When recruiting, training, and optimizing Gen Z, business as usual isn’t going to cut it, and with Gen Z now matching (and soon to exceed) Baby Boomers as a proportion of the total workforce, employers would be wise to adjust accordingly.
It is no secret that the competition for talent on the labor market has been historically tight for a long time now, with average unemployment nationwide below 4% for the past 2 years straight.
These conditions have had wide-ranging impacts across industries throughout the labor market, including upward wage pressure that resulted in a 4.5% increase in average hourly pay over the last year, which outpaced the 3.4% increase in inflation that accumulated over 2023.
While there was some softening in the labor market during the summer and early fall, the last few months have once again seen huge additions of new jobs being added to US company payrolls, despite the Federal Reserve’s nearly two-year-long interest rate hiking campaign designed to cool the demand for labor.
With the Fed signaling that those interest rates have hit their near-term peak and will likely begin coming down soon, however, demand for labor may well outpace the labor supply for the foreseeable future absent some kind of disruptive event.
As Gen Z makes up an increasingly large share of not only the labor supply, but also the supply chain, and customer base, how can employers transition their business practices to better accommodate and capture value as business norms, sensibilities, and expectations change with the times?
A recent survey from ResumeBuilder.com highlighted by BizWomen illuminates some of the main issues surrounding the entrance of Gen Z into the workforce, and how best to address them.
A closer look at some of the underlying reasons why almost one-third of respondent hiring managers are inclined to steer clear of Gen Z workers, however, reveals that differences of perception are often a source of conflict and misunderstanding.
The most common reasons listed for why hiring managers rejected Gen Z applicants were:
When analyzing this list of top hiring manager complaints with Gen Z job interviewees, the lack of objectivity that characterizes most of the issues is hard to overlook, especially given how so many aspects of assessing entitlement, communication, and preparation are quite subjective in nature.
For example, many interviewers complained that Gen Z applicants were not dressed appropriately, and/or they failed to make appropriate eye-contact, and or they used inappropriate language.
Rooting all of these perceptions is the idea of what is and what is not appropriate in a given setting, which are understandings that are very much in flux generationally.
Similarly, what some hiring managers may perceive as entitlement may reflect different career-related priorities and/or the different labor market/social conditions that each generation may have found upon their entrance into the workforce
Even the reasonableness of one’s compensation expectations, while more objective given market ranges, may be reflective of an underlying generational divide in light of the fact that dollars today earned by Gen Z workers have 86% less purchasing power than the wages brought home by Boomers at the same age.
Ultimately, company leadership will have to set the parameters and define what is appropriate when it comes to applicant and employee behavior, but the narrower that those parameters get relative to the broader understanding of what is and isn’t appropriate among the workforce and society in general, the harder it will be for companies to continue meeting their talent needs from an increasingly restricted labor pool.
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