Companies were looking to change their long standing recruitment policies, workforce management strategies and career management paths etc.....just to satisfy the gen Y'ers, and make themselves more appealing to them. They were trying to compensate everything (or so it seemed) just to position themselves to attract the gen Y'ers to their companies.
Quite simply, if you were a gen Y'er (good or bad in many cases), you would likely have been in a position of not only having the choice of three or four jobs, you would also have been in a position to dictate your terms at interview as well!
Things were really looking good, expectations were high, and quite literally, they were really top of the tree. So everything they had been told by their teachers and their parents - they could be anything they want - really looked like coming true.
Then of course their world simply fell off the side of a cliff - the recession happened and the same companies simply stopped hiring gen Y'ers, in favour of 'experienced' workers being laid off from other companies. The reason? - purely money........... jobs were needed and out of work people were lowering their salary demands....fast! And of course, as soon as they arrived into the price bracket of the companies that were still hiring, it was always obvious what they were going to do.
Move forward two years and into the 21st century.
We have started to see upturns in the recruitment market, with many companies recruiting again - recruiters are reporting profitable results month on month, and there is even talk about skill shortages again (well actually they have always been there, but that is another blog!).
But what of this 'forgotten generation' that people were referring to? Where are they now in the big equation of the job market?
Well, I for one, think they are in demand again by many companies.
Why?
Well, for a number of reasons:
1. They have no baggage. They will not be tainted by other exposure to other company practices - they are the work virgins. Now while the demand through recruiters is for 'experience' , I believe many organisations are now bringing in people and preparing to invest time and money in these new employees, for the array of new social (network not interpersonal!) skills they can bring to an organisation
I am seeing it every day with both large and small companies. They know that these gen Y'ers needs jobs and careers, and even though there is a realism that these same gen Y'ers will probably leave in a couple of years to further their careers, they recognise that for the two years they are there, they will (hopefully) get some good employees. In fact many are using these gen Y'ers to bring the social experience and knowledge to their companies.
2. They bring social media into organisations. It is well accepted that the gen Y'ers are very much the age of social networking - they started it and they have been active in them as it as been such a global phenomenon. Many companies are recruiting gen Y'ers just for these skills to ensure they are not left behind. This is happening more and more each week.
3. They have been burned. Remember all those employees that took pay cuts to join them? Well, surprise surprise, they want that salary back and are now hopping and jumping all the way to new jobs. I call them stepping stoners. I have no issue with what they have done, but some companies were very naive when they hire them!
4. Money. Let's be fair - in a post-recessionary world, costs and certainly salary budgets do count. Gen Y'ers will unfortunately be starting at the bottom of the ladder (most of the time anyway) and therefore don't command the salaries of others......yet!
Of course, many out there reading this will cite all the graduates not finding jobs, and I can't argue with that. But there are jobs out there, there are employers that are again willing to dip into the gen Y talent pool and there is an acceptance that gen Y can now offer the corporate world something, again!
But, if you disagree - let me know. Your experiences may well differ.
