A recent Jobfox survey that polled 200 recruiters on employee performance revealed some highly debatable results.
The survey revealed that only 20 percent of the recruiters said that Gen Y, the workforce’s youngest members, are “generally great performers,” as opposed to 63 percent in favor of the Baby Boomers’ performance in the workplace.
Furthermore, 30 percent of recruiters said that they viewed Millennials as “poor performers.”
The results elicited this response from Jobfox CEO Rob McGovern: “”Businesses must shed negative perceptions and learn new ways to incorporate Gen Y views into the workforce.”
I think McGovern is absolutely right. Perceptions that millenials are lazy, unfocused, and disloyal have handicapped these youth and are becoming detrimental to their job search.
Managers may need to revisit and refresh old policies to cater to a different work ethic, but it’s not a lazy mentality that they’re facing. Most of the millenials that I have spoken with are driven and motivated but lack a good leader or mentor who is willing to work with their strengths and weaknesses to define a career path that will lead to success.
Instead these youth are immediately dismissed as “poor performers” by people who have no business judging these workers in the first place. Why ask recruiters who have at best a few weeks of face time with these youth? Instead we could poll their former teachers or managers who have a clearer definition of how we should approach this vastly different generation.
These are the workers who will be running the world in the very near future. We should be assisting and praising them, not flunking their efforts before they’ve even had a chance to discover their niche in the workforce.
October 9th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
Agreed, Vanessa.
I’m not exactly sure what benefit Jobfox gains by doing a survey like this which was no doubt asked to the recruiters in their database. Actually, any survey taken depicting negativity considering the jobless claims as they are now is baffling.
It’s not a lazy mentality or disloyalty at all. Generation Y does not respond well to “because I said so” management or lack of positive feedback. Gen Y are more likely to be open about who they are and what they want. The Baby Boomers learned from the generation before them which didn’t tolerate diversity or brutal honesty. They cared about climbing the corporate ladder. After interviewing an applicant with an older baby boomer manager I was surprised when he didn’t want to hire her. It was because the applicant expressed her desires for mentoring, independent thinking, feedback, diversity and a life/work balance. I hired her. There is nothing lazy, disloyal or unfocused about her. She’s one of several Gen Y employees I have hired who is self-confident, optimistic and willing to take risks - not the “one size fits all” employee my manager was looking for.
October 10th, 2008 at 12:36 am
The results of the survey would be more interesting if they had performed a longitudinal study. As it is, they are conflating age with generation. It’s not too surprising that workers with more experience have higher performance.