Generation Y - A Wider Focus Please

I have been reading the recent debate about recruiting Generation Y with great interest and an increasing sense of frustration. I have great respect for experts such as Andy Headworth, who talk a lot of sense and make a lot of valid suggestions about the issues that companies need to tackle in relation to managing their Gen Y workforce. However, there in lies my problem. The debate centres around what companies should be doing to attract and manage employees of a certain age. NO STOP, sorry but companies should be taking these suggestions on board in relation to employees of all ages.

The kind of issues that are associated with Generation Y are;

• A need to respected by their employers. I'm an awful long way from being Gen Y, but if my employer doesn't respect me, I'm looking for another job. Fortunately I have a great employer, so no issue there!
  
• They want a sense of purpose and meaning in their work. Again, in middle age, so do I. If I don't understand why I am doing something, how can I optimise what I am doing to achieve maximum results?
• Young people expect to be coached through problems not just told what to do. Well I may be half way to my pension but if you coach me on the best way to tackle a problem rather than letting me find my own way, aren't you developing me and therefore getting best value moving forward? Surely thats good management?
  
• Social Responsibility is a key issue, and has always been a key issue for young people. Just because human nature means most of us become more temperate with age, to suggest that social responsibility is not a major issue for all ages is hugely patronising.
  
• They are entrepeneurial. This is very true and the success of Young Enterprise is testament to that, but are you really telling me that the likes of Alan Sugar, Richard Branson and many, many others are born of a generation that wasn't?
  
• Gen Ys want to be challenged. Hello, me again!
• Generation Y expect potential employers to have interactive websites with Social Networks, Blogs, Forums etc that they can interact with. I am a bit long in the tooth and cynical to expect these things, but sure as hell if a potential employer has them then they are more likely to attract my talents than one that hasn't.
  

Companies should absolutely take the advice of experts such as Andy, but apply them to their whole workforce. Their are two main reasons for doing this;

• Regardless of whether you consider Generation Y to be suffering from spoilt brat syndrome or not, if you consider treating a section of your workforce differently you will alienate the rest of your workforce and lose your best talent. However this should not be used as a reason not to act, but to implement change across your whole workforce.
• The sort of measures that are being proposed to attract and retain Generation Y will be equally attractive to Gen X, Baby Boomers etc. and help you attract and retain the best talent across the board.

As an industry lets lose the Gen Y tag and adopt a Gen Everyone tag instead.

Personal Buzz Monitoring

I was on the train on the way home on Friday checking Twitter, when I read a tweet from SJDelaney about the death of Jesse Helms. Being a curious kind a guy and not being up to speed on my American politics, I googled Jesse Helms to find out who he was. As is often the case for such questions my next action was to click the Wikipedia link, but instead of being greeted with the usual Wiki page, I came across the simple statement "Jesse Helms, burn in hell"

My curiosity really sparked now, I googled again and started to read and when I came back to Wikipedia a few minutes later, normal service had been resumed. Now Jesse clearly did a lot of good in his life, but this is overshadowed by his extreme views on many issues such as gay rights, abortion, ethnic minorities and other such topics. I personally find many of his points of view abhorrent and the insensitive manner in which he choose to express his opinions equally unacceptable.

However, whilst my heart is firmly in the camp that says the internet is a forum for free speech and should not be regulated or censored , I can't and don't condone the sort of cyber vandalism that I witnessed on Friday. If you have a point of view, set it out in a rational manner. Jesse's record speaks for itself, by resorting to personal insults on a recently deceased person who has no right of reply, you lower yourself to his level.

But the fact remains that we have, quite rightly, a forum for free speech. We have known this for some time and we advise our clients to monitor what is being said about them online. OK, most companies understand the issues, but what about candidates?

Recently Steve O'Neil of Security Watchdog wrote a good article about using the internet for background checking. Now professional background checking companies are trained to take a balanced view of information that they find about individuals. However an increasing number of companies are background checking candidates themselves and some will perhaps not be so discerning about what they find. How many candidates even think about, let alone check, what has been said about them online?

As Web 2.0 type applications become an increasing part of our everyday life and many of us seize the opportunity to share our passionately held views and get involved in heated discussions about topics ranging from business to football to technology to pretty much any other topic you care to think of, should we stop to think about the online picture we are painting about ourselves and/or what other people who don't agree with our opinions may be contributing to that canvass?

It feels uncomfortable to suggest that people should have to think about about, let alone check, what is being said about them online and for most people it probably is. But I can only see the likes of social networks, blogs, twitter etc becoming more and more part of daily lives and perhaps this is something that jobseekers need to start thinking about?

Economic Slowdown - Is it really a bad thing?

According to the news, Trinity Mirror Group, who publish five national newspapers and many regional titles, are reporting a drop in advertising spend, including an 8% drop in recruitment advertising. The fact that the general reduction is across most sectors appears to point to economic slowdown as the cause.

But is economic slowdown the reason behind recruitment advertising being 8% off? Or is this also a sign our industry is reducing it's reliance on advertising for candidate sourcing and starting to more widely embrace alternatives such as Search Engine Marketing, Social Networks, Blogs and the many other Web 2.0 type solutions?

Probably if I had the time to do the research I could find evidence to back up both theories. The reality is probably that both are contributing factors. But this leads me to ask if a slowing of the economy is really a bad thing for our industry? OK, in the agency market it's not the most original question and not too many people will shed a tear if those agencies, that add little value to the process, disappear.

But what is the impact of a financial downturn to a corporate recruiter? This is a more difficult question to answer as, unlike agency recruiters, corporate recruiters didn't really exist during the last recession. So here goes with some educated guesses as to what might happen;

• Sadly some will lose their jobs. Unlike in the US, many companies here in dear old blighty, still don't understand the true value of a good corporate recruiter. So when the question is raised about how to save costs is asked and the suggestion is made to cut non core staff is made, our highly skilled corporate recruiter finds themselves seeking a more appreciative audience. Ironically, there will be companies that follow this course of action that then revert to using agencies for the recruitment they do do, often spending more than they have saved by cutting their internal capability!
• Some corporate recruiters will see an improvement in their golf handicaps. Less vacancies to fill, more candidates to fill them with, ain't life grand!
• However the enlightened ones will realise that even in a candidate rich environment, finding the best talent, who are the key to the ongoing success of ones company, is as much of a priority, maybe more so, than in a boom economy. However, with the haystack being larger than normal, finding the needle becomes more of a challenge.

So in our constant search for new and better ways to source, how do we filter out the interference that is Mr and Mrs Average? Measure our outcomes (Yes I know I'm in danger of being repetitive) But just because you are suddenly getting 50% more responses to you ad campaign, if we can prove that our successful hires are the ones you found for free on LinkedIn, we know where to devote more effort and our boss loves us because we are rationalising our recruitment spend during more challenging economic times.