Gen Z and job interviews

[mike stenson]

Another "what's with kids today" complaint? This is as old as time..

[Brian Elfert]

I started working cutting a few lawns at around age 12 to make some spending money. My parents never made me get a job. I then got a summer job that I worked for seven years. I had been working for years by the time I got my first real full time job.

The summer job they loved me because I showed up every day and let them know well in advance if I needed to take a day off. They had a bunch of older adults who worked for minimum wage who simply didn't show up at least one day a week, and they left early on every pay day because checks were handed out at lunch time. I could have worked there as long as I wanted to. I even took time off my real job to work for two weeks every year for more than a decade. I would show up and my old supervisor would give me the plum job even though it displaced someone who had been doing that job all summer. She knew my work and knew I would do a great job even though I hadn't done it for a year.

[Monte Milanuk]

Frederick, I do believe that there is a statistically significant number of young folks who indeed did not have employment during high school and college and the job they obtain when they graduate from college is potentially their first employment ever.

Personal opinion here, but I think that's probably due to the recent tendency of parents to have their kids enrolled in every freaking extra-curricular activity imaginable, every spare hour of the week. Theoretically it's so the kids are busy enough to keep them out of trouble (like that has ever worked for any generation... ever) but it has the side effect of those kids having zero opportunity to get a job of their own. Add in some of the states have some bizarrely specific regulations regarding work hours during the school week, almost to the point where I could see employers saying dealing with students as "not worth the hassle".

[Stan Calow]

Another "what's with kids today" complaint? This is as old as time..

Complaining is one of the few perks of getting old.

[Steve Demuth]

Like Prashun, I'm very sceptical that that "survey" is legitimate. I have Gen Z kids and don't know of any parent in any family that has "accompanied" their kid to a job interview other than, perhaps, providing transportation if it's local and the kid doesn't drive. I will cite that this might be different for a special needs situation, but that's an exception. There's a lot of suspect stuff that floats around the Internet these days.

The headline is certainly wrong, since it doesn't reflect the poll results claimed in the brief article. (If you asked all the hiring managers in my last department whether they had every interviewed a Chinese-American applicant, I'm quite certain at least 4 in 5 would say yes, but nowhere near 80% of our applicants where Chinese, it was more like 1 in 20).

And I agree with your main point, that the data probably don't mean much. You do an internet based poll of cold recruits, and ask very many questions at all, and the data is pretty much guaranteed to be junk. I don't doubt that a few people have been dumb enough (and also had dumb enough parents) to actually bring a parent into an interview, but I doubt there are more than a handful who would do it twice, because it will never work to their advantage

[Patty Hann]

I sat on two "peer interview panels" when we were hiring another tech.
I seriously doubt that either the ethnicity and sex of the prospective techs would have stood out in my mind compared to the situation had one of them brought his/her parent to the interview.
THAT would have stood out, as in "what the...?... How bizarre."
What I'm saying is that if someone (HR/Hiring manager/etc) says a young "interviewee" brought his parent with him to the interview, I see no reason to doubt the person.

[Pat Germain]

Personal opinion here, but I think that's probably due to the recent tendency of parents to have their kids enrolled in every freaking extra-curricular activity imaginable, every spare hour of the week. Theoretically it's so the kids are busy enough to keep them out of trouble (like that has ever worked for any generation... ever) but it has the side effect of those kids having zero opportunity to get a job of their own. Add in some of the --l states have some bizarrely specific regulations regarding work hours during the school week, almost to the point where I could see employers saying dealing with students as "not worth the hassle".

This is a very good point. Most parents I know have their kids involved in some kind of organized activity EVERY DAY OF THE WEEK. Why? Well, to keep them away from drugs. To keep them away from gangs. To keep them away from kidnappers. To teach them commitment, team work and all that.

Sheesh, it may seem crazy, but I think young people need to be bored once in a while.

While many of us mowed lawns for money when we were young, that is now prohibited by law in many areas. Nobody under 18 is permitted to operate power equipment of any kind. Furthermore, many homeowners are now paranoid of getting sued for most anything. "No way will allow some kid to mow my lawn. He'll get injured and his parents will sue me for millions!". True or not, people believe it. People also believe if their kids are left alone for two seconds they will be kidnapped. The reality is kids are no more likely to be abducted now than they were in 1970. But media outlets love to scare the crap out of parents, so parents are scared. "Shark attack in South Africa! Denver residents want to know; are they next?".

After decades of helicopter parents and snow plow parents, it's no wonder young people can't operate independently.

[Prashun Patel]

I am certain it happens. To say that it happens frequently is what I question. I'm not negating your contacts' experience, just countering with my own.

Personally, if someone showed up with a parent at an interview, I'd turn them politely away.

