The Hiring Shift: What Each Generation Wants in a Job Offer (And How to Attract Top Talent)

Episode 87: The Hiring Shift: What Each Generation Wants in a Job Offer (And How to Attract Top Talent)

In this episode, Holly Hibbard - Executive Leadership Coach & Corporate Relationship Consultant - shares with you...

• how to attract and retain top talent by understanding what different generations—Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z—seek in their careers, including flexibility, career development, and positive corporate culture. (Insightful Strategies for Today’s Workforce)
• why traditional job offers might be driving away exceptional candidates and what innovative, personalized approaches can be implemented to enhance recruitment efforts and cater to a diverse talent pool. (The Evolution of Hiring Practices)
• actionable tips on how to craft competitive job offers that resonate with prospective employees, emphasizing the importance of hybrid work options and a supportive work environment to enhance organizational success. (Boosting Employee Engagement and Retention)

If you like what you've read so far, I’d love it if you’d SUBSCRIBE to the show, and TURN ON your notifications so you don’t miss a future episode.

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Transcript

Hey, everyone.
Welcome back to the Holly Hibbard Show, or if you're new here, hi.
Welcome.
I am your host, Holly.
I am so grateful for you listening to this show whether you are new or returning.
Every click, every listen, every download, it matters.
Yes.
Because of my metrics, and I do want the show to be successful.
But more importantly, I am incredibly passionate about having tools that you can use out there in the world, in the wilderness so that you can become a better leader.
You can boost your personal professional growth, and you can pass that on to your colleagues, your management, your employees, your your family.
Even if you can leverage it that way, that is my mission, and I wanna keep things as simple as possible, as realistic as possible.
So I am just eternally grateful, so grateful for you listening to the show.
Today, I'm gonna focus on hiring.
Hiring.
Because I don't know about you, but there's this little thing going on here in the last couple years.
I'm recording this in March of twenty twenty five.
Something going on where people are saying people don't wanna work anymore.
People are lazy.
People don't want to go above and beyond.
There's a lot of complaining and a lot of negative narratives out there in the popular media, in social media, in everyday conversations, friend to friend or colleague to colleague, that people just don't care about work or hard work ethic.
And that perpetuates into this idea that the talent, the talent base, the people looking for work, the people who are looking to leave one job and go to another, that they are the problem.
And when it comes to hiring, I wanna say in this episode that there needs to be a hiring shift.
Because if you're struggling to hire in your organization, if you're in your business, in your department, the problem isn't the talent.
The problem is the offer.
And I'm not saying that people who are lazy and don't wanna go above and beyond, I'm not saying that that doesn't exist.
Of course, it exists.
There are people who have other layers of responsibility in their life, and they're terrible at it.
There are people who are terrible parents.
There are people who are terrible drivers.
Whenever we're given responsibility as adults, some people will embrace it and go above and beyond and make sure that they are exceptional at it, and others just don't care.
But I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt to humanity and today say again that if your organization is struggling to hire people or attract quality people to your company, the problem again is not the talent, it's the offer.
So the hiring shift I'm highlighting for you today is again, generational.
I've been talking a lot lately about generational differences, and I think it makes such a huge difference in why it's not working.
And I'm going to go into what each generation wants in a job offer and how to attract top talent.
Now even though I'm going to be talking about baby boomers or boomers, Gen x, millennials, Gen Z.
I want it to be known in this episode from the jump that talent is talent.
Work ethic is work ethic, and experience is a great thing.
And I also think that a person's willingness to learn something new and have that desire to consistently approve upon improve upon how well they do their work is hugely valuable to an organization.
So I'm going to highlight different generations and, yes, with those generations come different age brackets like the boomers and the gen xers are in their forties and up, and then you have your millennials and your Gen Z who are in their thirties and down.
And it's not everything to do with age.
And I'm going to reference age because because it does have some influence and again, I'm blanketing the generations, but someone who has had years working and they are a boomer or an older person, an older gen x person, they could have terrible work ethic.
They can be absolutely checked out and not give a rip.
And then you also have people who are Gen z or millennials who are maybe they don't have the same, I've been in this industry for twenty five years experience, but they have that tenacity to do better and be better for themselves, for their family, for just feeling good about what they do and having a purpose at work.
So they might not have the twenty five years of experience.
Right?
But they might have an attitude that is inherently more valuable than just the number of years somebody has gotten clocked in on that job, let's say.
