Category: Generation Z (page 3 of 5)

Exclusive Insights Live from our 2022 #TEAwards Surveys

Over 80 recruiters and industry professionals attended our 2022 TalentEgg Awards and Conference to celebrate the best recruitment practices among students and recent grads. During the virtual event, we conducted several surveys to uncover exclusive insights into the future of recruitment and the workplace.

EMPLOYEES ARE HAPPY WITH HYBRID AND REMOTE WORKPLACES

We asked recruiters and industry professionals questions: “What kind of workplace do you have?” and “What is the best part of your new workplace model?” 5% responded “In Office”, 36% responded “Remote”, while 59% responded “Hybrid”. Regarding the best part of their new workplace model, most respondents are happy about the comfort of working from home while still being able to connect with colleagues. In the post-pandemic aftermath, hybrid workplaces are the newest trend that will become the new normal.

SOFT SKILLS ARE THE NEW CRITICAL SKILLS

In our Guide to Recruitment 2022, we empathize the importance of soft skills for the career success of students and new graduates. We asked our awards and conference attendees to tell us if they think “soft skills are critical for young talents in the workplace?” All respondents said “Yes.” When we asked them if they believe their company should invest in Soft Skills Training, all respondents said “Yes” too.

Students’ hard skills are learned in the classroom, whereas soft skills come from experiences, group projects, and daily interactions, which people must go out of their way to develop. Soft skills make for a healthy working environment, drive positive change, help solve problems more efficiently, increase sales and help improve employee retention.

Before the pandemic, students and grads expressed their need for additional training before entering the workforce and continued learning opportunities. Therefore at TalentEgg, we are egg-cited to excited to announce the launch of our E-Learning Platform. TalentEgg’s eLearning Academy offers courses that teach introductory workplace soft skills for students and grads and intermediate soft skills to advance careers. These courses support Canada’s top talent’s school-to-work transition and early career development. To learn more about our eLearning Academy and Soft Skills, download our Guide to Recruitment 2022.

THE DEMAND FOR TAKING ACTION ON DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION IN THE WORKPLACE

It is now a habit for students, recent graduates, and working professionals to research each company’s diversity, equity, and inclusion policies before applying. We asked attendees, “What is the most important DEI initiative in your workplace?” Among the answers were “having appropriate hiring practices in place,” “accessible website,” “ERG,” and “inclusive recruitment strategies,” to name a few. If you are a recruiter or HR professional, sit down with your company leaders and discuss practical ways to integrate diversity and inclusion into the workplace.

Social media, blogs, and websites are great for promoting your DEI initiatives, but it can sometimes be hard to target those initiatives to the audience you intend to promote. That’s why coming soon to TalentEgg; we will be offering DEI eblasts. These eblasts will be targeted and sent to DEI clubs in over 30+ universities and colleges across Canada.

If you’re unsure of what implementing diversity and inclusion initiatives or training in the workplace may look like, we at TalentEgg are here to help you take that first step. We have a whole chapter on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the workplace, in our Guide to Recruitment 2022.

NEW TRENDS FOR THE FUTURE OF CAMPUS RECRUITMENT

Due to the many options for recruiters, it can be challenging to choose where to put your campus recruitment efforts. When we asked attendees: “Do you think your campus recruitment strategies were up to date and effective in attracting young talent?” 57% of respondents answered with a “Yes” while 43% answered with a “No.” When we asked them, “Do you think your company should invest in new strategies to attract young talent?” all respondents agreed that their organizations should implement new strategies.

For many employers, a meaningful way to showcase their employer brand and capture students and recent grad’s attention is through events. Workplaces increasingly shifted to digital events during the pandemic, and this is a trend we believe is here to stay. Having your employer brand online is also critical to capture the attention of students and new grads.

Students and new grads overwhelmingly look for jobs on job board websites. Centralizing your organization’s recruitment efforts on job boards like TalentEgg is essential to developing and growing your employer brand beyond your career website to meet job seekers where they are. TalentEgg is not just a job board; we are also an employer branding platform to help you build and amplify your brand with hundreds of thousands of new grads and students.

