Reaching and recruiting millennials — roughly defined as individuals born between 1980 and 2000 — is a hot topic, primarily because research shows by 2025 that generation will make up 75 percent of the workforce.
A great step in attracting millennials is to enlist the help of their Gen Y peers already in your workforce. During our recent Social Recruiting Pro Tips Webinar, Ashley Cheretes, Recruitment Marketing Manager at ADP (@ashleycheretes), delivered some good news about this generation: they’re into creativity, expressiveness, technology, altruism and ambition. That means, among other things, that they’re very collaborative, especially when it comes to acting on those traits by being creative, using technology and expressing themselves. So if you have millennials on your team (and you likely do), they’re predisposed to giving you help and advice in reaching others of their generation. All you have to do is ask. Here are a few ideas on how to do that from Ashley. Send out a survey Ashley recommends using SurveyMonkey to ask millennials on your staff for the social media sites they use and ideas on how to attract individuals like them. Throwing in a relatively cheap incentive — such as a $10 Starbucks gift card for everyone who responds — can dramatically improve response. Ask them in person Millennials crave constant feedback and are very willing to help, so identify the highly active social media users in your workforce and just chat with them to get ideas on what you can do better. For some, talking over lunch may be a refreshing change and could help you gain further insights than you might by emailing a survey. Tap into their expertise with social media Virtually every millennial is involved in social media in some way. Research shows 71 percent of millennials engage in social media daily, averaging more than three hours a day on social sites. More than half of the Gen Y professional say they won’t work at a company if they ban social media access. According to comScore, the percentage of millennials who use various social media outlets looks like this: 
This generation literally grew up with rapidly advancing social media sites, so tap into their expertise on how to use social medial, what to post and more. Make them partners and consultants in your social media efforts. Empower them to give you continuous feedback on how you’re doing. Ask them to forward you suggested content, because this is truly what employee-generated content looks like. Follow them on Twitter, and retweet and repost interesting things from their accounts. Be sure to give them credit and recognition for everything they do to help your efforts. Millennials like to participate in conversations in social media, so soon you could find yourself with a nice flow of suggested content that you can put out on company social media sites that will get the attention of other millennials. Watch the Webinar Check out the full on-demand webinar.
“How To Engage Millennials through Social Recruiting,” on YouTube for additional insights to connecting with Gen Y. View the Slide Deck