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Young professionals (and emerging leaders) are seeking opportunities to advance their career. Here are three important benefits your association should offer in order to attract more Millennial members.
Today Millennials make up about 30 percent of the entire workforce, according to a recent survey conducted by the Department for Professional Employees. This statistic is expected to increase according to Forbes, with an estimated 75% of the workforce to be dominated by Millennials in the next 10 years.
As an association looking to gain Millennial members and maximize member retention, this is a huge demographic to market to. So, what makes a Millennial want to become a member of an association? Of utmost importance for these young professionals (and emerging leaders) is an opportunity to advance their career. Making them feel they truly have something to gain career-wise from an association membership is the key to their membership.
Here are three important benefits your association should offer in order to attract more Millennial members.
Having easily accessible job listings available is important when it comes to delivering what Millennial members want and need. With the diverse networking your association probably offers, your job listings should consist of various opportunities for Millennials. This includes opportunities through your member companies, your sponsors, and even your association itself. Full-time opportunities are ideal, but to reach the widest Millennial audience, you should also be incorporating a good range of part-time opportunities. This could even include internships to appeal to those still in college.
Just having a quality job board isn’t where you should stop with this. Today, Millennials are all about being digital. Therefore your job listing should be readily available to members through more ways than just a link on your website. To do this, your association should, if it hasn’t already, instill a strong, member only social media presence.
If there is one thought constantly floating through Millennial minds, it’s “what am I doing for the rest of my life?” College provides an abundance of resources for Millennials to take advantage of. Whether it be an online resource, an office they could stop by to, or a specific person they could contact, most universities have a variety of education and career planning means.
Especially during such an unsure time in their lives about what they are going to ultimately do with their education, having these resources was like having a golden pathway to success. To gain more Millennial members, a benefit you should offer is a well-structured career center. This should be readily available for young professionals to speak with qualified committee members about attaining their future goals.
Providing optional face-to-face communication between members and a qualified career representative is strongly recommended. Depending on the size of your association and location, having a on-site location for a career center can be tricky. But in today’s day and age, you don’t necessarily have to have a specific location to have more interpersonal interactions.
Millennials are ambitious and actively searching for new means to educate themselves. Often in their career alone, many of these professionals feel like they aren’t receiving the educational support or tools to push what they are capable of to the limits.
This is where your association can be of significant help to these Millennial members. By offering an abundance of members-only educational tools, you are attracting a large audience. Also, these tools could be just the leading force Millennials need for them to enhance their skill set. These hands-on tools can include volunteer run educational seminars, interactive modules and certifications relevant in their field. On top of this, regularly distributed educational journals and invitations to speeches by leading professionals can be beneficial to expanding their career-based knowledge.
By utilizing these three important benefits in your association's strategy, you can begin to offer benefits Millennials want. Then through accessibility to career advancements, helpful guidance within their career and inspiration to take on educational opportunities, your Millennial members will be all the more likely to renew their membership.
