It is expected that millennials are going to outnumber baby boomers by the end of 2015. Since they are young and energetic, hiring them with careful background screening is one of the major challenges faced by organisations today.
When screening employees do not just take into account what is effective and productive for the company to achieve its objectives, but also legal considerations have to be followed. Here are top 5 challenges faced by organisations, when it comes to background screen checks of millennials:
Many agree that millennials use social media more freely and are well connected to their social networks. There is a wealth of information available for hiring managers on accessing the prospective candidate’s social media profile.
Sometimes screening social media profile of candidates can be quite risky, as there maybe information pertinent to religious affiliations, sexual orientation, health condition or mental status, which are all prohibited under the anti-discriminatory laws.
Since there are legal risks associated with social media searches, employers should ensure that screening of protected class information is done by only those professionals who are familiar with legal risks.
See: How to Keep Millennials Happy and More Productive?
Some job ads particularly specify age discrimination such as “classes of 2007 or 2008”, this can be bracketed under Age Discrimination in Employment Act with legal implications. Hence employers should stay wary of the age discrimination, while millennials are not direct targets, but sometimes they indirectly do fall prey.
Also hire based on skilled requirements for the job, instead of using words like “digital natives”, there are chances that a lot of millennials will respond.
Understand if clean driving is bona fide requirement for the job, which requires driving license – then limit your talent pool in the 20-30 age bracket. If a licensed driver with clean driving record is what you seek, then you should allow fair chances for eliminating many millennial applicants.
Check for credit reports of millennials, while these unlike Gen-X or baby boomers are less dependent on bank loans and credit cards, they also tend to borrow less. If a credit report is an important requirement for qualifying for the job, then you can expect little to no information on unbanked millennials.
Understand if the candidate is into job-hopping across companies and different verticals. According to facts gathered, a whopping 91% of the millennials do not stay at a job for longer than 3 years.
Also according to a recent study, millennials are less likely to be working around school, hence have little to no on job experience to state in their resumes. These facts when carefully studied leave little to the employer in terms of reference checking and verifications.
However recent job history, skill sets and qualifications help in understanding if a candidate is perfect fit for the job requirement. Also it will be in better interest of the employer to expand the scope of enquiry on millennial background checks to – volunteering experiences and potential reference checks.
Also read: HR Nightmare: Job Hopping is Normal for Millennials
Image credit: flickr.com
