SECTION 1
OPEN THE DOOR TO GEN Z
Section 1 Takeaways
âą Recognize the Gen Z gems.
âą Find the Gen Zers who will help your company.
âą Perfect your hiring process.
âą Know what you want: experience or talent.
âą Choose your interview questions carefully.
âą Testâlegallyâto finalize the process.
CHAPTER 1
WHY SHOULD YOU HIRE GEN Z?
Some of you may be thinking that hiring and training Gen Z workers sounds like it could be a lot of trouble. It could force you to learn new techniques and think about your employees from a new point of view. Is that really necessary? Maybe you donât expect to have any trouble filling vacancies for a while and you assume that anyone you hire will be happy just to have a jobâany job.
This book was written in the spring and early summer of 2020 as millions of people were losing jobs because of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns. In that climate, employers might be tempted to think it wonât be too difficult to find workers or replacement workers if their new hire doesnât work out. But your company could soon regret not having some enthusiastic Gen Zers on board, for a number of reasons.
Theyâre Techies
For starters, Gen Z has skills your company needs. Hundreds of employers, HR professionals, managers, and supervisors whom Iâve talked to overwhelmingly say that being tech savvy is this generationâs greatest strength.
Do you understand the differences between Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter and how all of them can be used to reach your potential customers? Has your company struggled during the pandemic to adapt to virtual meetings or find long-distance substitutes for in-person sales and marketing efforts? Would you like to have an employee who seems to intuitively grasp all the finer points of Zoom? Or one who could tell you where all the young people went when they left Facebook? Then you need some Gen Zers in your office.
Employers React to Gen Z
They are able to do research on the internetâthey google everything or YouTube it so they can find an answer or how to fix something. So, they have the answer in a matter of minutes instead of the old-fashioned way of going to the library, checking out a book, and then reading it; or they find an expert in that field to tell them or teach them.
As we get older, we tend to resist changeâespecially new technology, although once we learn it, we usually canât live without it. Gen Z can help you plug into the latest programs and gadgets, and you might be surprised by how quickly you come to rely on an app or tech device once youâve seen how helpful it can be. According to a Forbes article by Robert Glazer, âA 2019 Pew Research study found that 68% of Baby Boomers own smartphones and 52% own tablets. That technology use is about to leap upward (because of the coronavirus).â7
Employing Gen Z workers and helping them feel empowered and engaged can help your company make the most from rising technology useâfor both your employees and your customers.
Theyâre Younger
According to âMarist Mindset List for the Entering College Class of 2023â:
âą The primary use of a phone has always been to take pictures.
âą PayPal has always been an online option for purchasers.
âą YouTube has become the video version of Wikipedia.
âą There have always been âsmartwatches.â8
There are 61 million Gen Zers, so you are not going to be able to ignore them for long. And theyâre coming along at just the right time to help replace all the Boomers who are hitting retirement age. In fact, you may soon discover that a number of your Gen X employees are also looking to retire or find a new career path, especially with the global pandemic upending so much of ânormalâ life.
âMany Gen-Xers will likely come out of all this thinking long and hard about what they really want to be doing for the remaining few chapters of their life,â according to Glazer. âI expect a lot of voluntary and involuntary career changes.â9
So, who will replace all the Boomer and Gen X employees who are deciding to step away from your company? The Gen Z wave is coming.
They Can Be Practical
Gen Zers were children and adolescents during the recession of 2008. Many of them saw parents and family members lose their jobs, their houses, their retirement accounts, and their sense of security. So, Gen Zers tend to be more risk averse and to seek more stability, which means weâre less likely to see them bounce around from company to company as Millennials have tended to do. Gen Zers tend to look at jobs more practically.
In addition, Gen Zers are used to testing and metrics because they grew up participating in high-stakes testing at their schools, which needed to hit certain benchmarks to avoid funding cuts. So workers from this generation are likely to meet or exceed expectationsâas long as those expectations are clearly communicated and documented.
