Snowflake Generation!

[wheypat]

A friend of mine's daughter graduated last summer with the class medal and a 1st class honours degree in I.T. He contacted me in September as she's had no luck in securing a job, and as I work in IT and work in the same city she lives in would I mind taking her out for lunch and reviewing her C.V. No worries. I also do the interviews and CV reviews for my firm.

Took her out and she's articulate, intelligent and knows her stuff. I'd hire her (but we don;t take on grads). So she gave me a paper copy of her CV and emailed it as well. Over the next week we go back and forth, I tell her what's wrong with her CV and she makes changes. After 4 or 5 iterations her dad phones be up to berate me as she's been reduced to tears as nothing she does is ever good enough for me. I reasonably point out that I'm doing what every employer is doing, the difference being that I'm telling her what's wrong rather than just not responding. As a example, she wrote about 500 words on her love of mountain climbing and less that 50 words on her senior honours project. Anyway, her dad can see the point and 2 iterations later I tell her that her CV is now up to scratch.

She applied for 10 jobs the week after I finished and got 7 interviews within 10 days. I offered to interview her as training but she said no, she wasn't sure she could take it. But I pointed out the alternative is learning in the interview and getting no feed back. And her dad made her do it.

So, I spent 2 hours interview coaching her (and at one point she asked for 10 minutes to gather her self) and then went for the real ones and got 5 job offers. All I did was offer her tips like look at the person who's talking to you and smile occasionally. Wear a bit less makeup. Answer the question that is being asked. If you don't know the answer just say 'I don't know' rather than bluff. We made up a list of questions for her to ask them. At the end of the interview say 'thank you for the interview, this role looks really interesting'

Jeepers, young people are so fragile these days.

She's now employed and a starting salary of 30K. But she couldn't take criticism in any way shape or form.

And her dad phoned me to say thanks.

[Lootman]

That's reassuring, as I have been starting to wonder how relevant my advice to my children is these days. Sure, some things like looking someone in the eye and not bluffing are timeless. But in other ways the workplace has changed so much since I retired (2001) that I fear my advice would be obsolete.

For example, in the 1990's I had fairly senior jobs at two of the largest fund managers on the planet. And yet I carried no work phone or mobile device. We'd only had the internet and external email for about 5 years. I left work by 5 pm and never heard a peep from work until I arrived the next morning. Indeed I don't even think my office had my home number. Nor did I have a home computer.

My sons go for job interviews now and the interviewer has already googled them. If they can't find their FaceBook account they ask to see it. If they don't have a FaceBook account it is viewed as suspect. A complete absence on social media looks even worse. And they are expected to constantly interact with others at work through Google Hangout or other chat/messaging apps on a smart phone. Don't even think about saying that you don't have a smart phone.

How the heck can I advise someone in that environment? I'm just grateful I don't have to deal with that.

[SalvorHardin]

Some twenty years ago a client asked me to comment on some job applications from recent graduates for junior Actuarial roles, before passing them to their HR department. Even back then there was this obsession with banging on about interests, travel and "achievements" instead of highlighting qualifications, experience and knowledge which was relevent to the job for which they were applying. Many thought that it was vastly more important to talk about their role in sports teams, charity work and amateur dramatics (and every holiday they had taken) instead of their qualifications and work experience.

One cv started off with being appointed milk monitor in primary school. After five more pages of stuff like this person got around to telling us in two short sentences that they had a first class degree in Actuarial Science from a top university together with a few months of highly relevant work experience. The sort of information that should stand out at the top of your cv.

There's a "Millenial Job Interview" sketch on YouTube (link below). I gather that whilst exaggerated, there's a lot of truth in it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uo0KjdDJr1c

According to a friend of a friend who's involved in recruiting from the Snowflake generation, Twitter and Facebook are excellent tools for weeding out undesirables as they don't tend to be careful about what they post (unlike the older generation, many of whom don't use them). Quite often if employers want to sack people without any comeback they'll trawl through that person's social media posts. The sort of person who deserves to be fired will often have put stuff up about themselves, their employer, co-workers and/or clients on Twitter and/or Facebook which provides grounds for termination for gross misconduct.