But besides job boards, social media is by far the best way to engage students and new grads. Due to the rise of TikTok as the new preeminent platform, the digital landscape has dramatically changed. Successfully reaching students and recent grads on social media platforms requires a lot of work and time. Therefore, TalentEgg has invested heavily in the past year on Instagram and TikTok to enable our clients to use our TalentEgg platforms to access a broad audience of students and recent grads.

We are happy to announce that TalentEgg now offers TikTok Takeovers. During these TikToks, your organization can access TalentEgg’s TikTok account for one week, helping showcase your employer brand.

In addition, we are also launching TalentEgg Shorts, a video series showcasing your employer brand to help you grab students’ and new grads’ attention. With the fast pace and engaging graphics and music of our TalentEgg Shorts, the videos will be jam-packed with information while keeping them tight, concise and compelling. To learn more about our TikTok Takeovers and TalentEgg Shorts, download our Guide to Recruitment 2022.

THE CONTINUING IMPORTANCE OF MENTAL HEALTH IN THE WORKPLACE

Finally, mental health initiatives and awareness have gone a long way in the past few years, but much work still needs to be done. We asked our awards and conference attendees to tell us, “Do you think your employer provides sufficient mental health and wellness support?” The most common answer was “Yes.” We asked them, “Do you think your leadership would benefit from more training in supporting mental health and wellness of their employees?” 100% of respondents said “Yes.”

Workplaces can play a crucial part in mandating positive mental health for their workers. Furthermore, students and graduates report that mental health support at work is an essential factor in deciding where they want to work.

Here at TalentEgg, we realize that mental health training is in high demand amongst students, new grads and working professionals. We also know that as employers, schools and career centers, you want to continue to grow your mental health initiatives and create a safe and welcoming environment for all students, new grads and working professionals.

That’s why we created our new Mental Health & Psychological Safety In The Workplace Master Certificate Program on our TalentEgg eLearning Academy site. With these courses designed for managers and team leaders, you can build a psychologically safe workplace where employee mental health is a high priority.

For more trends on recruitment, the new digital recruitment word, and a glimpse of the future of the post-pandemic workplace, check out our Guide to Recruitment 2022 package, brought to you by our team at TalentEgg.

Let’s Talk Talent! April Edition

March 31, 2022 / Trevor Buttrum / 0 Comments

Keeping your employer’s brand and opportunities top of mind for students, new grads, and early career talent is paramount in today’s recruitment landscape. In our work with our clients at TalentEgg, we have found employers experience the greatest success in this regard when they:

Give candidates a real look at “what’s behind the curtain” in your industry and organization
Commit to Investing in skill-building, early career development, and well-being of your workforce
Target and show up often in the digital sphere of Gen Z talent
Help candidates stand out and demonstrate their skills
Share compelling stories that candidates can see themselves reflected in
Take a multi-faceted and high touch approach during peak recruitment periods

Last month, we explored approach # 2 – Commit to investing in your workforce’s skill-building, early career development, and well-being and marked the launch of the TalentEgg e-Learning Academy!

In this edition, we will take a deeper dive into approach # 3 – Target and often show up in Gen Z Talent’s digital sphere.

Before the pandemic in March 2020, thought leaders in campus recruitment often talked about “boots on ground” approaches and a need to “show up” often in students, new grads, and early career talent’s environments as parts of an effective campus strategy. To some extent, this also involved having a strong social media presence.

In the age of virtual recruitment and hybrid learning, frequent engagement and “showing up” where the talent you need is already spending time is an even more vital ingredient to campus recruitment and employer branding success. An established social media presence has proven essential but is rarely enough on its own. So, what are some of the other effective ways you can engage students and new grads digitally?

One of the most powerful tools you can have in today’s recruitment toolkit is the ability to tailor your messaging and target your engagement to the audiences you most want to reach. Whether it is those in a specific program or area of study, particular geography or demographic, or those with a certain set of interests, or even speak an additional language, digital engagement enables you to be as targeted in your outreach as you like.

