HR managers hardly know high potentials: Wrong employer branding strategy {Trend! Study}

Companies like to lure the high potentials of tomorrow with all sorts of employer branding gimmicks: A cool (acting) e SALE at Facebook, some hip videos and then - so the misconception of HR - the young people will bite and look like stupid apply. Not even close.

No fig sheet for personel

The study in question, which dealt with the requirements of the Digital Native to that HR-Management employed jointly by Stiftung Neue responsibility and Egon Zehnder International. On it I aufmerksam I became through Karsten Wenzlaff from ikosom.

And all in all, the study is very exciting, because it is not a fig leaf for the HR profession but shows much more how bad the HRMarketing- those responsible can actually assess their target group. As a result, they often get completely off the mark with their marketing efforts.

Because the study does clear: Young People are much more tradition-conscious and conservative today than many people think. They are also looking for secure jobs, for example, but at the same time want the greatest possible flexibility. In any case, they won't be tempted by a few cheap social media features.

Who asked how?

The survey was conducted under 154 Alumni of the New Responsibility Foundation (SNV) and students of various disciplines, including Business Psychology and Economics, as well as 104 HR Managers. The alumni and personnel managers were interviewed from 20.12.2011 to 15.01.2012, the students in March 2012.

Data on the respondents

• Description alumni / students:
• Age average: alumni of the snv 33 years, students 23 years
• Sectors of the alumni of the snv: Economy: 36%, Science: 29%, Society (NGOs, Media): 21%, Politics / Administration: 15% (N = 261)
• Specialist disciplines of the students: various disciplines, especially economic psychology and economics

• Description Staffchefs:
• Age average: 48 years
• Sex: female: 30%, male: 70%
• 1. and 2. Leadership level, one person per company
• HR Generalists
• Broad mix of industries

Results

What came out of the study is that HR professionals and digital natives have different success factors such as work situation or Motivation judge very differently. An overview:

• Motivational factors: The top 3 motivating factors for alumni / students are “enjoyment of work”, “personal development” and “meaningful work”. In the first two points, the assessments of the HR managers agree with those of the alumni / students. However, they see the topics of career opportunities and participation as far less important than the HR managers suspect.
• Characteristics: HR managers tend to have a stereotypical image of high potentials (confident, innovative, willing to take risks). The self-assessment of high potentials, on the other hand, is more widely spread. Only 16 percent of alumni/students see themselves as very willing to take risks. Overall, a large proportion of alumni/students choose much more traditional characteristics in their self-description than HR managers do: 64 percent of alumni/students describe themselves as very disciplined (vs. 27 percent HR), 38 percent as modest (vs. 4 percent HR) and 17 percent as traditional (vs. 4 percent HR).
• Skills of the future: Social competency will become more important for both groups in the future. Consistency also exists in the fact that professional competence will not increase in importance. Competences for global cooperation - multilingual and intercultural competencies - are regarded as much more important by staff officers.
• The ideal work situation: The assumptions of HR managers regarding working conditions differ greatly from the ideas of high potentials. Here, too, HR has a clear stereotype in mind (mobile, flexible, digitally networked). On the other hand, the answers of the alumni/students vary significantly: 23 percent want to be mobile, but 27 percent state that being tied to one place is important to them. Only 8 percent want digital networking, while 62 percent want personal contact with colleagues and business partners. The desire for company loyalty (expressed by 27 percent of alumni/students) is also greatly underestimated by HR.

Conclusion: know the target group first

If you want to do successful HR marketing, you should first get to know your target group correctly and respond to your wishes. Many expensive social media campaigns are in trouble. The study states in the end:

High potentials are in Future In short supply, at the same time their loyalty to an employer is declining. The balance of power is shifting Executives need on the needs of individual high potentials and adapt their management style individually.

This is exactly what many companies have not yet understood, as some rather senseless actions have shown in the past. Maybe they should just listen to the young people?