Alright.
So attracting top talent, this is gonna require understanding what different generations want from their jobs.
So again, we're going to explore what companies must do to remain competitive.
I also want to insert a little bit of personal info here.
So as I've mentioned in episodes, the reason I don't have full on video episodes just yet, and I will in the next couple of weeks again, thank goodness, is because my family is currently moving from the house we're in now to our new house.
And in the process of moving to our new house, we have had a lot of contractors come in and out of the house.
Everything from drywall repairs to framing out a room for us to, you know, fixing just fixing issues that need to be corrected in our home.
And with having all these contractors come in and out, we have been in a situation where we're playing, the project manager, you know, or we are we are the, the person who is seeing who shows up and who doesn't.
And, yeah, there are a lot of people who came into the house previously well before we purchased it and did some really not so great work on the house.
And just a few years later, it's already causing big issues.
There have been a number of contractors that said they would show up at a certain time and they show up two, three, four hours later, if at all.
And the person managing all of them is so frustrated because they're on the ball.
But in the trades, in this specifically, they're having a hard time finding quality people.
And not only finding quality people, but then retaining these people as well.
And I was talking with them about how do they hang on to the people who are exceptional at the job.
And they said that it's tough to put an exact sticker and label on what's having it happen because somebody can commit to, let's say, showing up to our house to do work at nine in the morning, and they know they're going to get paid x amount of money per hour.
But they might wake up that morning and get an offer from another home company that says, hey, we'll pay you double, And then they chuck our job and they go to the other one and this person who's managing the whole thing, they there's nothing they can do about it in the moment because yes, the dollar is going to win out if one company is willing to pay more than another.
That will absolutely attract other people.
But there's other things that factor into this as well, and that's what I really wanna go into.
So this has some personal touches, in this episode today as well.
So hiring is shifting because old school job perks don't work anymore, meaning they are not as attractive as they once were.
So the generational divide in job expectations, I did an episode on this recently about what, the different generations value in their work and their attitude about work.
So I wanna quickly highlight what the job expectations are per generation.
When it comes to baby boomers or boomers, they're looking for stability.
Pensions are very attractive.
Long term security are very attractive.
And I know in my family, my mom actually got laid off from a sales job when she was 62.
And I remember when my mom was laid off from that job and she had to go into the workforce at 62 years old, it was so difficult for her because she knew that their the ageism was playing a part, even though she was exceptional at sales.
She was extraordinary with it.
She had a great personality.
She was very with it.
And it was difficult for her because she was banking on the company she got laid off from to be her long term security.
She only had a few years left.
So at that point, her perspective shifted because, yes, she was an empty nester well by this point, but having that long term security, or in her case, the two, three, four year security was very, very important.
So stability, pension, long term security is something that is very much in the forefront for the boomer generation, because of where they're at in their life, and they're not looking to rock the boat in too many places.
Now with Gen x, Gen X is looking for a balance between career growth and autonomy.
They want to climb, I'll say the ladder, climb the corporate ladder or receive more compensation, feel good about their work, possibly be management leadership.
They wanna feel like they're growing in their career.
However, they don't wanna be micromanaged at all.
They love that they have autonomy and how they get things done.
They know what the target is, and then they go out and they know that they can handle it and find the way that works best.
So they're not looking for someone to be breathing down their neck every two seconds about how something has to be.
Now Millennials Millennials are looking for meaningful work.
So when they're looking at job offers, they're looking for jobs that are flexible, that have purpose, and that have some element of mentorship where they can mentor others or they can be mentored because they want to be growing in their career.
And that's something that millennials and Gen X have in common in this regard is the career growth often means that they know that they're going to have mentorship from somebody else and that's only going to make them better in that industry.
And lastly, Gen Z.
Now with Gen Z, Gen Z enjoys career mobility.
They want to be able to seamlessly go from one place to another.
Gen Z is not coming into this like the boomer generation or even gen x thinking I'm going to be here until I retire.
They wanna keep growing, they wanna keep moving, movers and shakers, they appreciate inclusivity, And the reason that they want this mobility is because they want a work life balance.
And they've seen millennials and they've seen Gen X, especially when they go through life changes, like they get married or they buy a home or they move to a new city or there's a death in the family or they have kids.
Those massive life changes and stressors require flexibility and Gen Z has seen that in other generations and they want that career mobility and they want that work life balance.