Actually, I take it back. This DID happen once, but because the person interviewing for our warehouse position had to bring his mother because he was her primary care giver. She sat in the parking lot until I realized, then I invited her inside. In this case, the parent worked in the interviewees favor. To be fair, he was not Gen Z.

[Steve Demuth]

I sat on two "peer interview panels" when we were hiring another tech.
I seriously doubt that either the ethnicity and sex of the prospective techs would have stood out in my mind compared to the situation had one of them brought his/her parent to the interview.
THAT would have stood out, as in "what the...?... How bizarre."
What I'm saying is that if someone (HR/Hiring manager/etc) says a young "interviewee" brought his parent with him to the interview, I see no reason to doubt the person.

I probably did a poor job of making my point. I'm not saying that anybody was necessarily misreporting, but that you can't tell much about frequency from a question "have you every experienced ..." sent to a self-selected reporting group. That's for two reasons: first, as I was trying to illustrate with my Chinese-American example, hiring managers and HR professionals see tens to hundreds of interviewees over the course of a year in actively hiring organizations. If one or two of those hundreds brought their parent, then the answer to the question "have you had entry-level interviewee's show up to an interview with their parents?" is yes. So the rate for those reporting "yes" could actually be 1%, and the rate for the whole cohort of managers, where 1 in 5 answered yes, as small as 0.2% - not the 20% the article headline blared. Second, these kind of internet polls generally have a self-selecting bunch of responders. They send out 10000 requests for people in a profession to answer a questionnaire, and a few percent return it, so you get "800 responding hiring managers." But here's the thing: those tend to be people with something they want to report on, not the folks who are conducting business as usual. So you get a high rate of anomalous behavior reported, compared to the actual base rate.

So, I am not doubting your experience, but I do doubt that the survey results mean much about Gen Z applicants. In my 45 years of hiring, I found that every generation brought new perspectives and behaviors to interviews, but not that any were less suited to the task at hand, or generally less capable, or otherwise disabled. That's more or less the way the world works - I as a mid-century baby boomer approached the world differently from my "child of the depression" parents, and my kids certainly have engaged the world differently than I did. Stasis just isn't a thing in modern societies.

[Jim Becker]

Personal opinion here, but I think that's probably due to the recent tendency of parents to have their kids enrolled in every freaking extra-curricular activity imaginable, every spare hour of the week. Theoretically it's so the kids are busy enough to keep them out of trouble (like that has ever worked for any generation... ever) but it has the side effect of those kids having zero opportunity to get a job of their own. .

It's also affected by the very real situation that many of the jobs that high schoolers "traditionally" signed up for are now held by adults, including seniors. Labor laws around minors are a good thing because without them, things would be back to the serious exploitation that historically brought those laws to the table.

[Cameron Wood]

The math in that headline must be from either Artificial Intelligence or Complete Lack of Intelligence. If the survey results indicate that 1 in 5 employers had a recent graduate bring a parent to an interview, those employers would have to have 100% of the recent graduates bring parents in order to meet the 20% of New College Grads bringing parents with them as noted in the headline. Or the entire body of survey respondents would have to have only seen 1 recent grad each.

Just nit-picking on sensationalism in journalism!!

Not sure where that headline came from, but it is not the title, nor does that line appear in the story.

The actual statistic is plenty to riff on, however....

[John Goodin]

Statistics can be massaged and purposely or inadvertently manipulated to get an intended result. I doubt the accuracy of their findings.

However, I do see quite a few parents on a neighborhood social media app posting that their kid is looking for odd jobs or babysitting. While I occasionally hire a teen to do basic work around the house it is never from a post made by a mom. There are quite a few Gen Zs who do pretty good working the gig economy on social media. In particular many young men have done well pressure washing driveways and pool decks.

As far as kids not working. Many are involved in extracurricular activities that prevent working through the school year. In Texas, the way extracurriculars are run and the way in state college admissions are structured you just about need to an activity to get into many of the more competitive colleges. it is difficult to explain briefly but most extracurriculars are double blocked which means students spend 25 percent of their class time in football or band, etc. The easy A’s boost class rank and GPAs. In Texas kids who play football or basketball, etc spend twice as much time playing a game than in math class. I will refrain from the diversion and not discuss the number of academic courses taught by coaches who really don’t much care about anything other than sports. Makes my blood boil.

[Brian Runau]

I got played pretty well by employers when I was younger. I didn't have any "street smarts" about the tricks they use to screw you. Learned over time.

Brian

[Bill George]

Both my boys had jobs in High School, after school that is to pay for their toys. Both my granddaughters did also, no gifts or money from parents in either case. The parents today Give the Kids everything.... they do not need Jobs!!

[mike stenson]

Complaining is one of the few perks of getting old.

The irony is the people doing the complaining, are ultimately responsible for that which their complaining about.