With millennials predicted to comprise more than 35 percent of the workforce by 2020, it’s inevitable to see members of this millennial generation in hiring-manager positions, recruiting and hiring senior-staff members who may be far older and more experienced than they are.
Understanding the way millennials think about work, jobs, and career is key to making the right impression in the interview, getting hired, and fitting in with a multi-generational workforce. Here are five general observations:
1. Leadership, teamwork, and communication are always in vogue. Millennial hiring managers seek these traits just as much as their counterparts in other generations. millennials are especially obsessed with collaboration, so stories that demonstrate your team-leader and team-player competencies will play well in interviews with them. As for communication, remember that millennials are visual learners who grew up consulting YouTube to learn how to do things. They are not big readers and have actually been conditioned to skip large blocks of text. That means they are unlikely to appreciate huge amounts of detail on your resume. And they might just resonate with a pitch deck about yourself that you bring to the interview.
2. Millennials respect experience, but as hiring managers, may not be willing to pay for it. Hiring managers in this generation recognize that experience is valuable, but they are more focused on the specific contribution you can make and how productive you are. They do not necessarily associate years of experience with a premium salary. It’s important to describe in the interview how you’ve contributed your productivity in similar situations, rather than emphasizing your vast experience. Show that what you bring to the company – not your years of experience – makes you worth your requested salary. It’s also important to show that a wealth of experience will not impede your ability to react quickly to changing dynamics. You want to show that you are not fixated on looking at new situations through old lenses.
3. If the watchword of real estate is location, location, location, the watchword for older executives under scrutiny by millennial hirers is flexibility, flexibility, flexibility. Demonstrate that you value diversity. Show you are not tech-averse but open to learning new technologies. Prepare for interviews with stories of responding effectively to the kind of rapid change millennials have experienced all their lives.
4. Millennials raise their eyebrows at careerists who’ve worked at one place for a long time. The good news is that job hopping is scarcely an issue for millennials who hire. Instead, the opposite is true; they look askance at those who seem to have stayed in one place too long. Their generation has tended to seek personal growth by moving from job to job. If you have been at your most recent job a long time, prepare an explanation about how you’ve grown in your work and have not stagnated. By the way, if the millennial interviewing you will be your supervisor, don’t count on him or her to stick around for a long time.
5. Millennials admire work-life balance. Stories of the long hours you’ve toiled and personal sacrifices you’ve made for your work are not likely to resonate with millennials, who tend to dedicate themselves to meaningful work, values, and balance between their professional and personal lives. In interviews, be sure to share the volunteer and community activities that make you a well-rounded contributor.
Final Thoughts
Being considered for a position by a hiring manager many years your junior can be intimidating. But once you understand the millennial hiring mindset, you can navigate interviews with these young hiring managers with ease.
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