This is also a generation that for a lot of Gen z, they were finishing high school, and getting into their college years, early twenties during the pandemic, during 2020 and COVID and all of that stuff.
And so it showed them that the world can actually flip on a dime, that people can go from working in office buildings to completely online and that change can happen that fast, and there does bring career mobility and more opportunity with that.
So Gen z and a job offer and an expectation of a job, they're looking for that.
So why standard job offers are no longer working?
As I said before, the job offers of the past are not as appealing yesteryear as they are today.
And the reason is because there is a decline in what's known as lifelong employment.
People are not entering the workforce, typically, with the goal of I'm going to be here from 22 or 23 years of age until I retire at 65 or 67.
People are not as willing to hang on in a miserable job setting where their mental health is taking a toll just for the sake of, Oh, I might have a pension, or I might have tenure.
Those things are not a big as big of a piece of the pie as they used to be in yesteryear.
So this idea of lifelong employment is down.
So if you are in a hiring position and you're looking for people to come in and say, yeah, I wanna work here for the rest of my life, you might be asking too much.
You might be asking too much.
Now if you're seeking people who want to be a part of something long term, just recognize that long term to them, you might be your organization in this job, it might be a five year plan.
It might be a ten year plan.
I understand that you don't want turnover every six months to a year or two years because it costs money to have to retrain somebody over and over again.
But understand that when people come in, they're again, not necessarily looking for lifelong employment anymore because they see so much opportunity around them.
So you've got to know, are they on a five year plan?
Are they on a ten year plan?
And don't hold it against them, in my opinion.
Also, standard job offers are no longer working because there's a rising demand for hybrid work and flexibility.
And I think this has to do with the generational shift as well because for those of you who've been listening to my show for a while or you know me, in the last so I am 45 years old and I got married almost about a year and a half ago.
And I've been an entrepreneur for a number of years.
And my life between getting married, moving in as a family, now being a mom, then my mom having cancer, my life and my mom passing away.
There are so many shifts that happened in my life, major life shifts.
And now buying a house, oh, you know, no big deal.
There's so many things that have happened for the good and for the bad just in the last four or five years of my life.
So for me, someone in my who's been in my early thirties here or my early forties and now mid forties, my life has shifted so quickly, so many times just based on family and relationship, not even in the workforce, not even because of the workforce.
And so I think with millennials and gen Z, or I'm sorry, millennials and gen x, I think those generations are going through these massive life changes.
There are there are marriages.
There are divorces.
There are kids.
There are sick or parents sick parents or parents passing away, people becoming empty nesters.
Those are major tolls on people emotionally.
And that emotional toll on people and just the need to adapt and change to those big situations, that is something that absolutely is going to impact how they work, where they work, and their demand for flexibility and potentially hybrid work.
Not because I don't wanna leave my house, like I want to work in my sweatpants.
And if that's you, cool, no problem.
But sometimes the flexibility in the hybrid work is because again, in the last number of years, when the world flipped on its head on a dime, we all saw things happen in person to virtual very quickly, actually overnight.
And the world can function that way.
Yes.
Interpersonal communications with people face to face are super important.
I do believe that.
But we've seen the world can come up with hybrid opportunities.
We've seen the world make the workplace flexible and people learned from that.
Wow.
Like I, I can be home with my kids when they leave for school and come home from school and I can still work from home and not have to put my kids in a daycare, which is hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars a month.
And that is fiscally responsible.
It helps people out.
So again, if you are putting forth the standard job offer and you notice people are asking about hybrid work, flexible work, and you automatically ding them for that, I would invite you to be curious about it and ask them why that is important for them.
Because honestly, you're going to hear what they value in life and it's probably the kind of values and principles that you want your employees to have.
And yes, it might require you to rework the standard job offer, the position, and think about how can we make this more flexible so that this person can win in their personal life.
Because if they're thriving in their personal life because you helped accommodate that as their employer, I promise you they're going to be much more loyal to you and much less likely to leave.
And isn't that the name of the game?
We want quality talent, top talent, and we also want to retain them and keep them.
The last reason that a standard job offer is no longer working is younger generations are prioritizing a company culture over salary.
And that is just mind boggling to folks of older generations like Gen X or boomers or even older.
Right?
Prioritizing company culture over money.
Yeah.
It's a real thing.
It's a real thing.
And I think too, a lot of these generations, the younger, the younger generations are more likely to be minimalistic.
