Matching values

Are we setting gen z up for disappointment?

Hello!

Thank you for joining me, I’m so glad you’re here.

It’s Sunday afternoon. My quiet flat welcomed my friend and her little girl this afternoon, and my two cats had a rare experience of having a child in their home. I think we can safely say they are happy with a child-free life! It is nice to have them absolutely tuckered out in the afternoon, though.

Pro tip, Japanese hand-rolled sushi is a great lunch to make for young kids! I made it totally veggie for my friends, using avocado, cucumber, pepper etc, so there’s no need to get special fish if you’re not into that.

Photo by Gabrielle Henderson on Unsplash

I’ve been invited to take part in some teacher training, helping teachers understand trends in the recruitment and onboarding of young people. I’m really looking forward to it.

In the prep meeting last week, the organiser explained that part of the session will be about employer’s company values and how to use them in the recruitment process. Most companies have values these days, even if they are mostly quite bland and largely the same, and I’ve known places include questions aligned to their values in recruitment processes (for example, if a value was “excellence”, a question might be “tell me about a time you weren’t sure what was expected of you, and how did you go about completing the task?” - to see how they might work through challenge to meet expectations set of them). I’ve even known an org who will knock off points in an interview if a candidate can’t answer “which of our values do you align with the most and why?”

The tricky thing around this is that people might not know about company values; might not even know to go and look for them. And in times when there is a 23% increase [LinkedIn] in the number of applicants per early careers role, testing against values can be quite handy as it’s not like it would be fair to test them against their experience. Though I very much disagree with downvoting someone who can’t recall values of an org that hasn’t even employed them yet.

It seems, however, that the direction of the teacher training is more toward teaching students how to assess the values of an organisation against their own values. I thought this was really interesting, and wanted to write out my thoughts and get your opinions too - would love to hear from others on this.

On one hand - it is so important to know our own values and how they might impact our work. To do work that aligns with our values, at an employer that aligns with our values is pretty much the dream, right? Everyone should be able to have that, and I think it’s brilliant that students are being taught to consider these things.

I LOVE LOVE when young applicants quiz me on values topics in interviews. I haven’t had it so much outside of the US, but when applicants ask me about the diversity of the leadership team, about our sustainability goals, about what we do to give back - I instantly add points. I wish more applicants would do this (but also, would other interviewers feel the same as me I wonder?)

On the other hand - a lot of us won’t have the privilege of working somewhere that aligns with our values, so is it setting expectations that won’t be met to tell students they can filter employers like this?

The example that was given is a company that had the value of flexibility, and for students to consider if this would be a fit for them. Flexibility is great, and I would bet that places who advertise themselves as flexible are much more competitive…will we always work places that fit how we work? This goes beyond the values that are written on the walls of organisations, also because we all know that how an org says it’ll act and how it really acts isn’t always the same. The aim is to give students tools to assess whether somewhere is a good fit for them.

I’m not personally of the mindset that young people have to “graft” in their first few roles and earn upgrades, but I do think that working in a few really stinkers of companies, and especially working for stinkers of bosses has made me more aware of what I want from an employer and has made me a better manager myself. If I chose places that were always great, I think I wouldn’t have built the skills I have today and though there were some hard times, I look back on those experiences and appreciate them for how I was forced to grow through them.

I think it’s really great that students are being spoken to about values, and are being encouraged to consider theirs. The great thing about gen z is how empowered they are. I just wish we had a job market that gives opportunities to find better matches, where organisations didn’t feel the need to disqualify people for, let’s face it, arbitrary reasons, and feel confident doing so because there are 100 more applicants behind them.

To finish this section, I’d like to do a quick poll. Please note: I cannot see who has voted what, so it’s all confidential:

Links

Last year my very wonderful buddy Erika moved from teaching to a non-teaching role, and I absolutely loved her post this week on why ex-teachers make for great employees. [LinkedIn]

I’m not sure I agree with this one, but apparently gen z are tanking interviews, apparently lacking in communication skills. [NY Post]

Someone asked the internet what they should do to make their upcoming redundancy as uncomfortable for the org as possible. [TikTok]

Speaking of layoffs, here’s an article about how the mass redundancies of 2023 are potentially resetting expectations in the workplace, and causing more uncertainty for workers. Are gen z so empowered they’ll come across as entitled in a job market where we’re just trying to survive? [Axios]

Cambridge University put out this EPIC video this week and I think it’s a great way to show snippets of life as a student there. Gave me food for thought for employer branding. [LinkedIn]

Speaking of employer branding, here’s a great example from John Lewis of why you should (sometimes) let go and give the account over to younger employees to create content. [TikTok]

One for those out there who pay the apprenticeship levy - where does the unspent funds go? Maybe not where you thought it would… [LinkedIn]

I’ll leave you today with a TikTok video that made me smile this week. On TV gameshow The Chase, a woman is asked about how she got into her very niche engineering-y role… and it wasn’t through engineering. Food for thought for recruiter friends out there! [TikTok]

If you enjoyed today’s newsletter then please do spread the word! The more people we have in this community, the bigger the discussions will be!

Until next week,

Charlotte