May 14, 2008
Gen Y Is Empowered
Not my words, but rather a quote from this Selling Power article:
“If I had to use one word to describe Generation Y, it’s empowered,” says Ann Fishman, president of Generation Targeted Marketing Corporation, a specialized marketing firm providing insight into consumer preferences, trends, and buying habits affecting the six generations of Americans. “This is a generation who has a tremendous amount of self-confidence. They are civic minded, optimistic, and want to be involved in their futures. They are going to come on very strong.
And now for some tips:
Fishman notes a few things to keep in mind when going through the hiring process with this group. First, Generation Y is very interactive, says Fishman and suggests getting them involved in the interview process very early.
The other thing that is really important to this generation is bonding and branding, says Fishman. “This group bonds to companies very early – they start bonding at age 10 and they are almost fully bonded by the age of 15,” she explains and advises offering summer internships, sponsoring field trips, sport teams, or volunteer causes. “You have to support their volunteer causes. This group has been volunteering since pre-K. Establish name recognition with them early on.”
And then the tip that caught my attention (emphasis mine):
Along those same lines, you need to be careful once you hire Generation Y employees; make sure that they have a clear understanding of what’s to be kept confidential. This is a group that has no concept of privacy. Their lives are online with MySpace, Facebook – everything is exposed and open to the public.
That is an excellent point. I suspect there has always been some intellectual bleed from companies in the past, but Gen Y could multiply it by an order of magnitude more.
Lastly, a tip for hiring:
Speed is very important to them. They’ll give you a quick turnaround, but they expect a quick turnaround. If they can’t text message, then they don’t understand why. Email is almost too slow for them. A sales career is a great match for them, because the sales industry is fast paced.
Since they are speed demons, they aren’t really good at handling long-term projects. Fishman suggests breaking up long projects into shorter segments. Along the same lines, if you decide you want Generation Y employees, you need to hire them right away. They won’t wait around for six-month background checks or interview processes that take weeks. They want a quick response.
We got a bloody nose on this topic when we lost a good, young candidate who wouldn’t wait for our plodding customer to work through their baby boomer hiring process. The candidate took another job before our customer finally decided to move forward.
We learned a valuable lesson from that experience.
Comments(5)
