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What Millennials Want

Aside from providing competitive compensation and mapping out a clear track for advancement, the key to retaining Gen Y professionals is good management. Gen Yers directly connect having a strong relationship with their manager to job satisfaction levels. In the Robert Half and Yahoo! HotJobs survey, respondents described their "dream boss" as being understanding, caring, flexible and open-minded, as well as someone who is authoritative but respects, and values and appreciates his or her employees.

Millennials' upbringing has much to do with their expectations of having managers who are engaged, accessible and communicative. They are accustomed to direct, ongoing supervision and guidance from parents, teachers and other authority figures, and probably were encouraged to ask questions (to which they likely received fairly open responses). As adults in the professional world, they expect to have the same type of interaction with their supervisors; in fact, 35% of those surveyed want to communicate with their boss several times a day. However, do not mistake being a more involved and attentive manager with micromanaging; Millennials want to be nurtured, not stifled.

Gen Y workers are eager to make contributions to their employers. As a result, they want and need to be challenged. So, make sure to give them assignments that will stretch their abilities and enable them to develop competencies they can carry with them through their careers, such as communication skills and other interpersonal abilities. And to bring out their best performance, be sure to provide constant feedback. If you don't, you run the risk of alienating Gen Y workers who may misinterpret a delayed response—or none at all—as a signal that they did not perform to your expectations, or worse, that their contributions are not valued by the company.

Investing In Tomorrow's Workforce

One last word of advice for retaining Gen Y workers and helping them advance professionally: Promote mentoring in your IT department. In the Robert Half and Yahoo! HotJobs survey, Millennials said they find mentor relationships to be valuable. Employers should facilitate the transfer of knowledge by pairing less-seasoned employees with veteran professionals. Mentoring not only can help to create a highly skilled and knowledgeable IT team, but it also can help employees from any age group build rapport with their colleagues.

Millennials make up a quickly growing pool of new tech talent. IT organizations making an effort to understand the values, work styles, ideals and professional expectations of Generation Y likely will be those that are successful in recruiting the best and brightest of these workers and retaining them for the long term.

Katherine Spencer Lee is executive director of Robert Half Technology, a leading provider of IT professionals on a project and full-time basis. Robert Half Technology has more than 100 locations worldwide and offers online job search services at http://www.rht.com. To request a complimentary copy of What Millennial Workers Want: How to Attract and Retain Gen Y Employees, call 1.800.793.5533.

Comments (2)

	1. 06-06-2008 12:10
	Yes, mentoring the Millennials and respecting them for who they are is very important.    I met someone at a conference who was really not happy with millennials. It was the same old lecture of 'kids these days'. C'mon now, isn't that what everyone said about each of us and our generations?    This person even wanted to go to an HR conference wearing a t-shire that said 'I survived working with a Millennial.' I asked her if she thought that would be offensive to any millennials at the conference. She felt confident they would be too young to attend.....    Shame!    So yes, let's welcome our successors with open arms and open minds.    Thank you Registered

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	2. 08-19-2008 08:52
	I respect both Katherine and Margaret's views. I have a slightly different point of view.    My organization hires over 10,000 students from campuses and off-campuses every year for large corporate houses. 25% of them for IT clients. There is a huge gap between the expectations of the corporate and the competence of these youngsters.    The surge in economy during the last five years (until very recently) put undue pressure on corporate houses to hire in very large numbers. Since campuses made economic sense, they hired hugely from the campuses too. This trend of mega hires and ever increasing compensation levels on the campuses led the campuses to hike their fee year-on-year. An Engineering Graduate who used to pay Rs.80k (Roughly $2K) for a seat ended up paying Rs.400k (Roughly $10K) for a paid seat. The campuses, in their greed to make hay when the economic Sun shined, increased seats. This had a direct impact on quality.    The new gen which came out of the campuses mistook the hefty offers they got from big brands as a proof of their own competence and sang through the induction programmes. However, with 60% attrition in Sales, 18% to 22% attrition in IT (where service agreements were signed, this was lower)and 100% attrition in BPOs during the first SIX months of joining, Indian corporates who hired this new-gen were in for a blood-bath.    At best, they are same old rum with a designer tag. The best time to hire them is after they quit their first employer (this can be within 15 days of 180 days of joining). They are known to stay own with their second employer, appreciating the fact that the grass is not always green on the other side.    My comments are personal and India specific. These are not the comments subscribed by my organization.  Thanks and regards  Rajesh Kumar Registered

Rajesh Kumar

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