Is hiring Millennials truly difficult in a highly competitive employment marketplace? “How To Recruit, Incentivize And Retain Millennials” by Prof. Dheeraj Sharma offers several solutions to this perennial problem.

Millennials are seen as unique in terms of their characteristics and consumption patterns. The uniqueness of the millennial generation primarily stems from the fact that they are:-

1) The first generation to have been raised in nuclear families with both parents working,

2) The first generation to confront information overload owing to media congestion, and 

3) The first generation to suffer isolation resulting from technological ubiquity. 

Although Millennials are often described as techsavvy, creative, active, and seeking continuous change, they have also been characterised as aloof, hard to understand, contradictory, and incompatible. They spend a major chunk of their time communicating over social media and are largely devoid of face-toface conversations and human touch. And several organisations are forced to adapt their workplace and work environment. The varied ways of life of Millennials are also reflected in work settings.

The millennial workforce has entered the contemporary corporate world with unique needs, characteristics, expectations, and personalities. These differences pave the way for new challenges for organisations on a regular basis. Thus, ‘What do millennials want?’ is the one question that is confronting every organisation today. 

Talent managers are looking for recruitment strategies that can help achieve optimal organisation fit. And several organisations have already started implementing innovative practices to attract and retain millennials. For instance, Infosys has scrapped the formal dress code and encourages its employees to wear smart business casuals. It has also come up with a new crowdsourcing initiative known as ‘Murmuring’ that invites innovative business ideas to contribute to the company’s strategy. Likewise, Microsoft attempts to drive the culture of innovation at the internship phase itself by allowing interns to learn directly from experts. In a similar vein, IBM put forth an integrative tool known as ‘IBM Verse’ that integrates email, calendar, meetings, video chats and a lot of other capabilities on a single platform. IBM also has a well-developed reverse mentoring program to engage Millennials.    

The book primarily deals with understanding the millennial generation. It offers prescriptive and descriptive insights into managing and working with the millennial generation. It specifically deals with issues such as recruiting, managing and incentivising millennials. 

There are several specific topics that are covered in the book that pertain to:

• Understanding the millennial generation

• Understanding the millennial generation in an organisational context 

• Strategies for managing millennials

• Industry best practices for managing millennials

• Strategies for recruiting millennials

 
• Strategies for incentivizing millennials

 
• Strategies for retaining millennials 

• Strategies for leveraging on the strength of millennials 

• How to best harness the talent in millennials The book also features several short cases that illustrate discussions and perspectives in each chapter. As far as things stand, there is no specific book that looks at recruiting, managing, and incentivising the millennial workforce