[redsturgeon]

First of all wheypat, I'd like to say well done, it sounds like you did a great job, your friend and their daughter are lucky to have someone like you who is prepared to help in this way for no reward and it is disappointing that the daughter has not found the good grace to thank you personally .

However I'd disagree with your characterisation of a whole generation based on this one anecdote. Also I'd suggest that it may be the parents of your "snowflake" who might bear some responsibility for his daughter's inability to take criticism although clearly the current education system may bear some burden .

My daughter often says to me, "Dad, if I don't do well in life, is it down to genetics or my upbringing!"

As Lootman pointed out though kids today are subject to many pressures that us boomers were lucky enough to avoid.

I remember my first job, having passed the six week training course at head office I was out on my own with no contact with my manager apart from one ten minute phone call a week, a morning visit once every month to accompany me on customer calls and a day long team meeting once a month (at which we had a slap up meal with much alcohol).

I had an hour long appraisal once a year and an annual three day conference and that was my only contact with the company at all apart from written reports and communications (by post). Not sure what I would make of today's 24/7 work expectations.

I must say that I never cease to be impressed with my own children's dedication to duty and hard work, although that may be due to my own failings in those areas rather than any special enthusiasm of theirs.

Nice to hear a story with a happy ending though.

John

[mrbrightside]

She's now employed and a starting salary of 30K. But she couldn't take criticism in any way shape or form.

A very interesting story with a happy ending which I can identify with as my son recently secured a job in IT after 5 months. The difference was he was self-taught without the advantage of a degree. He needed more help on the technical side as opposed to the face to face interviews.

However, unless this young lady grows a harder shell, I suspect she may also suffer in the workplace. Peer code reviews (depending on who is doing them) can be very direct (bordering on brutal) and appraisals can result in, err, constructive feedback that she views as overly negative.

[gryffron]

After five more pages of stuff like this

That's shocking. I spent 20 years as a manager and recruiter, and NEVER read as far as page 5 on a CV.
Indeed, IF I'd had a secretary, I would have told them to bin any CV with >3 pages, >4 fonts, any spelling mistakes or love hearts and sun bubbles, before even passing them to me.

Once we were looking for interns. I received a batch of CVs from a university. They looked like they were written by primary schoolchildren. Love Hearts, stupid decorated fonts, all "personal statements" and no clue what they could actually do! Worse,they'd obviously been told to do it like this, as they were all so similar. I was so appalled I phoned their tutor (listed as a reference by most of them) to tell him why I wouldn't be interviewing his students. He sounded shocked, but I don't know whether he did anything about it.

Gryff

[Howyoudoin]

She's now employed and a starting salary of 30K. But she couldn't take criticism in any way shape or form.

I think i'd be asking for commission after that experience.

You must have the patience of a Saint!

HYD

[AleisterCrowley]

After 4 or 5 iterations her dad phones me up to berate me as she's been reduced to tears as nothing she does is ever good enough for me

That's the point I'd have given up. Possibly before...

[wheypat]

She's now employed and a starting salary of 30K. But she couldn't take criticism in any way shape or form.

A very interesting story with a happy ending which I can identify with as my son recently secured a job in IT after 5 months. The difference was he was self-taught without the advantage of a degree. He needed more help on the technical side as opposed to the face to face interviews.

However, unless this young lady grows a harder shell, I suspect she may also suffer in the workplace. Peer code reviews (depending on who is doing them) can be very direct (bordering on brutal) and appraisals can result in, err, constructive feedback that she views as overly negative.

Yep, I've warned her about that. People I work with have been known to request that someone else reviews their code other than me One guy I work with has been working with me now for 22 years, he likes to tell new starters that in those 22 years his code passed at first review by me once. I like nice code!

BTW I also tell people to be equally brutal when they review my code, I like to tell them to think of it as revenge . . . . . and they do enjoy it when I make mistakes or mis a test scenario.

