reality or illusion. M.Video-Eldorado experience
Recruiting staff is a task with an asterisk for any organization. Especially for large enterprises that need a constant influx of new talent. Add to this the fact that different generations have their own priorities when looking for work and, for example, generation Z – more “diverse” than representatives of any other generations before that.
In this article we will tell you how we at M.Video-Eldorado look for talented employees, work with interns and attract them to our team.
Eternal puzzle: how to attract and retain young workers? What does the new generation expect from the labor market? How to work with the mobility and flexibility of modern young people, as well as with their selectivity in their careers and professional fulfillment?
There are many questions, but searching for answers for each company is worth it, because with the arrival of young specialists, the team receives fresh impetus, new emotions and atypical views on routine tasks. It is these young people, living in the rhythm of modernity, who will become brand ambassadors; in the future, they will bring clients to the company, speak the same language with them and move their employer towards results in a year, five, ten years.
“We’ll call you back!”
Since the 1980s, the job market has evolved due to globalization, automation and technological advancements. The changes have led to a reduction in routine work and an increase in demand for positions requiring significant social interaction and soft skills. The presence of higher education among candidates has become a marker of social skills, and employers have focused on it.
“New-ready” is the ideal for most employers, that is, companies prefer to hire “ready-made” and “packed” specialists into their staff, expecting that they will not need to be taught anything special. Internal training requires time, money and people who know how to teach. And therefore, companies often rely on the development of their managers and do not invest much in line employees, believing that it is enough for the latter to complete work tasks and interact with each other in order to learn new skills. The management hopes that it will be like the saying: “There will be no boredom when your hands are full.” However, the employee’s mind must also be busy. And ideally – new knowledge, understanding of trends, ideas for improving business processes and other insights useful for the company.
At the same time, the numbers are interesting: from a financial point of view, external hiring of new employees costs on average 1.7 times more expensive: filling vacancies with employees from internal sourceov, companies can save money and give their young specialists the opportunity to develop in their profession. Creating career paths for newcomers, working with mentors, internships and development programs are clear and attractive to young people. All this is already expected from the company, so why not give it by adding a “plus to the karma” of the HR brand?
Moreover, the modern labor market has become tougher and is encouraging employers to be more flexible in their hiring practices and invest in new strategies for finding and developing personnel. Now, in recruiting, HR people focus on the job applicant’s availability of in-demand skills and proactivity, rather than diplomas and other fancy qualifications. And in many sectors of the economy employers are reducing their requirements for higher educationand hiring practices are gradually changing.
Okay, zoomer
Let's see what's “under the hood” of the Zoomers. These are technology, hyperactivity, multimedia, pragmatism, etc. It is not surprising that most older people consider such young people unmotivated and unfocused – do they even want to work?
Yes, he does. And she also wants to be involved in something more than “earning a piece of bread”: it is important for her to see her contribution to the company’s mission, to business development and even to processes on a planetary scale! A vertical career “according to the canons” is no longer the basis of the motivation of the majority of representatives of generation Z.
Everyone works for money, there is no doubt about it, as long as this is how the world economy works. However, money alone is no longer enough to retain staff. Potential Gen Z employees want to know what personal development opportunities you can offer them and whether they can influence their development.
Young workers are not afraid to change jobs and look for better options. According to survey conducted by PwCGeneration Z is 27% likely to change jobs within the next 12 months. For millennials this figure is close to 23%. For older respondents – 9%.
Prepare for the inevitable dialogue with young employees – about opportunities for professional development, non-financial motivation and training. Do you want a significant competitive advantage in the eyes of young people? Then offer your employees your own educational programs, advanced training courses, access to corporate libraries and development clubs. The “must-have” now is a mentoring system, tutors and buddies who make the adaptation of young people effective and help newcomers establish an emotional connection with the employer.
M.Video-Eldorado experience
And now we get to the “delicious” part – our case. In a situation of record low unemployment in Russia (in February 2024, according to according to Rosstatit amounted to 2.7%) companies are increasingly competing for personnel and, first of all, for young people, and here we are no exception. Against the backdrop of a general shortage of young specialists, caused, among other things, by demographic factors, companies are actively trying to cooperate with recent university graduates.
Being the main experts in technology in Russia and having stores from Kamchatka to Kaliningrad, we work with young specialists in different formats. A significant part of the youth in the company are salespeople in our stores (22% of employees are under 25 years old). And we find innovative ways to increase the number of young salespeople.
We see that the demand for work from young people is changing. And a young specialist has two options to join our staff:
In the summer of 2023 we organized an annual internship. After only 3 months we realized that the guys who came to us were not ready to wait 12 months. The dynamics of their careers are different. They live at different speeds. Now our program lasts six months, and after 3 months you can already work full-time as part of the internship. Working in retail teaches us to cope with the high speeds of the modern world. The summer 2023 internship was a pilot project for a relaunch of the youth work concept.
