This Module

Recruiting and Onboarding Young Adults

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2. Build a Welcoming Onboarding Experience

1. Share Opportunities Clearly

Every interaction you have with a young adult, from connecting through social media to them checking out your website, to texting or calling, is a moment of communication and trust-building.

Make the most of those moments by starting with a clear content and recruitment plan. Past experiences may have left opportunity youth skeptical of any jobs or services that sound too good to be true. They may also be reluctant to reply because of a fear of rejection or being judged.

It’s essential to communicate with young adults in a manner that feels authentic to them. Keep these takeaways in mind as you review the rest of this module and when you start to create your own content plans.

Jump to: Takeaways

Who is this play for?

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Organizational Leaders

Frontline staff

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Marketing and communication staff

Why this
matters:

Leads with essentials

Consistent communication builds credibility and strengthens long-term relationships with young adults.

Clarity Increases response rates

It helps hesitiant young adults engage when you clearly state what young adults will receive, such as pay, skills, certifications, or experience.

Consistency builds credibility

Ensures the same information appears across social media, your website, and direct outreach.

Put it into action

Map your recruitment strategy using the following tips:

Have clear communication goals

Whether you are creating content for a flyer, a webpage, or preparing to have a conversation via text or in person, you need to know your goals.

Everyone’s had the experience of finishing reading something or getting out of a conversation and then asking themselves, “What was the point of that?” It’s easy to lose track of why you are communicating in the first place. Having a clear goal can prevent that from happening.

This step can be as simple as jotting down your thoughts ahead of time. At a minimum, you need to ask yourself the following questions before crafting any external communications to opportunity youth:

Why am I communicating?
What do I want to accomplish in this interaction?
What do I want the reader or person I’m speaking with to get out of this interaction?
What next steps do I need to set up with this individual?
How can I explain opportunities for partnership with this individual?

To help with setting your goals, you can use this format:

"I’m communicating with _______ (this can be a group or an individual)

because I want them to [feel/understand/decide/apply for / take the following action] ________.

So they can be successful, the one thing I want them to take away is ___."

Keep your content as  brief and direct as possible

All of us, including young adults, are bombarded with messages and media at all hours.

Texts from friends and family, social media posts from people we follow, phone calls, video conferences, the list goes on and on. And then there are all the advertisements and spam.

It’s not that people “don’t read any more” (that’s an assumption). It’s that there is too much to read, and also too much to distract us from reading.

In the face of this, it’s imperative to keep your communications brief and to the point. Every sentence should have a goal and help advance your reader or the person you’re communicating with towards your overall goal.The more time someone has to spend trying to figure out what you are saying, the less likely they are to act on it.

When you are crafting communications for OY you need to:

Make whatever you create easy to scan by using keywords and headlines.
Avoid long paragraphs. It’s best to chunk information into short blurbs (two to three sentences max). Line breaks are your friend.
Ensure that each chunk of information serves a specific purpose.
Think about how each chunk of content fits together to support your overall goal.

Start by asking yourself what they will need to know at the end of the communication. Do they need to remember everything you shared or just part of it? “Extra” information, even things that might seem like they could be helpful, can distract from what people NEED to know to achieve their goal.

Scan your communications for deficit-focused language

In Module 1, we talked about getting your program ready by ensuring the opportunities you offer young adults are framed through a strengths-based lens. Your team can work to reframe external communications towards a strengths-based approach. Use intentional affirmations and encouragement because it’s essential to find ways to directly and indirectly affirm opportunity youth when you are reaching out to acknowledge what has already done. Using intentional affirmations and encouragement is a powerful way to build trust, self-worth, and motivation—especially with young people who may not hear positive feedback often. When affirmations are specific, genuine, and focused on effort or growth, they help youth recognize their own strengths and potential.

For example:

Find ways to add phrases like these into your communications:

“You’ve taken the first step.”
“You showed up.”
“You’re making a smart choice.”
“You handled that.”

Get Comfortable with Repetition

For things to resonate, we often need to hear and read them multiple times.

We’ve already covered the importance of keeping your communications short and to the point. Along those same lines, it’s essential to identify your most important points and be comfortable with repeating them without initials assumptions that young adults aren’t paying attention.

We all have a lot on our minds, so even under the best of circumstances, it can be tough to remember everything you’ve just been told. Due to the various challenges they may face in their day-to-day lives, opportunity youth and other young adults may struggle to pay attention to details. Anything you can do to make it easier for them to identify what is the most important thing to know or do at any given point in time will greatly improve the chances that it will get done.

Use language to highlight what’s most important in a conversation or communication. Improve text with the use of underlined, bolded, or color-highlighted information. When possible, use the same keywords or exact phrase repeatedly. For example, find ways to work in:

“If you remember just one thing from this ….”
“The most important takeaway is ….”
You are expected to arrive by November 30, 2030.

Communicate using multiple channels

Multi-channel communication is critical. If what you are trying to communicate is essential to young adults navigating your website, application system, etc. you need to make sure you’re getting the word out there in as many ways as possible.

There is a tendency to focus on electronic communications nowadays. However, especially when working with Opportunity Youth and other young adults facing economic challenges, it is crucial to be aware of the digital divide (The State of Tennessee Digital Opportunity Plan Department of Economic and Community Development, 2024).

There was a time when people believed that putting something on a website or posting something at the local community center was enough to get the word out. Today, getting your message out can be much more challenging. Young adults are not necessarily going to community centers as often, especially since many don’t have programs tailored to their needs. And while smartphones allow people who have them to access the web or email, their screens are not always the easiest to read. More importantly, if a phone is broken or lost, people can lose access to their email or past communications.

So you always need to be thinking about alternative ways of connecting with them through all available communciation channels.Return to your communication goals and use them to consider the various communication methods available to you.

Ask yourself:

How complicated is the message I’m trying to get across?
How many people am I trying to reach?
How might my message be broken into smaller actions?
What might people need to know at different stages along the way?
What are the best challenges to share those steps?

Once you have considered those things, you can then explore your options. If you are trying to get work out about something, then you can start with more traditional advertising. One thing we learned from our research is that many young adults still listen to the radio or podcast formats. There are also options, such as social media advertising.

It’s also good to create content for the web—especially if you are trying to collect information as part of the process. That said, many people still prefer receiving things on paper, especially something they can take away from a one-on-one interaction. For digital interactions, PDFs can be useful but remember that they can be hard to read on a phone.

Takeaways:

Good communication starts with a good content strategy.
Think about how you can use strengths-based approaches to communicate in transparent and encouraging ways.
Keep your content brief and direct. Repeat key points to help them sink in.
You will have to repeat key information, so get creative not frustrated!
Think about how you can use multiple communication channels and build in feedback loops.

What's next

Next Play

2. Build a Welcoming

Onboarding Experience