Many of our clients have successfully promoted their brand and opportunities using targeted e-mail blasts and mobile marketing campaigns. This blend provides vehicles for telling their career story, driving traffic to their digital content (e.g. videos, blog posts/editorials) and building awareness of their events and opportunities on a large scale but also a curated audience based on their recruitment needs.

Mobile marketing ads appear where your target audience is already spending time online. And students and new grads have been shown to click these ads at twice the average industry rate. This tells us they are paying attention and engaging with content that appeals to their career interests.

Here are some examples of these marketing tools in action:

Evolution Mining is newer to the Canadian campus recruitment space. They have effectively used e-mail blasts to introduce themselves to students and new graduates with backgrounds in science, mining, geology, environmental science, technology, and engineering, promote their virtual information sessions, and encourage candidates to apply to their new graduate programs.

They have also leveraged mobile marketing to ensure they reach potential candidates from communities close to their mine site, studying at their target schools, or actively interested in a career in mining.

EF Tours needed to find talent for their bilingual sales team based in communities around Montreal. Mobile marketing enabled them to engage a broader pool of candidates with the skills, language profile, interests, and experience they were looking for.

In addition to targeting, consistency in your digital engagement and keeping your brand front and centre with candidates during key recruitment periods are also highly effective. Several of our clients have found leaderboard and pop-up ads to be excellent vehicles for this type of engagement.

Rogers utilizes pop-up ads on TalentEgg’s main pages to drive students and new grads to their open opportunities and to discover more about what it is like to work at Rogers via their employer profile.

Chick-fil-A invites top student and new grad talent to explore their leadership development program and learn more about their distinct workplace culture.

Leaderboard ad

Pop-up ad

Finally, think about ways you can take a few chances and engage Gen Z on other platforms that are a big part of their digital sphere. Recently, TalentEgg has been experimenting with content creation and engagement on TikTok. Over the last few months, we have been steadily increasing our followers and have seen some solid engagement with the career content our team has been sharing on the platform.

If you’re feeling brave and want to pilot sharing some of your own branded content via our TikTok account, reach out to us! We’d love to collaborate with you!!

In summary, target your audience, be consistent with staying top of mind, and don’t be afraid to take a few chances and experiment. These are three tactics TalentEgg has found to be very useful in engaging with and recruiting top students, new graduates, and early career talent in a virtual world.

Until next time…

Millennials Are All Grown Up: Connect with Early Career Professionals

May 18, 2020 / Stephanie Davis / 0 Comments

In 2019, TalentEgg is proud to celebrate its 11th anniversary. For over a decade, TalentEgg has specialized in being the most preferred job board and career resource for students and recent grads in Canada. Something unique about our demographic is that we’re finding students and grads that found their first jobs on TalentEgg are now coming back to us for their second or third jobs in their careers. As a trusted source for all things career, our users are looking for more experienced and intermediate roles, which means we can reach even more candidates to fill your recruitment gaps. To learn more about early career professionals, we eggs-panded our TalentEgg Survey to get their insight about the workplace, what they look for in an employer and what they’re searching for in their careers. We’ve already revealed some of our findings throughout this Guide but wanted to dedicate a little more attention to this cohort. Our once young millennials have grown up, and here’s what they’re searching for.

Out of the early career respondents, 41% have been with 1 employer since graduation and 41% have stayed in the same role since graduation. However, 72% are actively looking for a new position with an employer. The common theme? They’re looking for growth and aren’t necessarily finding it at their current place of work. Career path and growth is consistently the number one factor that both students, grads and early career professionals are looking for in a potential employer. So it’s no surprise that 59% say they want more job opportunities shared with them.

We found that 94% of early career professionals are interested in taking additional training and certificates, including one-on-one career coaching. We also discovered that 61% of early career professionals have already taken additional training/certificate programs beyond their undergraduate degree. This demonstrates that there is a clear desire for additional training. This presents an opportunity to develop a generation of young professionals who are looking to continue on their career path, potentially improving employee engagement and retention. Don’t let your onboarding investments go to waste. If your organization prides itself on developing its people, then make sure you’re highlighting this to not only current employees, but to new candidates as well.

