Recruiting Gen Z: 5 indispensable tips

Gen Z is notoriously hard to reach with traditional recruitment techniques. So, what can we do to attract the new generation for our workforce?

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room: Gen Z! Say these words out loud in a room full of recruitment professionals and watch a shudder travel across the room. Why is that?

Because Gen Z is notoriously hard to reach with traditional recruitment techniques. Many recruitment professionals will happily admit to not having all their ducks in a row yet when it comes to this young and digital-first audience of job seekers.

And that’s totally fine! The world is changing at a rapid pace and keeping up can be hard, especially if that means forgetting things you thought you knew for a fact.

So, we’ve established that Gen Z requires a different approach: simply posting on a job board isn’t cutting it anymore. You’ll have to get down and dirty if you want to get anything done with this generation, but luckily we know of some ways to get to them.

Read on for a few proven tactics that recruitment professionals have been using to get Gen Z in the door!

Create meaningful and natural-looking content

Gen Z likes “realness”: they want to see things like they are and will have a clear aversion to messaging that is too commercial or too clean.

It’s why live streaming and TikTok are so popular in this age group. Next to that, a good story is everything. If your content doesn’t have a deeper meaning then you’ll struggle to make an impact.

What does that mean for you? Well, you’ll have to dig a little deeper when talking about a job or company. Don’t talk about the company, but about what it can mean for the candidate.

Make your communications about the ideals and mission rather than about practical things like revenue or stock value. That’s because we know that Gen Z’ers will make career choices based on their personal values, as per this Deloitte report.

The full report is an interesting read which could help you find angles to speak to this audience from your own brand.

We’d like to circle back to the first part of this bullet point as well: make sure your communications don’t look too clean. Don’t use models that look unrealistic, or settings that scream “too good to be true”.

For all of their ideals and values, Gen Z has a very well developed bullshit radar and will instantly know when the things presented are too rosy or pretentious.  

Share employee stories

Continuing on from the last bullet point, sharing employee stories is an easy way of showing your character and “realness”. By showing real people and their experiences, you can eliminate the distance between your brand and your target.

Viewers will be able to identify with the human experiences these employees have. Seeing a real and natural face will make them more confident that you’re not embellishing anything about the other parts of the work either.

Sharing employee stories has the added benefit of giving insight into people’s motivation, which neatly connects to the values and mission that Gen Z is on the lookout for.

If you have an employee (maybe even of Gen Z age) talking about why this company fits their belief system perfectly, then that can be a trigger for others to feel motivated. A video is a great way to share their stories!

Find them where they are

If you’re looking to target Gen Z, there’s really only one obvious choice: social media! There are of course many different ways to go about this, as social media has become a bit of a container term that includes anything from Linkedin to TikTok.

It’s important to do your research and find out where your candidate is: in general, blue collar workers are more likely to hang out on Facebook or Instagram. And white collar workers are big Linkedin users, for instance. The job you’re recruiting for makes all the difference in your targeting.

Make sure your message matches the platform, too. On Instagram you’ll have to make your message as visually attractive as possible to avoid being skipped.

On Twitch or YouTube, partnerships with well-known streamers or long-form video content can be winners, respectively. It’s up to you to decide how far you want to go, and what fits your brand best.

Show your most flexible side

Gen Z is a generation that understands that we’re well past sitting in a cubicle from 9 to 5. They know that working hard doesn’t necessarily mean sitting in front of your screen for 8 straight hours, and they will look elsewhere if you’re not flexible about this.

So show Gen Z that you are not just focused on profits, but on people too. This requires a fundamental shift in the way we think about work: presenteeism is very much dead with Gen Z.

So how do you play this angle? Well, try to emphasize it if you’re open to remote work, if your company has any arrangements for flexible working hours, or if they can get a budget for their home office.

These types of things show candidates that you’re open to exploring how the job can fit into their personal life. It’s not without benefit to you, either: flexible employers breed loyal employees.

Actually, “More flexibility” and “Better work-life balance” are cited as reasons number 2 and 3 for why employees are leaving their jobs. If it’s retention you want, flexible you’ll need to be!

The power of Talent Attraction Technology when targeting Gen Z

Now, if you’ve read all of the above, we understand how this can sound like a lot of work. And believe us, it is. That’s where Wonderkind comes in: our Talent Attraction Technology does all the work for you!

Just input your job description, and we’ll take care of targeting, visuals and channel mix for social media. No need to invest time learning each and every ad manager or reisizing a million pictures: we do all of this for you.

Our technology can be set up to target not only specific age groups, but even based on interests, allowing you to speak to Gen Z’s passionate side.

We’ve got a proven track record finding passive candidates, for which the individualization of our ads is the main driver. All of this information is fed back to you through our handy dashboard, that tells you exactly how effective your campaigns are.