Predicting Success in the Generational Divide at Work
Barbara Poole, Founder & President, Employaid, Inc.
A couple of weeks ago, I was providing some interview coaching for an Ivy college Junior. He is searching for a summer internship on where else? Wall Street. This isn’t exactly open season for hiring in Financial Services, so he has to have every edge over the competition. After explaining that interviewers are often tough, I began a series of questions that “searched for limitations”. One of them, “Tell me about a time when you disagreed with your boss” led to a response I hadn’t been counting on. The young man relayed a story about working in a running store. He noticed that people were asking for a certain model of shoe, and that it was also very popular with his track buddies. The young man approached the manager of the store, and told him that he should start to carry the wonderful shoe. He was not prepared for the manager’s push back, and was shocked when what he was asking for was out of the question. Undeterred, he went back to the counter, and wrote down the brand, model and price of the shoe, and returned to talk with the manager. “What did you do then?” I asked. He told the manager to give the note to his boss, since he could not approve buying the new model himself. Whoa! This is a living example of Gen Y attitude in the workplace. Who among our Baby Boomers and Gen X employees would have boldly stepped “out of line” to respond in the same way?
The interaction with the college kid got me thinking once again (see my September column) about behavioral interviewing vs. attribute interviewing. The once structured interview technique has to be supplemented by attribute discovery. For what we have happening is the entrance of Gen Y into a workforce that have far different values than these entry level folks. And to take it one step further, interviewers are playing the lottery if senior management in the organization does not provide the productivity coaching and follow-up to support generational differences in their organizations. There are a few ways to stack the deck for success when sourcing and recruiting multi-generational candidates.
- Ask the tough questions, but this time makes them be about character and motivation as well as behaviors.
- Look at social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Plaxo, etc.) to understand the candidate and his or her social network out of the workplace.
- Using knowledge of the organization, conduct a risk assessment of, for example, a Gen Y candidate hiring in to a group managed by a Boomer. Will the GenY survive? Will the Boomer get the work productivity (vs. disdain) that GenY is often reluctant to provide?
- Don’t let the hiring manager off the hook. Hold pre-meetings prior to bringing in candidates. Ask the same type of questions of the manager that you will of candidates, so you can understand the odds of being responsible for a good hire or a turnover statistic. This is a tall order when faced with a ton of open requisitions, but diligence can prevent a boomerang job posting situation.
- Work with Operations and Human Resource groups to find out more about the type of training new hires will receive, and openly campaign for generational differences to be brought out into the open.
Posted by Barbara Poole
on January 22, 2010. Filed under Human Resources, Recruiting, Retention, Sourcing, Thought Leadership.
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