Now we are faced with the task of building a unified framework for working with young people, the basis of which is a three-stage involvement in the company’s activities: practice, internship and hiring young specialists to the staff.
As part of our internships, we actively cooperate with Moscow universities: RANEPA, MGIMO, State University of Medicine, Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation and others. Our IT internships most often include graduates of MEPhI and MSTU. Bauman. This is how it happened historically. Coming for a short period of time (from 2 to 4 weeks), trainees begin to practice their skills and get acquainted with specialized managers. This is often the first time they are confronted with work tasks and office infrastructure. Guided by the principle “not only do we choose you, but you also choose us“, we give trainees the opportunity to immerse themselves in the company’s activities and ask questions that interest them. Managers who are ready to invest in young specialists have the opportunity to invite them as trainees even at the internship stage. 30% of trainees return to the company in this status.
Perhaps the key challenge for practices is the invested resources: paperwork, negotiations with the university, managers’ time. The downside of these investments is the loyalty of students, the desire to get an internship with us and the interest of managers in continuing to work with young specialists if their work has been successful.
Internships are the basis of our youth work system. Interns are not hands or “plugging” personnel holes. These are our future employees who grew up within the company, are ready to learn and practice new directions, and understand the corporate culture, values and internal rules. By the end of the six-month internship, they have strong social connections within the company and an understanding of business processes. They become professionals ready to work in the Group. We run four internships per year: two (“M. Internship“) in the business directorate, two – in the IT division of the Group – the M.Tech company.
Basicly similar internships still differ from each other. “M. Internship” is classically designed to attract students and very recent university graduates. The IT internship has no age restrictions for participants. The average age of IT trainees is 24 years (range 19 to 42 years). We consider candidates who have completed retraining courses in target specialties in the last year, evaluate their skills in a test task and knowledge in a final interview. All of this potentially expands the funnel. And it allows you to attract more applications, organize a competition and raise the professional level of interns already at the entrance.
In particular, the absence of an age limit allowed the number of applications received for the internship to double compared to the original plan. An internship at M.Tech is an opportunity to start your career in retail IT if the candidate is not yet a university graduate.
Another obvious advantage of the absence of an age limit is the willingness of interns to work full-time: 2/3 of interns chose the option to completely immerse themselves in work processes, which increases their involvement and attracts additional resources to solve problems.
As noted earlier, the internship lasts six months. In the first month, the trainee, together with the supervisor, creates his own individual development plan, which sets out the necessary soft And hard skills (non-professional and basic skills), the development of which is one of the conditions for successful completion of the internship.
For each new employee we allocate buddy (senior partner), and for trainees they play a special role. This is a guide to the company’s culture, a source of knowledge about the organization of work processes. Working with a buddy is the key to the most in-depth and high-quality adaptation of the trainee.
Skills are skills, but without an internship project there will be a “failure”. The internship project is aimed at solving a specific business problem that is set for the young specialist during the internship. Projects work to improve the company’s business sector, interns learn from real cases, take responsibility and make real efforts to improve business efficiency.
Young people, especially after the pandemic, have become accustomed to a hybrid format and remote work. We primarily work from the office, but we make exceptions and add flexibility for interns. This allows them not only to combine work with study, but also to be more actively involved in solving work problems.
The third link in working with young people is their entry into full-time positions after an internship. Today, more than 50% of interns get the opportunity to join the company. Already as junior managers, they become buddies for new interns, which allows them to form a community of interns and graduates of the intern program.
“Although the world as a whole moves forward, young people always have to start over again” (Goethe)
Now our key problem is how not to demotivate those candidates who apply to participate in our internship program. We are receiving more applications than we originally planned. This is difficult organizationally, but it is important for us to give an answer to everyone who has declared their interest.
Unfortunately, sometimes we have to say: “You have a great resume, but we can’t even conduct a telephone interview. We have already closed the internship position” We are honest with candidates and in such cases we believe that it is wrong to waste their time. The growth of the apprenticeship program is limited by the natural growth of the company.
We assign trainees to solve unusual problems, no imitation of hectic activity and no shuffling of papers. We like their straightforward view and courage, they like our trust and opportunities to influence the development of the product and the company’s real business processes. Interns are not on hand, they are in the thick of corporate events. And that's the only way.
The conclusions we made after completely restarting work with young people:
Attractive internship conditions allow you to create competition at the entrance and raise the overall bar of the internship program, and behind it the overall quality of the company’s human capital.
The high flow of internship candidates allows us to expand the number of young specialists in the company, including through direct hiring. The internship and internship program has an obvious side effect.
Successful internships raise candidate expectations of us. So, after the launch of the IT internship, we received applications for the “M. Internship” in business from a large number of analysts who want and can solve complex business problems. Simple actions without a challenge no longer seem so interesting to them. These challenges must be met to avoid disappointing potential candidates. And that’s why we constantly work on ourselves, which is what we wish for everyone.
