Attracting IT Graduates to Your Business: Capture the best new IT talent for your company

The Millennials are often also named the Google or Net generation because of their comfort with all things technological. They grew up using technology and they expect employers to provide them with the same tools used in their personal life to collaborate, create, brainstorm, and network. They are hyper-connected through all types of media—physically and socially. News is sourced online and then shared across a wide range of social media networks. They love to learn and they know that there will always be new things to learn because of our dependency on technology. When they learn, they want the content to be engaging and inspiring, with an element of fun thrown in for good measure.

In his book Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World, Don Tapscott established a summary of the norms and characteristics critical to understanding the needs of this generation.

The Millennials can be defined as follows:

As an employer, accommodating or even just being cognizant of these traits is often a challenge. For a lot of organizations, it will mean that they need to rethink how work needs to be carried out, how teams work together, and how much is shared for the purpose of creativity and innovation.

In your organization:

Millennials believe this as essential for their productivity. If you don't make the tools available, you would need a good reason for why it isn't for their use during working hours.

If I think about some of the employment terms and conditions I have seen in organizations, there may well be a cry for a massive overhaul in the coming years in order to retain the best talent. I know companies that block Facebook and chat functions or even disable the whole Internet on workstations in order to keep workers focused on the job at hand, not to mention the very restrictive clauses often found in codes of conduct or employment contracts. Obviously, at some point in time these served a purpose or were added to avoid a particular situation, but they may now be the exact reason why the new generation of workers may turn down an otherwise good offer.

When it comes to the use of social media, I have seen clauses in contracts that prohibit its use, and employers have even looked for login details for employees' personal accounts on social media, which thankfully is now deemed unethical. With blogging and microblogging through Twitter as a favorite pastime for many graduates, once again companies are trying to control what is said and not said about the inside world of work. When openness and transparency prevails, very protective and restrictive clauses may cause the Millennials to refuse offers or move on when they sense their freedom of expression is completely controlled.

In preparation for this book, I did my own research of current IT graduates and asked them what would attract them to a company as well as what would turn them away from a company. Unsurprisingly, the answers I received were in line with the traits listed in the larger research samples mentioned previously.

Although I specifically didn't mention salary, it was still the number one reason to accept a role above another. The next strongest factor was the opportunity to learn and grow on a personal level as well as gain deeper technical knowledge. The third decisive factor was a tie between having a strong work/life balance and having freedom from strict rules and schedules. Work environment and benefit packages in the style of Google and Facebook were mentioned a number of times, but didn't make it into the top three. Furthermore, graduates also commented on the fact that for a lot of organizations, a strong work/life balance was often more lip service than actual reality, and they definitely wanted normal hours so that life can go on outside of work.

The answers to the question "What would turn you away from a role?" were also quite revealing and congruent with previous research. Here are some of the top reasons graduates gave for turning down a role:

IT graduates would rather have organizations keep their promise close to reality instead of promising the moon, sun, and stars when the reality comes well short. They are eager to learn and develop, and they may consider a balanced package over a high salary with 24/7 expectations. What also came out was the expectation of graduates to have experience while, by and large, that will not be the case, and this will only end up frustrating both ends of the equation.

My personal research only accepted answers from IT graduates, whereas some of the other studies mentioned took just age as the main selection category, and yet the results were strikingly similar.

The intention of this chapter was to give you an insight into some of the key behaviors and deciders of the generation of graduates that are currently joining the workforce in high numbers globally.

In this chapter, we have learned:

I hope that by sharing these ideas, I am also making you think about your company, the benefits you offer or could potentially consider in the future, and your internal policies.

In the next chapter, you will learn how to implement the attraction policies and procedures used by some of the industry's greats.