Millenials Are Different. Your Talent Probably Isn’t

Late in 2016 Deloitte published a fascinating market profile of the millennial generation, basically anyone born between 1980 and 2000. Considered as an Important demographic, millennials will be the largest adult segment by the end of the current decade. That’s three years from now. And not just in the West: Already nearly two thirds of Asians are millennials. Millennials are entering their peak years for earnings, consumption and investing. They are coming not just in numbers but with documented dierences in the way they think about money.

Late in 2016 Deloitte published a fascinating market profile of the millennial generation, basically anyone born between 1980 and 2000. Considered as an Important demographic, millennials will be the largest adult segment by the end of the current decade. That’s three years from now. And not just in the West: Already nearly two thirds of Asians are millennials. Millennials are entering their peak years for earnings, consumption and investing. They are coming not just in numbers but with documented dierences in the way they think about money. From where I sit, the nancial services industry doesn’t know how unready it is for the millennial wave to break. Companies in every industry commonly hire for the operating environment that is about to expire. Everyone concerned relies on their expert judgment of talent. It is a judgment formed in the old world and so they look the old talent pools. And they hire the wrong people. In an age of talent shortages this costs them money and constrains growth—not just future growth but growth right now. Recently Wholefoods, the big US grocer, conducted a search for a senior HR executive who would “hack our people practices.” Grocery retailing is far removed from the clients we serve at The Options Group, but I know exactly what Wholefoods is after. I’d like to see a similar kind of impulse among nancialservices rms to get themselves ready for the long wave of millennials coming down upon them. Here are some big ideas for doing just that.