[SalvorHardin]

I spent 20 years as a manager and recruiter, and NEVER read as far as page 5 on a CV.

I gathered that at the time this was quite common for students coming out of university. The client's HR people said that this was because universities required lengthy CVs from applicants for academic posts, causing many new graduates to assume that they had to do similarly lengthy CVs for private sector jobs.

After they'd been away from the influence of their tutors for a few months, most seemed to realise that the way to do it was a one page CV and to put the relevant stuff for that particular employer at the top.

[didds]

I coud pontificate at large and I reallyb despise this "snowflake" term

I do concur there seems to be a general alck of get up and go / resilience about.

I am not convinced it is purely "the youger generation" though.

Rather than condemn young peopel for having little perceived resilience and get up and go maybe should consider how this percieved situation has arisen.

* who has created the society whereby young people growing up in lack this resilience and get and go?
* why has this society been thus created?
* young people typically don't have the opportunities for what older generations would regard as "saturday jobs". They just don't exist as they once did. about half my 6th form all worked in a local supermarket it seemed on saturdays. Today those positions are all 4/8/16 hour per week contacts which adults have
* demands of modern education don't IMO prepare young people for the outside world. All their energies are poured into the edudational conveyor belt rather than real world experience
* the above two points combined leads us to "work experience". WE is anything but actual work experience. Real WE is turning up punctually, doing the required job, maybe using some initiative to get it done. "WE" from what I have seen in my own workplaces and my own kids experiences is not getting in early cos the staff wit the jobs need the first hour to sort their day out, not staying until "the end" cos end of the day meetings leaves them unsupervised or whatever, and not beign given anything to do that requires any levelk of security or open to commercially sensitive info. Its basically a week of helping make the coffee and watering the plants. [ I know not all WE is like this from coments here before. But half a doxen plus experiences of it directly has shown me the coffee/plants scenario ]

In short our young people are protected from responsibility so it cant be any surprise that they don't know how to handle it.

I'll shut up now, other than to say I admire young people in today's society because my generation and that of my parents have crated a pretty messy world to navigate

IMO. YMMV. natch

didds

[didds]

One cv started off with being appointed milk monitor in primary school. After five more pages of stuff like this person got around to telling us in two short sentences that they had a first class degree in Actuarial Science from a top university together with a few months of highly relevant work experience. The sort of information that should stand out at the top of your cv.

Just before I graduated in 1984 we were given a "going for your job interview" lecture/advice thing.

The things that stood out to me and recall strongly now are

* no more than 2 x sides A4 of CV
* only summarise academic achievements on page 1
* page 2 to include any positions of responsibility but don't bang on about paper rounds and supermarket jobs.
* page 2 to also include information about hobbies etc
* NEVER ask about the pension - you are ONLY 21 years old!

Take from that what you will wrt advice being provided to 21 years olds in 1984.

didds

[nmdhqbc]

Fantastic humble brag. Nothing wrong with that by the way but it's a term I just learnt so wanted to use it.

Also there seems to be a thing going around on the internet where the youngsters say "OK, Boomer" to the older folks. The discussions around it seem to be exactly what's going on here.

[UncleIan]

A friend of mine's daughter graduated last summer with the class medal and a 1st class honours degree in I.T.

Good for you for helping. I wonder if being such a high flyer has meant she hasn't received an awful lot of criticism in her life, so she's not developed the required coping strategies that would help when there's a bit of grit in the cogs. Hope it works out for her.

[didds]

Meanwhile we now have the need for "personal statements" for applications bloody everything it seems.

Really? 500 words of hyperbole and probably outright lies - maybe fine if you are going to be running a political party's social media site, but for a job looking after backups and monitoring alerts?

Why do you want this job? because I don't want to be homeless and I want to pay off my humongous student loan accrued whilst getting the piece of paper that provides me with the opportunity to be patronised by questions like that one
Where do you see yourself in 5 years? I've no idea. I am 21 years old and this is my first job and my life may offer me opportunities I've not even considered yet.
What do you know about us? That your website is full of broken links, and spelling mistakes but lets face it if I point that out you are not going to offer me a job
What is your biggest weakness? Losing the will to live listening to asinine questions like that one.

