Generation Z and interviews

[Sa Calobra]

sjj84 said:

If it's not the done thing to ask about salary and benefits at interview, when exactly are you meant to discuss it? I'm consideringba change of employer, but there are so many adverts with out mention of salary.

I always check before interview that it's within at least the right ballpark

[Who_Goes_Blue]

I would say a few on here come across as though they regard an interview as a one way process. The employer deciding if they want to employ a certain individual - for me that is the old school element of it all. We have a job - why on earth would you not want to work for us

But its very much a 2 way process, the candidate is also trying to figure out if you are the company they want to work for. Do you have the right culture, atmosphere, remuneration, prospects, security. Especially as unemployment is currently very low this means candidates can afford to be a little more picky as to who they work for. I'm not excusing the lateness or non attendance, that's just plain rude. But asking questions about future role potential and the remuneration that would come with it are perfectly acceptable questions. In the right candidate these inquiries show drive and motivation. Provided they come across grounded and qualified for the post without illusions of grandeur, for me they would be the stand out applicant.

[j_4m]

James_B said:

I don’t recognise that at all, especially not the idea that younger people do things faster. I can knock out a spreadsheet in half an hour that takes our grads days, as they just aren’t up to speed on technology so soon out of university.

There is an alarming gap between myself (a late 80s millenial) and my early 20s colleagues in basic IT abilities. Sure, they're technology literate in that they can pick up some kind of mobile device and do whatever with it, but most of them don't actually own computers of their own and don't know how to use them beyond web browsing. If given a simple task crunching lists or data arrays they'll spend all day manually typing them out; the concept of nested Excel formulas baffles them, the idea that spending an hour building a spreadsheet to do the job for you being quicker than spending five hours hammering a keyboard is an alien one. They can't even type very well, I'm the only person in the office that can touch type, let alone hit an 80+ wpm. Let's not even get into using things like command line...

[craigjm]

j_4m said:

James_B said:

I don’t recognise that at all, especially not the idea that younger people do things faster. I can knock out a spreadsheet in half an hour that takes our grads days, as they just aren’t up to speed on technology so soon out of university.

There is an alarming gap between myself (a late 80s millenial) and my early 20s colleagues in basic IT abilities. Sure, they're technology literate in that they can pick up some kind of mobile device and do whatever with it, but most of them don't actually own computers of their own and don't know how to use them beyond web browsing. If given a simple task crunching lists or data arrays they'll spend all day manually typing them out; the concept of nested Excel formulas baffles them, the idea that spending an hour building a spreadsheet to do the job for you being quicker than spending five hours hammering a keyboard is an alien one. They can't even type very well, I'm the only person in the office that can touch type, let alone hit an 80+ wpm. Let's not even get into using things like command line...

Thing is, none of that is important to them. I bet they can type faster than you using a touch screen. The issue is that we are constantly trying to force “old technology” on new generations in the workspace and we just wouldn’t do that in our home lives. How many people still own a VHS player and use it regularly? We adapt far faster in our personal lives than we ever do at work and the later generations now are just showing this up more than ever before. If we want to move forward business has to adapt to the modern world not the modern world adapt to pre-existing business.

[Kermit power]

toon10 said:

I just think there is a shift in attitude with the younger generation on expectations compared to when I was young.

I had to google "Generation Z" to check when it was. I then jumped through Gen X (which I'm slap bang in the middle of) and Gen Y. All three of them include the fact that in their 20s, they were, in various ways, slackers, self-absorbed, entitled, etc...

Methinks it's nothing to do with them being Generation Z, and more to do with them being in their 20s, and you're possibly looking at your peers in your 20s through rose tinted spectacles.

[craigjm]

Kermit power said:

toon10 said:

I just think there is a shift in attitude with the younger generation on expectations compared to when I was young.

I had to google "Generation Z" to check when it was. I then jumped through Gen X (which I'm slap bang in the middle of) and Gen Y. All three of them include the fact that in their 20s, they were, in various ways, slackers, self-absorbed, entitled, etc...

Methinks it's nothing to do with them being Generation Z, and more to do with them being in their 20s, and you're possibly looking at your peers in your 20s through rose tinted spectacles.

There is certainly an element of that. Each generation is different to the one before and we either ebrace that and take the benefits or we hold ourselves back by trying to make them like us. We are all products of the environment we are in and this is constantly changing.

[Kermit power]

craigjm said:

Kermit power said:

toon10 said:

I just think there is a shift in attitude with the younger generation on expectations compared to when I was young.

I had to google "Generation Z" to check when it was. I then jumped through Gen X (which I'm slap bang in the middle of) and Gen Y. All three of them include the fact that in their 20s, they were, in various ways, slackers, self-absorbed, entitled, etc...

Methinks it's nothing to do with them being Generation Z, and more to do with them being in their 20s, and you're possibly looking at your peers in your 20s through rose tinted spectacles.