And yes, living in this world is incredibly expensive and inflation is very high.
And because these generations though are minimalistic, they don't need to hold onto or hoard as much as say some of the older generations might be tempted to do so because that's just pattern that was passed on from, you know, parents who were in the Great Depression.
So we're going to like grandparents, great grandparents, depending on who you are and how old you are.
So this is not necessarily a bad thing.
Because again, if you have someone that's coming to work for you, would you rather they're just there for the money and they're going to, you know, half the job, they're not going to care about their work.
Or would you rather have somebody there that looks at the vision or the mission you have for the work, who comes with a good work ethic and says, Yeah, this company, it sounds like they're doing something meaningful and I want to be a part of that.
I tell you the money, people are always going to want more money and there's nothing wrong with wanting more money.
Okay?
Don't hear me wrong on that.
But culture, culture will shove people out much faster if it's toxic than, Oh, I haven't gotten a raise in a year.
Co corporate culture takes a toll much quicker on your people than a lack of raise or promotion or bonus.
Promise you that.
So those are some reasons why the standard job offers are no longer working.
So how can if you're an employer, if you're a leader, or you have, you know, you're in the ear of management where you are working, How can you, and the employ as an employer, how can you adapt and then also attract and more importantly retain this talent?
One of the things that you can do is when you're creating the job offer, have a part of it where you know that you're able to personalize that job offer to meet the applicant's needs, and more specifically, the applicant's generational needs.
Because let's say you create an offer and you know that you have a preference.
You would prefer for this person to, let's say, be in the office, five days a week, eight hours a day.
Very standard.
And let's say you have, you know, eight great, applicants that you're going to interview.
When they come in, rather than if somebody says, Yeah, I'm I'm cool with being in the office every single day.
You can still ask that person, would you be interested in hybrid or remote or having it be flexible?
Do you prefer it this way?
Do you prefer it that way?
That's an example of something that you can come to the table and know that that's something that certain generations might value more than others.
And mostly because of the stage that they're at in their life.
Some people are raising families and trying to save money on health care while you've got, you know, one or two people trying to make enough money to have everything work.
Other folks are empty nesters and they don't wanna sit at home all day.
They wanna get out of the house.
They wanna be around other people.
It could be the same person in a different season of their life.
That's my point.
But have some things in the offer that you can personalize to them whenever possible.
How can you make it flexible and get to know your applicant and what they would prefer?
The other thing that you can do to attract and retain talent is keep the level of importance in your mind of career development programs.
Now I am kind of biased on this because I created a leadership program for corporations and small businesses called Relatable Leadership.
And I love my workshops.
Like I love my workshops.
I love teaching them.
I love going into organizations and helping them boost that morale and humanizing the workplace because that boosts pride, it boosts confidence.
And when you boost pride and confidence in your work and you get to know people and you meet them where they're at, that boosts competence.
And that also helps them to say, you know what?
I would like to learn something new, career development for my work.
And also career development is not only giving them training based on the job they actually do.
Yes, that's important.
But in, in my eyes, it's so important to support them as people and give them trainings and programs and access to it that are going to help them both in their workplace and their personal life.
That is why my program is called Relatable Leadership when I go into companies, because I'm customizing it to their team and what they are looking to improve upon.
I'm not going in there and saying, this is what everyone needs.
I mean, that's just ridiculous to me.
I really want to get people to feel comfortable in some degree to share what's really going on for them and how it's impacting their productivity, their efficiency, the culture around them, what's off putting, what's exciting, what boosts them.
Those conversations are so important.
And one more thing that you can do to adapt and retain the talent I'm sorry, to, to I can't even talk anymore.
I haven't talked in too long, you guys.
To adapt so that you can attract and retain your talent.
That's what I meant to say.
Is you can showcase your company culture out in the world.
This is something that my husband's company actually does so, so well.
My, you know, I won't go into names and all that stuff, but this particular company, they have such an exceptional corporate culture and they do promote it.
They get it out there.
And so I can't go a day or two without logging on to LinkedIn and seeing them post something that people in the office have done that is beneficial to the community around them, or beneficial to the culture itself.
They could they might celebrate somebody's birthday and get catering for everybody in the office or something like that, and there will be pictures there.
And with a note that says, oh, you appreciate this person.
They're so extraordinary.
And then, you know, there might be another one that says, we just attended this corporate culture award, and we were nominated for XYZ and we're really excited to improve on ABC.
