For a couple years now, I've been listening to some people in the business community bemoaning the "entitlement mentality" of Generation Y. Stories began to circle about how Generation Y workers (Gen Y refers to people born around or after 1979) would bring their parents to job interviews. I also heard rumors that parents would call HR when their children "got in trouble at work" to argue.
These were just stories though. I continued to wonder if these differences were so real.
Well, I'm still not going to decide to generalize an entire group of people based upon age. But I can tell you that in a recent situation where I was helping a friend conduct interviews, I did notice a distinct difference in interviewing job applicants who were under the age of 25 versus those who were older than 25.
What characterized the interviews with younger workers?
1) Informality of speech. - One person remarked that they were not "anal retentive about things." Another candidate said "Like.... you know" about thirty times in the interview. One candidate said that they had "a brain fart." I'm pretty sure I felt my eyebrows hit my hairline at hearing "anal" and "fart" enter the interview process.
2) High Expectations for a Boss - Each of the younger candidates was not shy about describing exactly where prior bosses had failed them. This wasn't to say that they were whiny or rude; they simply were clear about what kind of relationship they wanted with their manager and were not afraid to say so. This was not limited to the younger applicants, but it was more pronounced there.
3) High Expectations for Pay - I noticed that most of the younger candidates didn't have as good of a "feel" for what the market would pay for a job, and they often asked for the top of the range.
Of all of these, I suppose I found #1 the most surprising. Ultimately, being a bit informal in the interview isn't a problem, although one does always worry that you'll hire someone who will walk up to a customer and say that they had a brain fart. It's not that I'm the queen of clean language, but I do tend to save my more colorful euphemisms for moments outside the interview process.
In any case, I'm still hesitant to categorize people based upon age. (It's happened to me, and I don't like it.) However I can say that I was a bit surprised at the different feel in interviewing candidates from Generation Y.
If you're working with multiple generations, have you noticed any distinctions?
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Posted by: Shravan Kothi | September 17, 2008 at 04:07 PM