Recruiters talking about my generation at the APSCo conference

Recruitment executives find Generation Y members of their workforce less keen to get on the phone, and report that they are looking at non-traditional ways of motivating their younger staff.
Wed, 21 Oct 2013Recruitment executives find Generation Y members of their workforce less keen to get on the phone, and report that they are looking at non-traditional ways of motivating their younger staff.

This was part of the discussion at the Association of Professional Staffing Companies (APSCo) conference last Friday, in the executive session led by the organisation's chairman Miles Hunt.

One attendee at the session, also attended by recruiter.co.uk, said he found younger staff less ready to hit the phones and make calls. They prefer emails or using social media to contact people, he added.

Hunt said this could be advantageous. “They’re digital natives, we’re not,” he said. However, picking the phone was always going to be a key for any agency, he added.

Recent research from Jurys Inn Hotels and CrossCountry Trains does indeed show that workers aged 18-24 are least keen to use the telephone. Their survey of 2,500 office workers saw 28% of respondents claiming telephone communication making them nervous, rising to almost 40% in that youngest age bracket, with 5% of those under 24 going as far as saying it “terrifies” them.

Generation Y or Millennials are various defined as those being born from the early 1980s – hence in their early 30s today – but more commonly those being born in the mid-to-late 80s or early 90s, and just entering the job market today. A large body of research on the matter of generational difference produced in recent years has produced a number of conclusions.

Another attendee expressed a further difficult in integrating Generation Y workers. “Generation Y are less driven by a KPI [key performance indicator] culture… so we’ve had to change,” he said.

As another attendee pointed out, a key can be “how you use KPIs”, in particular making sure that rather than a weapon they are “a tool to aid them [consultants]”.

Sitting in the session, executive coach and consultant Scott Wintrip, who addressed the whole conference in two sessions that day, suggested a model in which staff know they can “earn the right to less KPIs”.

Wintrip’s three-tiered system sees recruiters progress from Apprentice stage, through Journeyman, to Master. “Once people have earned this, they don’t want to go backwards,” he commented.


Have you had to change your way of working as a result of skills and weaknesses of different generations of workers? Click ‘comment’ below to let us know…

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