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 Do You Get It?
The Gen Y candidate:
You are thinking about a change; it’s time for a new challenge, new scenery, and the next step in your career. Two days later the phone rings and it’s a headhunter. She has an opportunity that sounds exactly like what you are looking for. You are pumped! You polish up your resume, meet with the recruiter, and jointly you determine that yes, this is the opportunity for you!
Today’s the big day: your interview with the hiring manager. You’re prepared, you’ve done your homework, you know what they are looking for, and you want this job. It’s perfect for you and you are perfect for the position.
While waiting in the lobby, your phone rings. You check the call display and it’s your good bud, Mike. He must be calling about your beach volley ball game tonight, so you answer and start a dialogue. The hiring manager comes into the lobby and you’re still on the phone. Just about done, you look up, give her a nod, and mouth that you’re just winding up the call and will be right with her.
Your interview takes about an hour and a half and you walk out of there feeling ‘top drawer’; you aced the interview and the job is yours. The next morning you call up the headhunter to check in and see if there has been any feedback from the employer. How did you do?
Well, that depends. For some organizations, your fielding of a cell phone call just prior to your interview may have been a fatal mistake. You may have lost the job the minute the hiring manager walked into the lobby and you were on the phone with someone else. For other organizations, it may not have made any difference at all. Until you know the internal workings of the company, such as the work environment, corporate policies, dress code, etc., you should always err on the side of caution. As they say, when in doubt, wear a suit and a tie.
The company / executive:
One of the challenges that ‘traditional’ (old school) companies and executives face today is how to deal with the new Gen Y / Generation Next / Echo Boomers (they have been classified under many different names), many of whom have been raised to expect instant gratification, and lead multi-tasking / multi-media lifestyles. The bottom line is that you have established a level of professionalism within your organization and you have the right to expect your employees to meet it. For some companies, this includes the expectation that employees not take personal cell phone calls or text messages during working hours, while other companies may have strict policies in regards to not putting customers on hold while taking other calls. In short, each company has different expectations and policies, and those at your organization may be quite different from what some of your younger generation employees are used to.
Many of today’s young professionals don’t see what the big deal is. They don’t understand why it’s not cool to have pictures of themselves and their ten closest friends half-naked, half-cut on a booze cruise exposing the new tattoos on their backside out on Facebook for EVERYONE to see.
The advice:
As an executive of your company, what can you do? As the boomers retire and technology continues to take over our lives, you are going to need many of these talented and generationally different individuals to keep your company alive and prosperous. You really have two choices:
1.) You can reject them outright and move on to the next candidate. The challenge with this approach is you could run out of good candidates very quickly and you may end up with constrained resources.
2.) The other option is that when you come across a good, young candidate who has what it takes but ‘doesn’t get it’, explain to them that you want to hire them and you want them to become an important part of your organization. However, before you take them into your company, they need to understand and respect the way that you would like each of your employees to conduct themselves and to agree to work inside the boundaries of your company’s expectations regarding conduct.
As a good young candidate who is eager to conquer the world, what can you do? Well first off, go back and read this article again. Then turn off your cell phone when in a sales call, an interview, or an internal meeting. Remove those personal blogs and pictures you have splattered all over the Internet, or at least restrict access to only your personal, close friends. Don’t send a new prospect, the Director of Sales at XYZ company, a text message that reads "Bob, c u @ 2 2day, btw ilbl8 b/c traf blows". Why? Because correspondence to a client, employer, or anyone else in the professional world is the equivalent of what a professional letter used to be. Consequently, treat it as such.
Lastly, have a look around at your peers, bosses, and the people you look up to and respect. Notice how they dress, how they communicate with other people, the language they use, they way they wear their hair to the office, they way the conduct themselves, and then take a step back and see if ‘you get it’!
By Colin Farrell, Corporate Recruiters Ltd. Colin can be contacted at colin@corporate.bc.ca
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