Insights

You may have heard that early career talent is becoming an increasingly crucial talent pool, but who exactly are these candidates, and do you really need to tailor your recruiting strategies to interest them in your company?

While recruiting for any role at a company can be tough in today’s tight labor market, early career hiring has its own unique set of challenges. The way that you attract, evaluate, and ultimately hire entry-level employees will likely differ from your approach to recruiting more experienced professionals. As you develop your early career hiring strategy, here are some of the main challenges you may encounter (and some of our recommended solutions).

As employers navigate new working models in the wake of COVID-19 — such as remote-first, fully on-site, or hybrid — showcasing company culture to prospective employees has been more challenging than ever. Recent research from RippleMatch’s What Gen Z Wants report shows that company culture remains a key factor in the Gen Z job search, indicated by the value that these candidates place on work-life balance, a sense of community at work, and how companies have supported employees’ well-being during the pandemic. Our data further illustrates that company culture is not only helpful for recruiting new talent, but also for retaining interns for full-time positions after graduation.

For Gen Z college students, the importance of learning and growth doesn’t stop after graduation. In fact, a RippleMatch survey from 2018 found that professional development was the top priority for Gen Z job-seekers at the time. But as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to challenge both educational and professional norms, has Gen Z candidates’ focus on professional development during the job search changed?

As the competition for entry-level talent continues to intensify and the pandemic ebbs and flows, candidate experience can be the difference between hiring your next superstar or losing out to a competitor. Our latest report focusing on what Gen Z wants at work uncovers new insights on this generation’s top priorities during the interview and hiring process — including where they are looking for jobs, how they prefer to communicate with prospective employers, and what main factors contribute to a positive candidate experience.

Over the past several years, job candidates have been increasingly less likely to move in order to accept a new job. In fact, the percentage of job seekers relocating for a job in 2019 was only 10%, the lowest it had ever been. And with the COVID-19 pandemic normalizing remote work and shifting job seekers’ priorities, recruiters may be facing additional challenges in attracting job candidates who are willing to relocate for a job with an on-site requirement.

Nearly two years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the workplace is continuing to evolve, especially when it comes to remote vs. on-site environments. While some companies have fully returned to an office setting, others have implemented hybrid schedules or instituted indefinite or permanent work-from-home policies.

Changing priorities for Gen Z since the beginning of the pandemic have caused students to focus on compensation during their job search. In our latest report on what current Gen Z candidates are looking for in the workplace, we found that compensation was a major factor in everything from the overall reasons students would choose a job, to why they would renege on a job offer, to why they’d consider relocating for a job. Here are some of the key insights we uncovered related to compensation and the Gen Z job seeker.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about massive changes in the way we live and work. But what does that mean for the newest generation of employees, who are just entering the workforce for the first time?