Inside the mind of a millennial: Accenture Case-Study

Millennials aka Gen-Y aka The Job-Hopping Generation! Yes, that is the reputation the millennials have unattached to organizations and institutions.

Well, this is what data says. A report by Gallup suggests that 21 percent of millennials say they've changed jobs within the past year, which is more than three times the number of non-millennials who report the same. Millennials also show less willingness to stay in their current jobs. Half of the millennials compared with 60 percent of non-millennials in the same study by Gallup, strongly agree that they plan to be working at their company one year from now. For businesses, this suggests that half of their millennial workforce doesn't see a future with them.

So how do you design a plan that guarantees you a success in attracting millennials and made them stay? Grace Yip, Head of HR, Accenture Southeast Asia shared the architecture of an Employee Value Proposition and elements of a candidate experience that will help companies to elevate their millennial workforce.

Grace Yip shares, Accenture right now constitute 80 percent millennials. The challenge for the organization is not the volume of hiring but making sure that their talent acquisition journey is able to hire the right candidate.

Accenture required a more innovative approach to solve the three following challenges:

The organization reinvented their Employee Value Proposition that was based on three principles:

Based on the above overarching principles, Accenture crafted an intensive EVP that targets the ASEAN Candidates and Employees. The key elements of the EVP were:

- The Brand Promise

- Key Message to be delivered

- Branding the EVP

The second step in the process was to decode the mind of the millennials and understanding what are the key factors that help them decide to join a company.

The above step further helped Accenture reimagine their overall candidate experience. The company adopted a three-step candidate experience plan:

Yip shares, “Employers make hiring decisions based on the educational background of the candidate, GPA scores, and relevant experience. Accenture shifted from this approach by leveraging technology to eliminate bias and hire quality candidates.” The gamified screening technology helped the consulting company to assess candidates on the skills like cognitive abilities, social intelligence, computational thinking, teamwork, leadership behavior rather than the pedigree.

The overall impact that the Accenture saw was an increase in the application- A 40 percent increase in the male applicants and a 60 percent increase in the female applicants. Further, the success rate, i.e. the final offer made went up by 40 percent with the final gender mix of 36 percent males and 64 percent females.

This case study is curated from the session delivered by Grace Yip, Head of HR, Accenture Southeast Asia at People Matters Tech HR India 2018.