Since early career professionals are the millennial generation, they are digitally savvy and want to receive information in a similar manner to students – via social media. Instagram is the number one preferred platform for early career and, as they get older, they start to rely on social media and online resources for their career information instead of their parents and family members.

With TalentEgg’s paid social media campaigns, targeted email blasts and geo-fenced mobile marketing campaigns, we can target early career professionals looking to make the next step in their career as well as provide you support for your campus recruitment.

With this strategic approach, we can add value to your talent attraction and recruitment efforts and your talent pool will be filled with the top-notch candidates before you know it! We deliver measurable results and promote your employer brand at the same time. Reach out to us to find out which customizable solution will work best for your company.

Stop Ghosting Your Candidates and Other Recruitment Pet Peeves

April 6, 2020 / Maria Vasserman / 0 Comments

It’s no surprise that having a positive candidate experience is beneficial to your employer brand. So why are so many candidates having negative experiences during the application, interview and hiring process? In our 2019 TalentEgg Survey, we asked students, grads and early career professionals what their biggest pet-peeves about the recruitment process are. Their answers may not surprise you – you may have been in a similar situation yourself! We’ll be sharing how to avoid these recruitment mishaps and ensure your organization is always seen and spoken about in a positive light when it comes to recruiting.

Overwhelmingly the number one complaint from job seekers came down to communication (or lack thereof!). Many felt that there was either too long of a gap between the application process and hearing back about a decision, or many times not receiving a response at all. After all, no one likes to be “ghosted”! Ensure you have an automated message (at the very least) to give candidates a sense of where they are in the recruitment process.

Social media makes it easy to share information, especially negative experiences. When a candidate feels they’ve been treated poorly during this stressful and nerve wracking time, they remember the companies that went above and beyond to make their experience positive, even if they didn’t end up getting the job.

Another pet-peeve among young job seekers was the lack of human touch during the application process. Even though AI can be an efficient part of your recruitment strategy, be mindful about how you’re integrating it into your process. Is it at the expense of a positive experience or potentially letting a superstar get buried underneath the digital mountain of documents or algorithm data?

Although 50% of early career professionals and 46% of post-secondary students were neutral about Artificial Intelligence being used in the recruitment process, an overwhelming majority complained about feeling like their applications went into a black hole and were frustrated by the challenge of showing the real person behind the CV and getting a chance to tell their story to recruiters.

Introducing our new Talent Candidate Video Showcase! Launching this fall, TalentEgg is the first online career website in Canada that allows young candidates across Canada the capacity to upload their personalized 2 minute video “elevator pitch” and CV to a searchable database for recruiters. These candidate profiles will be available to employers to find the best talent for their organization through easy-to-use keyword search function. By pre-screening and interviewing through our TalentEgg Candidate Video Showcase, you will be able to add a human touch to your recruitment process, while benefiting from optional AI technology and the efficiencies of a digital platform. You will be able to see the real person behind the CV and get the essence of the candidates’ value proposition in their own words in a video introduction that adds transparency and authenticity to the application process and greater insights into the job seeker.

Message top candidates or invite them to submit video answers to additional screening questions, take part in a two-way interview or a panel interview of up to 10 participants. Use our platform throughout your annual campaign for all of your hiring, or sign on for discrete, a la carte services just when you need them.

Other pet peeves that were mentioned were:

Manually filling out applications’ fields when candidates have already attached their resume and cover letter with the same information
Bias in the application and interview process
Unrealistic expectations of years of experience for the posted job

“I appreciate companies that take the initiative to eliminate pain points in their applications after receiving feedback and recognizing redundancy in the application process. It’s crucial that organizations make the recruitment process easy for top talent so as not as risk abandonment because the application is too long and too much effort.”
Aakanksha Sharma, University of Waterloo, 2019

Keep these pet peeves in mind when you and your team are going through your recruitment process. Maybe it’s time for an internal audit and new strategy to keep your organization top of mind with job seekers! Contact us to find out how we can help you hire the best young talent!

New Features of TalentEgg Profile: Candidate Video Showcase

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Today’s Talent, Tomorrow’s Leaders

Category: Generation Z (page 3 of 5)

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