Most honest thing I've ever heard at an interview (late 80s) - "I'm not going to ask you why you took 20 months out to backpack around the world. its bloody obvious why. Good on you."

didds

[Bminusrob]

It is a few years since I retired, but for several years immediately before retiring, I dod a lot of recruiting for software and electronic engineering roles, and I agree with a lot of what has been said already. I would receive a pile of CVs to go through to see if of the candidates were worth interviewing. The trouble was, I had a full time job as well, and I often took home a pile of printed CVs (because I find them much easier to read on paper), so reading CVs was done in my own time, so they needed to be concise.

As a matter of course, I would reject a CV if (as often happened), the first page was just table of hundreds (yes, I mean hundreds) of three letter acronyms (and four and five and six). A table like this tells me virtually nothing. The other thing which was hugely off-putting was bad spelling and bad grammar. If a candidate's spelling or grammar is bad, what is their software like, and do they not check spelling and grammar first?

Put simply, a CV doesn't need to be more that two pages of A4. Qualifications first, relevant experience in detail, with most recent experience first. Hobbies and interests are a couple of throwaway lines at the very end of the CV.

I took on some very good people, and my hit rate of good against average or bad recruits was extremely high.

On a lighter note, I was sometimes tempted, but never did follow the advice from, I think, The Office, of taking the pile of CVs, and throwing half of them in the bin without reading them, on the basis that those half were unlucky, and I didn't want to employ unlucky people.

[UncleEbenezer]

A friend of mine's daughter graduated last summer with the class medal and a 1st class honours degree in I.T. He contacted me in September as she's had no luck in securing a job, and as I work in IT and work in the same city she lives in would I mind taking her out for lunch and reviewing her C.V. No worries. I also do the interviews and CV reviews for my firm.

Damn, why weren't you (or your predecessor a generation up) a friend of my dad when I was a young grad?

After five more pages of stuff like this

That's shocking. I spent 20 years as a manager and recruiter, and NEVER read as far as page 5 on a CV.
Gryff

Nowt wrong with five pages. So long as the principal bullet points are on Page 1, the rest can expand on it for whomsoever may be interested.

[tjh290633]

One little observation. Back in my day (1940s), we had no chance of Saturday jobs. People worked 6 days a week, probably with a half day on Early Closing Day. I went to School on 6 days a week, with 3 hours of homework on 6 nights. Saturday afternoons were spent either participating in or watching games.

Some work was available during school holidays, mainly agricultural. Summer camp for the ATC, CCF, OTC or scouts was mandatory. Then we had 2 mandatory gap years doing National Service, with 4 years reserve service to follow. Admittedly we had applied to university before National Service and some were able do it after university. Finally, during university vacations we were able to do some work, alongside reserve service. The Christmas post was delivered by many students. In those days you had a delivery on Christmas morning.

And we enjoyed ourselves.

TJH

[didds]

Meanwhile we now have the need for "personal statements" for applications bloody everything it seems.

Not to mention being 'passionate' about your job.

yes. It is so cringeworthy I couldn't go there in my rant!

"Passionate? I am passionate about shagging my bird! I am passionate about watching my team stuff our local rivals! I am not passionate about the prospect of ensuring Alan from accounts' PC is working every day despite his interesting downloads on a Friday evening when everyone else has gone home. I'd imagine Alan is quite passionate about those however!"

didds

[stewamax]

I was often asked to mentor those who had been deemed up-and-coming by HR.
One in particular sticks out: a female of around 35 who was technically good at her job but had an excessive and upsetting command of foul language. This had been mentioned to her in the past to no avail.
On the first mentoring review, I started out by using conversationally the worst language I could think of without giving her chance to intervene. After several minutes of this she bridled – but then twigged.
From then on there was massive improvement!