Charles Macleod UK resourcing leader at Price Waterhouse Coopers

Generation Y see a career as something they own rather than something the company owns. They want to build up their own human capital to become more attractive to employers. They want lots of opportunities and tend to think shorter term. Their career horizon is two years rather than 10 or 15. Our staff turnover is very low – 10% – because we offer development and variety.

Once, the employee had to justify the privilege of working for the company. Now the company has to justify why talented people should stay with it. In the war for talent, however, everyone is going after the same people. Firms need to open up to a wider range of graduates. Greater participation in higher education means that many students are the first in their families to go to university, so they have nobody to advise them on the professions.

Keith Dugdale, director of global recruitment, KPMG

There are three working generations now, and they need different treatments. We are recruiting 1,000 UK graduates, and to reach Generation Y we use blogs, podcasts and social network sites such as Facebook and MySpace.

We know that Generation Y like early international experience and this summer we are running our first global internship programme. This will send some 35 students from across the globe, including five from the UK, to offices in other countries for two months. Of course, money still matters to Generation Y, but it is not the main reason why they want to join KPMG.

Our graduates could have gone to investment banks and earned more. But here they will get work-life balance and the opportunity to do things in their community at the same time as being stretched and developed.

Brian Fitzgerald, director of HR development at Atkins, the UK’s largest recruiter of engineering graduates

For recruitment we used to rely on a classy brochure with lots of information and some sexy pictures of the iconic buildings that Atkins has been involved in across the globe. But Generation Y tend not to read brochures, so now we use the building images to pull potential employees onto our website.

Today’s young people also seem more interested in what it will actually be like to work for us. They ask what projects they will work on and whether their ideas will be valued. They also want to know what our principles are to see if they align with theirs. With us they can choose to specialise or to have broader experience. However, we are very careful about our promise matching the reality. If the ‘psychological contract’ is broken, they have enough choices to just walk away.

Marc Woods, motivational speaker and paralympic gold-medal swimmer who lost part of his leg to cancer in his teens

I speak all over the world to businesses and I find that Generation Y respond differently from older people. They tell me that what I say has helped them on a personal level while older colleagues say it helped them with a team or work issue. The young seem more interested in the work-life balance and, although I’m in my thirties, I feel like those in their twenties because of what happened to me.

Generation Y need five things from employers: flexible working hours, constant mutual feedback, a level of autonomy, help with life development and a corporate social-responsibility strategy. Generation Y have to evaluate a company’s performance, too – they have a much more equal relationship with employers than previous generations.

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