There's always something, there's always a narrative they're putting out there about their corporate culture.
And I love that.
And there's a there's another company, here in the Metro Detroit area that I know of that does an excellent job with it.
They literally have billboards along the freeway when I'm driving on 75, I-seventy 5, that talks about perks of being a person who works there and their retention is very good and they're always hiring and the retention is still really good because people enjoy working there.
So showcase your company culture.
Don't worry about, oh my gosh, is are the right people gonna see it?
People are going to see it.
And it might not be the person looking for you to come and work for you, but someone that knows that person looking will see it and go, you know, I saw this thing on LinkedIn or I saw this thing on Instagram or whatever it is.
Don't be afraid to brag about any and all things that you can be proud of in the workplace.
So here are some actionable hiring strategies.
If you really want to implement this information, attracting that top talent, putting forth that job offer that's really gonna resonate with them.
First, have a checklist for creating a modern competitive job offer.
I've given you some ideas here.
Obviously, the offer you're gonna put forth has to have clear agreements about what the task itself is going to be, what the metrics are going to be about that task, what they can expect in terms of salary, or hourly and how they can grow in the company.
So you wanna include opportunities for them to grow in the company because again, that career development path, that career growth is important across generation.
You also wanna highlight why people who work for you feel that stability.
What's the culture like?
What keeps people there who are staying there?
Don't just focus on the people who are leaving and then leaving and then leaving.
The people who are staying, find out why and promote that.
This is part of creating that modern competitive job offer.
You want to go back to what I shared earlier in this episode.
Go back to what boomers, Gen x, millennials, Gen z are looking for and make sure your job offer, your job listing touches on each one of those things.
The the stability, the moe the meaningful work, flexibility, work life balance, whatever you can bring to the table, as much of those things as you can touch on in the job posting, that's going to attract more applicants and more applicants means more qualified people or exceptional top talent that you're going to have to choose from.
Another thing you can do as an actionable hiring strategy and is really avoid, looking only at Gen Z and millennials.
So this is basically what I'm saying here is don't be ageist either way.
Don't be ageist either way.
Because as I pointed out before at the beginning of this episode, yes, we're talking about age because of the generations, but generations each have a different vibe, a different feeling, a different set of priorities generalizing here.
So just like it would be wrong of you to say, oh, well, this Gen X or this Boomer probably is gonna work harder and they know more, talk to them.
Ask them questions.
And if you have a Gen Z or millennial come in, don't assume that just because they're greener or fresh to the industry that they're necessarily going to give you their absolute best.
This is where asking them questions is so important.
Get to know them.
So part of that checklist with having a great job offer or a job listing that you're going to put out there, similarly, have a great checklist of questions that you're going to ask during an interview of all folks, of all applicants, of all different generations that's going to help you focus on keeping the main thing the main thing.
What are the principles and the values of your organization?
What is the job at hand?
And what is their skill set?
What is the merit that they can show you?
And it's because we can't just say that because somebody is older or somebody is younger, they're going to be better at the job.
Kind of feel like that should go without saying, but unfortunately, in today's world, it needs to still be said.
So here's your final challenge.
In the time that you're listening to this or over the next week or so, reassess one aspect of your hiring process.
Look at your hiring process from start to finish.
Is there a concrete checklist that you're looking at in the very beginning, or are you making it up as you go?
Or let's say you're looking around at your workforce and let's say the majority of your workforce are millennials.
And maybe you're thinking, wow, they're really great.
So I'm going to write this job offer targeting more millennials.
Well, see how you can expand on that.
How can you ask better questions to bring in more applicants who are Gen X, Boomers, or even Gen Z?
Because diversity in the workforce in terms of perspectives and the way people see the world, it's invaluable.
It actually makes your team richer when you don't have cookie cutter employees.
It makes it richer.
It also boosts the number of solutions you can come up with to a problem.
It boosts creativity because different perspectives means different ideas, and different ideas equates to more solutions in a faster time.
So open it up, reassess how you are doing hiring in your organization, and remember, if you're telling yourself it's the talent that's the problem, it's not us, well then that's not being responsible.
That's not taking ownership of what's happening.
So reassess and if you've already assessed, reassess again.
Get a fresh set of eyes on it.
I'm happy to give this to you.
I hope this is supportive.
Thank you so much for listening, and until next time, I will talk to you next time.