Because Millennials have an insatiable appetite for learning and professional growth, the employer who caters to this need helps himself as well as his younger employees. Many employers are reluctant to provide tuition reimbursement plans because they’re afraid that their investment will be wasted on someone who has no intention of making a long-term commitment to the organization, yet such thinking is counter-productive. Employees who are allowed to increase their knowledge are more valuable, and if they know their employer is willing to pay for their education, then they also feel valued and are more likely to stay.

Employers are more demanding because the pool of potential candidates is becoming increasingly saturated. For career counselor Baker, there’s nothing wrong with a recent college graduate working at a job for only a year or two in order to expand his skill set, then moving on. By expanding his skill set, the graduate becomes more valuable to what is, for him, a more desirable employer. For this reason, it is in an employer’s best interest to find a way to persuade new hires to stay for more than one or two years by offering them work environments that are dynamic rather than stagnant. Deloitte & Touche boasts that the job is always changing in their organization. If so, then boredom is not an option at Deloitte & Touche.

“They want to try new things,” said Baker, “so no matter where they work, they will want to move to different departments or become an overall expert in the department where they are.” That sounds like a pretty tall order, but employers who are willing to find a way to oblige this desire are the employers who will have new hires willing to commit beyond the putative three to five year standard. They will stay because they will have found an organization that can provide job satisfaction as well as a competitive salary.

CMU second-year graduate student Steve Hanneke seeks an organization that funds travel to conferences where he can meet and collaborate with others in the research end of computer science, his major. Those conferences are important to Hanneke. He is a typical Millennial who wants to continually grow and learn in his chosen field, artificial intelligence research. He’s also typical in that he anticipates changing jobs frequently; Hanneke wants to keep himself constantly surrounded by the best and brightest people in the industry. “There’s a lot of movement in computer science,” Hanneke said.