ABCnews.com offers a comprehensive article explaining some traits of the Millennial generation – Meet the New Millennials. The lengthy article provides many different insights into this generation.
Here are some anecdotal highlights:
“We recently had to tell a young woman employee that this was not an underwear optional workplace,” he told ABCNEWS.com. “This generation needs to be deeply coached about wardrobe, and a lot of them are used to getting up at 10 or 11 a.m. Forget about them showing up to work at 8 or 9 a.m.”
“They grew up with an ‘everyone gets a trophy’ sense of entitlement,” he said. “They are members of a generation that thinks it should get a trophy just for waking up in the morning.”
“I had a human resources manager call me about a worker who received her performance review only to have her mother call up and complain that ‘she’s better than that,'” he recalled. “The HR manager was shocked and asked the mother why she was calling about her daughter. The mother responded, ‘Because I’ve done so throughout my daughter’s life.'”
Some of those stories are almost shocking. I have to admit we do not have extensive experience with this generation when it comes to hiring. Some of these stories would give us pause.
In terms of managing this generation:
“The millennials are more collaborative and require a different form of managing,” said Masie. “There are more self-starters in this generation; they are clearly different than their bosses. The average worker under the age of 25 doesn’t expect to remain at a company for more than three years. They expect a sequence of jobs over their lifetime.”
Managing short-term employees who have different values and expectations sometimes requires managers to practice more than a little bit of patience.
Did you catch that bolded information? This change in career philosophy is having a tremendous impact on hiring today. The days of one company careers are all but over.