Generation Z and interviews

[craigjm]

silent ninja said:

I am for giving people genuine problems or small projects and seeing how they get on. You're assessing the process, not the outcome, and it can tell you a heck of a lot about a person. This doesn't work in all industries though.

Having said all of this, over 60% of jobs - and most of the best and senior jobs - are not advertised. They're won through relationships and networks.

This is what modern assessment centres are. The type of thing where you fill in a questionnaire and find out your an ENTP and they want INTJ etc or you have to work as a group with people you’re competing against is rubbish as you say. The point is that sifting a CV and then doing a panel interview will not give you a proper demonstration of what someone can do and it doesn’t matter what colour shirt they wear to interviews etc.

Your last point shows why networking and the ability to do it well is a vital skill in the modern world. This is something that lots of people struggle with regardless of how old they are. Stick 50 people in a room together who don’t know each other but work in the same field and half of them will look at their shoes and not know what to do. Networking takes many forms and those that are good at it know how to build their networks and how to leverage them.

Even this place can be used as an important networking opportunity. I help people get their foot in the door and then prepare for modern assessments in my spare time because I have a long history in recruitment and organisational change. I’ve seen some PHers when they ask for help lap it up and rise to the challenge and really grow and get where they want to go. I’ve also seen others when asking for help decide to throw in the towel when the process to get there isn’t as simple as they thought. It’s not hard to see which of the two groups succeed and it doesn’t matter how old they are. For me it’s a great feeling when someone gets where they want to be. We had one poster on here a while ago that was depressed and pretty much suicidal and as part of his recovery that lots of us pitched in with I helped him get a job as a social media manager at a large car dealership network. It’s great when networking works!

Your last point is

[romeogolf]

With apologies if this has been mentioned already...

Those in their 20s currently have experienced a job market where they get very few responses to applications and are routinely outright ignored. Until very recently, when there feels to be a shift in more job vacancies than qualified workers, finding employment meant having a very tough skin to deal with the continual rejection which came in the form of "no response is a response".

It doesn't surprise me that those looking for work, having experienced these conditions, now treat employers and recruiters with the same disdain with which they were treated for several years previously.

[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.