There is certainly an element of that. Each generation is different to the one before and we either ebrace that and take the benefits or we hold ourselves back by trying to make them like us. We are all products of the environment we are in and this is constantly changing.

The one thing which left me absolutely gobsmacked reading through the varying definitions on Wikipedia was the large percentage of American baby boomers inclined to leave their wealth to charity because they think each generation should make its own money. OK, the Yanks might not have State pensions and FAPOC healthcare in the way that we do here, but I still can't imagine that most of those selfish bds will have paid enough into their occupational pensions and the like during their working lives for their kids' generation not to be picking up the tab now! Fine, if you want each generation to pay its way, how about you do that now, and those currently paying your way for you can have a tax rebate to help them pay their own way in retirement?

[Flibble]

craigjm said:

Thing is, none of that is important to them. I bet they can type faster than you using a touch screen. The issue is that we are constantly trying to force “old technology” on new generations in the workspace and we just wouldn’t do that in our home lives. How many people still own a VHS player and use it regularly? We adapt far faster in our personal lives than we ever do at work and the later generations now are just showing this up more than ever before. If we want to move forward business has to adapt to the modern world not the modern world adapt to pre-existing business.

While that is true, being able to smash out text quickly on a touch screen isn't going to help much of you need a large spreadsheet set up. And touch screens are crap for efficiency compared to keyboards.
Just because it's new doesn't make it better.

[craigjm]

Flibble said:

craigjm said:

Thing is, none of that is important to them. I bet they can type faster than you using a touch screen. The issue is that we are constantly trying to force “old technology” on new generations in the workspace and we just wouldn’t do that in our home lives. How many people still own a VHS player and use it regularly? We adapt far faster in our personal lives than we ever do at work and the later generations now are just showing this up more than ever before. If we want to move forward business has to adapt to the modern world not the modern world adapt to pre-existing business.

While that is true, being able to smash out text quickly on a touch screen isn't going to help much of you need a large spreadsheet set up. And touch screens are crap for efficiency compared to keyboards.
Just because it's new doesn't make it better.

Maybe but you are assuming that there isn’t / won’t be a replacement for large spreadsheets in the future. Spreadsheets are 1980/90s technology. I’m not saying touch screens etc are the future I’m saying that things move on, faster in technology than anything and judging people by 20 year old skill sets is not going to move a company forward

[Jambo85]

craigjm said:

Maybe but you are assuming that there isn’t / won’t be a replacement for large spreadsheets in the future. Spreadsheets are 1980/90s technology. I’m not saying touch screens etc are the future I’m saying that things move on, faster in technology than anything and judging people by 20 year old skill sets is not going to move a company forward

Quite - relevant to exactly this point someone demonstrated PowerBI to me recently... it won't be new to a lot of people on here but I was blown away. The days of people churning through excel sheets will soon be behind us.

[Blanchimont]

craigjm said:

Flibble said:

craigjm said:

Thing is, none of that is important to them. I bet they can type faster than you using a touch screen. The issue is that we are constantly trying to force “old technology” on new generations in the workspace and we just wouldn’t do that in our home lives. How many people still own a VHS player and use it regularly? We adapt far faster in our personal lives than we ever do at work and the later generations now are just showing this up more than ever before. If we want to move forward business has to adapt to the modern world not the modern world adapt to pre-existing business.

While that is true, being able to smash out text quickly on a touch screen isn't going to help much of you need a large spreadsheet set up. And touch screens are crap for efficiency compared to keyboards.
Just because it's new doesn't make it better.

Maybe but you are assuming that there isn’t / won’t be a replacement for large spreadsheets in the future. Spreadsheets are 1980/90s technology. I’m not saying touch screens etc are the future I’m saying that things move on, faster in technology than anything and judging people by 20 year old skill sets is not going to move a company forward

I've worked in companies where 15 year old plus out of date software is used, vulverable servers are still live, and public facing just "because it works" at a snails pace is astounding. I started, and within a week managed to find around 20 huge vulnerabilities that needed immediate remediation. I got told that it's always been like that, and why would we need to change it. Other than AV, the concept of security was non-existent. I came in, highlighted massive security and operational issues (2003 servers, 18 month out of date patching on newer servers, public facing servers with any/any permitted access. Firewalls that default was allow, rather than deny the list goes on) and presented everything to remedy it, Hours, Costs, implementation plans, everything.

Still got denied. I got fed up with constantly banging my head against a brick wall as it seemed only the free projects would be approved, and anything that could upset the applecart would get declined.

In the end I managed to blag a virtual environment on the proviso that there would be no downtime. I managed to migrate around 40/100+ servers to VMWare before I left, and resulted in a 20 minute downtime when I didn't connect a NIC card.

They didn't understand anything new. The thought of upgrading a VPN server was laughed at.