Focusing on Youth in Hiring is Hurting Your Organizational Health
In the Fall of 1984, Ronald Reagan, at the time the oldest U.S. President in history, was in a fight for re-election. In his first debate with youthful challenger Walter Mondale, he appeared tired and lacking energy. Many began to question his stamina for the job. In the second debate, he was asked a question about his age and being able to function in tough circumstances and in a crisis. Without hesitation, Reagan said the lines that we wish would be used more by older candidates seeking a job today: “Not at all… and I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” He never looked back and won re-election in a landslide. Underlying the humor of Reagan’s response (even Mondale laughed at the time) is the truth in his words. Do we, and organizations in general, consciously and/or subconsciously choose “youth and inexperience” over “experience and wisdom” to our detriment and even to the detriment of the younger employees we onboard? Are we missing training, coaching, mentoring, and even reverse mentoring opportunities that would ultimately lower turnover and benefit the entire organization? Is it time to rethink age in hiring, especially in the current “candidate’s market,” and get away from the misconceptions and perceived costs of hiring older workers and focus on the benefits? In Search of Experience and Wisdom “Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.” – Mark Twain Most can agree that experience and wisdom are good things, but there are clearly also times when age and health can lead to poor performance. On the flip side, performance in younger employees could be just as impacted by a lack of training (investment in your personnel), mentoring, and coaching, which could lead to increased turnover and impact the future of your entire organization. We recently placed a 61-year-old candidate into a client who simply couldn’t ignore the fact that she would make the entire department better. Instead of age being a negative, this particular person’s depth of work and life experience, high energy, and continual learning mindset, as well as the fact that she had been a coach and mentor to several in the same field for decades, became a major positive. She didn’t need training— she was going to become the trainer. The client saw that this was a resource that many of his Millennials could tap into, and concerns over age and longevity in the position were overcome. Too often as business leaders, we look for “shiny and new” over “tried and true.” On the flip side, the disdain that many in the Baby Boomers and Gen Xers have for Millennials (and vice versa) is not a new phenomenon. Saying that Millennials are more prone to leaving jobs and switching companies than previous generations is misleading. They leave jobs because they are young and new to the workforce, and there was probably little in the way of training investment, coaching, and mentoring to keep them there and get them through the rough patches. According to Pew Research and a study they did comparing Millennials to Gen Xers, the percentage of 18-to-35-year-old employees who stayed with their employers for 13 months or more was 63.4% for Millennials in 2016 and 59.9% for Gen Xers in 2000. In addition, the percentage of these same groups who had been with their employers for 5 years or more was 22% for Millennials in 2016 and 21.8% for Gen Xers in 2000. It is easy to form generalizations about generations and blame the Millennials for leaving because they do not “have a strong work ethic.” It is also envy, and we have all been there. Ask an all-star major league baseball player from the 70s or 80s if he wouldn’t want the salary of even the most mediocre ballplayer today? What about Millennials just entering the workforce out of college? According to Mike Brown and the “The Class of 2018 Career Report” conducted by LendEDU, 41.3% had already found a job, and of those, only 37% envision staying at that same job for over 3 years. 28% of those who had found a job envisioned staying at their job for up to 3 years, while 25% thought they would last 6 months to a year, and 10% said they would leave as soon as something better came along (click here for the full study at LendEDU). The research indicates that younger workers are leaving your company, not because they are “Millennials.” They are leaving because they don’t see the career path and opportunity they’re looking for, and they may indeed have higher expectations, or they simply need guidance. They may have been thrown into a position without proper onboarding or training and are learning simply by making mistakes, which can be soul-crushing. In a recent Udemy “Workplace Boredom Report,” 46% of employees are looking to leave their companies because of a lack of opportunity to learn new skills. This is when a more experienced and wise counterpart can provide the training, skills, career/life guidance, coaching, and patience that can help them learn the position, see their fit within the company, adapt to the culture, and see a future. Do you have a mentoring program? There is a wealth of company, industry, and subject knowledge in older workers that Millennials can tap into and that employers should value. Programs that enable knowledge transfer and connect younger and older workers have been found to have a high return on investment because of the impact they have on increasing retention rates, promotions, and overall employee satisfaction. There is also a benefit in reverse mentoring in which older executives are paired and mentored in turn by younger employees on technology, social media, and trends. After all, what organization couldn’t benefit from a free exchange of ideas, wisdom, and engagement between employees in different generations?
