You may be looking for the best strategy to hire millennials for your business because you want the newest and brightest talent on your team. You want to hire high-performing millennials. But how can successful entrepreneurs save time and money during the hiring process to ensure you hire the right people? And after you hire them, how can you ensure that they will stay with your company?
Understanding What Millennials Want
You could start with understanding what high-performing millennials want in an ideal career. They are different from the previous generation because they are looking for work-life balance, flexible work schedules, mentorship, and the option to work from home occasionally.
Now, to attract young talent, you could go to extremes like General Electric did. The company moved its long-time headquarters to a major city because urban millennials only prefer to live in big cities.
But in most cases, you don’t have to do something as drastic to ensure that you hire the best performers. What you can do is set up your company to offer what they are looking for, such as work schedule flexibility and business mentorship.
Mentorship is important because many don’t have much work experience. Millennials, born between 1980 to 2000, have on average only a few years of career-related experience. However, they are very technologically savvy. They grew up with social networking and typically have about 200 Facebook friends, send an average of 50 texts a day, and have posted selfies on social media sites.
People tend to believe that this generation isn’t loyal to their employer and they change jobs quickly. But in my organization, I have hired a lot of young people because I need to keep up with trends, and I have found that my team members are extremely loyal.
They are also high-performers. The reason I’ve been able to hire loyal, high performers for my organization is because of my hiring process.
How To Build A Strong Team
When it comes to hiring, nothing is more important than your team. The best team wins in business. It’s not the techniques, the technology or even your product because those things you can manufacture.
Business is about people. I’ve seen leaders with great talents but they have a weak team. I would take an average idea and a great team any day of the week verses a great idea and an average team.
An average team could not execute the idea the way that we want to but a great team can take an average idea and make it work. A great team will tweak ideas, improve, upgrade, or change direction as needed to make things happen.
In my lifetime, I’ve made some very good hiring decisions and a few really bad ones. That’s how I learn to pick the best people for my team. I’ve also come to believe that there are only three types of employees: the grunt, the mercenary, and the patriot.
When you understand these three types, you can streamline your hiring process to find the employee types you don’t want, and attract the types you do want in your company. Part of this process includes asking the right questions to assess their work ethic and personality type.
Watch this video about the three types of employees.
The Grunt
The first type of employee is the grunt. You can rely on them to show up and get work done. To find out if your potential employee is a grunt, don’t ask them the typical interview questions, like their background and strengths.
What you want to ask is, “Are there any questions you have for me?” when you’re interviewing them. And they will tell you, “Well, how do you calculate overtime? How many vacations do I get? Or exactly how many hours do I have to work?”
That’s a grunt. They just want a nine to five job and to do the minimum not to get fired and go through the day to day motions. They just do what they do to pay the bills and make a living. They’re very focused on how much time they have to work, if it’s full-time or part-time. If they’re asking you questions about work hours, you have a grunt.
Depending on your type of business, you may want to hire a grunt to get the work done. For example, you need someone to do some work that is fairly routine and repetitive.
You don’t want to have too many grunts in your company. If there are too many of them in your company, your business is not going to grow because you have a team of people doing the minimum.
The Mercenary
The second type employee you will get is what I call a mercenary. A mercenary works for money.
At the end of the interview, they will ask you a lot of money questions. They want to know about salary, bonuses, and other compensation. It’s all about money for them. That kind of person usually works in sales positions.
With a mercenary, if there are better opportunities where they can make more money, they will jump ship very quickly. Because they work for money, they have no loyalty whatsoever.
There’s a time and place for mercenaries. They’re hunters. They are ideal if you want to sell a lot of product at your store. You probably don’t want a mercenary in customer support. You probably don’t want a mercenary managing your finances.
The Patriot
The third type of employee is what I call a patriot, the one you want in your company. You want mostly patriots in your company because they want to make good money but that’s not what drives them.
A patriot is driven by a mission, a purpose, and being part of something bigger than themselves. During the interview process, they will bring you ideas.
They will say things like, “I have studied your company’s culture. I think I could bring value to what you do.”
From the beginning, they are already thinking about improvements, but not from the perspective that your company is doing something wrong. They want to contribute and they’re driven by growth.
Patriots are the type you want to hire. Those you cannot hire enough of because when you have a group of patriots, your company you will have a culture that is growth oriented, because those people always want to make things better.
Chances are, patriots work well with other people because they know they cannot do it by themselves. They need to work with other people to in order to make this vision a reality. They are not nickel and dimeing you.
They’re not thinking about what happens if they have to work more than five minutes of over time. They’re not watching the clock, seeing that it’s 4:50 so they’re ready to go home in ten minutes.
Patriots just want to do something epic with great people. When you have a group of patriots, you will have a much stronger organization.
I have many patriots in my organization and because of their growth mindset and passion for what they do, my company is able to move at a fast pace and pivot quickly. If you want to build a fast paced business, one way is to hire millennials who are patriots.
Hiring High-Performing Millennials Who Are Patriots
Millennials want work-life balance. They want to be part of a mission that is greater than themselves, so they aren’t as concerned with money. Many would rather make $40,000 doing something they love than $100,000 doing something they hate. In fact, a majority think that the performance of a business should be measured by more than its financial success.
More and more millennials are becoming entrepreneurs to supplement their income or make a positive difference in the world. In 2011, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, millennials launched just under 160,000 startups a month, and 29 percent of these businesses were started by people 29 to 34 years old.
Now if you’re an entrepreneur or business owner and you want to build a strong team, you should hire high-performing millennials who are patriots. I have several millennials on my team and they have important roles as leaders and directors. I have empowered them to run entire departments on my team.
You might be wondering why I would hire young kids and give them important responsibilities instead of hiring someone with ten years of experience. The secret is to hire based on attitude and then train for skills. Skills are something that can be learned. A hard working attitude, desire for learning and self improvement, and passion for success cannot be taught.
So hire based on attitude and then train for skills.
Benefits To The Company
Millennials want to be part of a mission that benefits more than themselves. They also want to be mentored. On my team, I provide my hires with mentorship, but I also expect them to invest in their own training.
A patriot will always invest in their own growth and they will always contribute their knowledge to the team so the team also grows. My team members pay the airfare, hotel, and costs to attend training in other cities. When they invest in themselves, they will pay more attention to what they are learning. And when I see the results of their training, I will reward them.
The high-performing millennials on my team work long hours but they don’t watch the clock. Their work tasks are based on what they are passionate about doing, such as digital marketing, copywriting, or video production. It’s easy to lose track of time when your career is like a hobby.
They work remotely and they set their own hours, but they also support each other. I have created a team culture in which my team is responsible for their work tasks and will accomplish what needs to be done without direct supervision. This can only be achieved when the company CEO or business owner sets a clear vision and clear team culture.
There are over 80 million millennials, and the way they want to work is changing how employers hire. If you want to build a successful team, then hire patriots.
Final Thoughts On How Successful Entrepreneurs Hire High-Performing Millennials
If you want to build a successful team and hire millennials who are patriots, share with them your mission and give them the chance to contribute. Allow work-life balance by having an organization where employees set their own hours and have the opportunity to work from home.
If you do this, you will hire a lot of patriots. From time to time, some tasks should be left for grunts. For certain tasks, like a sales position, mercenaries will be fine. But if you want someone who will help you achieve your company’s mission and will be a high performer, hire a patriot.
How could a patriot move your business forward? Comment below.
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