How to win and retain young talent post pandemic

The media is rife with stories on the ‘Great Resignation’, ‘Great Attrition’, ‘Great Reassessment’, ‘Quiet Quitting’, and all things talent-centric.

The pandemic has changed the hiring playing field and what worked in 2019 to hire and retain talent no longer works in 2022.

Remote work culture has subjected the workforce to enormous changes, resulting in a massive shift in their values of work and personal life.

The traditional approaches to attracting and retaining talent have lost their sheen, thus forcing organisations to revisit their gamut of talent strategies.

There is no quitting this war of talent. There is much ado about the labour market being more employee/candidate-driven and organisations clambering to source the best talents.

The past couple of years has accelerated the adoption of digital technology, spurting the demand for talents
specialised in digital transformation skills.

The differential preferences for hiring tech talent have almost blurred, with organisations having to source from an almost common talent pool.

It has propelled the demand for talent and hiring happening almost concomitantly with similar skill-set requirements.

When the focus is on technology skills and experience and not much on domain experience, how can organisations ensure they are attracting and retaining the right talent? Where multiple offers have become a trend and candidates have plenty to choose from till the nth hour, how does a hiring manager make the right choice? How do you maximise the turnaround of offers to onboarding?

Hiring managers must carefully evaluate their current project requirements and future business needs. It will help identify talent with the desired minimum technical skills and deploy them faster to meet immediate client requirements.

It helps create a talent pool that can be nurtured and made future-ready to scale the business.

Assessing the organisational fit and gauging capabilities to adapt to the culture is also critical and essential for long-term retention.

Organisations need to be more agile and consciously bring out more of the human factor in resource management.

To attract and retain the talent, they need to establish more conversations and follow-ups once the official offer is released. Visibility and communication with the senior leadership can also help in this phase.

They should have a “culture immersion” session where prospective candidates can interact with founders and other leaders to know more about the company and its future.

Do away with traditional approaches to retention and focus more on the value and experience promised to candidates.

Technical and domain skilling, real-world customer engagements to learn real-time, and mentorship opportunities are more welcome by Gen Z. They contribute to more candidate stickiness too.

Winning and retaining talent is a strategy that must evolve with the changing times.

The experience for each role and individual needs to be customised to ensure the availability of required leadership talent within the ecosystem.

Empathy and compassion are must-haves to co-create work environments that are mutually sustainable and beneficial. The war for talent is a constant - organisations need to remaster their A-game every day.

(The writer is the senior vice president of talent strategy at Maveric Systems)