Theyâre Magnets
If you make your Gen Z employees feel valuable and engaged, they are likely to attract other qualified Gen Zers who want to work at your company. One of the best ways to attract highly qualified applicants of all ages is to build a great reputation as an employer. Your employees are living advertisements for your business, and you can ensure that they say good things about your company if you make your organization a great place to work.
How can you make sure your company is a great place to work? Of course, it never hurts to offer higher pay and better benefits than your competition. But it requires more than that. Companies that made Fortune magazineâs â100 Best Companies to Work Forâ list in 2020
âą demonstrate they care about their employees and put them first;
âą give employees autonomy and support;
âą are transparent;
âą provide a work-life balance and flexible work schedule;
âą cultivate an inclusive and diverse culture;
âą provide opportunities to learn and grow; and
âą are philanthropic.10
Having happy Gen Z employees will attract more Gen Zers who will be valuable additions to your firm. The next chapter offers other tips for finding great Gen Z workers.
7Robert Glazer, âCOVID-19 Will Permanently Change the Way Every Generation LivesâHereâs How,â Forbes, April 1, 2020, https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertglazer/2020/04/01/covid-19-will-permanently-change-the-way-every-generation-lives-heres-how/#7edee67e493b.
8Marist College, âMarist Mindset List for the Entering College Class of 2023,â accessed June 1, 2020, https://www.marist.edu/mindset-list.
9Glazer, âCOVID-19.â
10Fortune, âFortune 100 Best Companies to Work For 2020,â accessed May 29, 2020, https://www.greatplacetowork.com/best-workplaces/100-best/2020.
CHAPTER 2
HOW DO YOU FIND GEN Z WORKERS?
Even when millions of people are looking for a job, itâs not always easy to find just the right person for your company. And Gen Z workers may be harder to find because their job searches may not be following the âtraditionalâ paths.
It is highly unlikely that Gen Zers will ever answer your classified ad in the newspaper, and not many of them will stop in and ask about the Help Wanted sign in your window. If you want to find great Gen Z candidatesâor have them find youâyouâre going to have to get in the social media game.
Consider this: in the first quarter of 2020, more than 2.6 billion people logged on to Facebook every month,11 more than 166 million people actively used Twitter every day,12 and 690 million people had a LinkedIn membership.13 So, youâre doing yourself a disservice if you discount the impact social media can play in employee recruitmentâeven if you think Facebook is silly, have no idea how to tweet, and have not looked at your LinkedIn account in years.
Social media is especially important if you are trying to attract Gen Z workers. The Center for Generational Kinetics calls social media a carefully curated lifeline to and for Gen Z.
According to Laura Hill, CEO and executive recruiter of Pinnacle Recruitment Services, social media isnât just for Gen Z. âSocial media has become a go-to resource for us in almost every candidate search. We continue to see our business rely heavily on it as all generations become more technologically advanced.â14
Here are some tips for setting up a Gen Zâfriendly application process:
âą Allow applicants to apply on their mobile device. Although about 95 percent of Gen Z members have a smartphone, fewer of them have access to computers.
âą Make the application process quickâit should take less than fifteen minutes.
âą Make sure applicants can save the form and return to it later if necessary.
âą Allow applicants to express interest in a job online before beginning the formal application process. If you do that, you can connect with the ones you want to apply.
âą Promptly notify applicants that their application was received and let them know about the next steps in the process.
Online Attraction
Your companyâs website is one of your most powerful tools for finding job candidates. Post job openings there, but do more than thatâuse your website to make people want to work at your business. Post pictures of company events, positive employee testimonies, your mission statement and company values, and other messages that communicate your company culture.
Job boards are another powerful tool to reach Gen Z workers. You can advertise openings on a variety of generalized online job boards, such as Monster and Indeed. But look for the more specialized job boards to get the best results. For example, Iâm a member of the Kern County Society for Human Resource Management, so the societyâs job board is the perfect place to post when Iâm looking for HR candidates.
If your firm has a Facebook page, you can always post your job opening there. However, you will probably get better results if you buy a targeted ad so you can ensure that more of the right people will see it. Facebook will allow you to choose your exact audience and then offer different options and price levels.
When posting on ...