Organizational Success? It’s the People
Jeff Bezos, the wildly successful Founder and CEO of Amazon.com, recently shared his “three-step formula for success” with INC magazine. According to Mr. Bezos, “Success is going to require talented experts, a beginner’s mind, and a long-term orientation.” His first and most important tenet: “Surround yourself with the right people. If you’re going to accomplish great things, you need a team of great people.” Unfortunately, the reality today in most organizations and leadership mindsets is far different from Mr. Bezos’s, and likely the reason he keeps on winning. We have sat with leaders of companies of all sizes, industries, and demographics to listen to their hiring and human resource needs. An integral first step of this process is to gain a 360-degree understanding of their business and culture. These leaders share and show their innovative products, mind-blowing services, new equipment, new software initiatives, new buildings, forward-thinking R&D, and more with great pride and passion. However, what we find time-and-again is the most important part of a company’s success – its people – are not shown off with this same excitement or even worse – grumbled about. Their 80/20 Rule: 80% of their energy and investment in “things” and only 20% in the right people and talent that are critical to driving their success. We hear you Jeff, but look at my shiny new toy! The conversation then turns to the reason we are meeting: hiring a strong performer. Yet the leader or hiring manager is hesitant to do so. They want to pay below market and demand unrealistic productivity results in too short of a time span. They then complain about being burned in the past with new hires and want others to do this for FREE as “contingency” headhunters. Wow! This is a major disconnect. You just showed off your shiny new and expensive “toys.” You beam with pride at your new building and all of the high-level consultants you paid to help you with these capital expenditures or process decisions, and all the potential results these fancy “things” can potentially do for the company. Yet, you now want to hire a critical role that turns that investment into profit as inexpensively as possible? We are not talking about just paying below industry compensation. We are referring just as much to the process of hiring that person, the continued professional investment in that person you are prepared to make, or even taking time to properly transition a new professional into the organization. The “people” part can get messy We get it. People are the most mercurial part of a company, and our personal lives, for that matter. They have a mind of their own. I can control my machine or software, but I can’t control the day-to-day decisions of my employees. I can’t just build them or set my “specs” into them and walk away (robots and AI aren’t there yet). Now I have to manage (note the keyword should be “lead”) their motivations, behaviors and actions constantly. People are a lot of work. We’re not sure how to put the question to leaders or hiring managers more bluntly than this: Why do you try to get the best professionals to fit your company and culture on the cheap, but you will pay through the nose for a capital expenditure? Why are you taking time out of your busy schedule to talk with us, but you want us to “consult” and run the process for free until you “might” hire someone we present? You pay your software or your capital expenditure/process consultant hourly rates of $150-$500. You are paying your lawyer $600-700 an hour for legal advice. You may be paying your own executive coach $750+ an hour. Yet you are not going to invest in the process of hiring the best cohesive professional(s) to help your company win? Again – we get it. The “people” part of a company is a challenge, and it can be messy. But all the more reason to properly invest in them from the very beginning of the hiring process. What to do? Now that we have identified some of the problems with this approach— here are some proven solutions we see working today… Invest in qualified professionals who partner with you to lead your hiring processes. You get what you pay for. What quality level of hiring advisory do you think you are going to receive back by throwing contingency recruiting firms at an important hire, while all the while doing all you can to hire someone using your overworked internal team to identify that hire properly? Hire a professional executive recruiting advisor NOT a “headhunter” or contingency recruiter. Know who and what your company is and stands for. You cannot begin to fit a person into a company unless you are fully self-aware the of positives AND negatives of your company and culture. Identify more than a job description for the role. A job description is important, but it only provides the semantics and bare minimums. Take the extra time with your Retained Executive Recruiting Advisor to clearly identify at least (3) metrics or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) of what that person must achieve in their first year of employment. Be sure to make them reasonable. A qualified advisor will know how to help you do this. Be transparent in the process. No company is perfect, and no person is either. Be proud of your strengths and communicate how you achieved them. However, do not BOAST or oversell them to candidates. Be equally proud of your shortcomings and share them with humility when interviewing a candidate. After all, if you were perfect, you wouldn’t need them to address these challenges. Don’t blindside them when they are on board by NOT telling them where the skeletons are during the process. Have a real Transition Plan. Don’t refer to onboarding or transition as “babysitting.” Or say, “That’s why I am paying that person— they can figure it out.” An Onboard or Transition