After about 15 years worth of articles and conference presentations about Millennials I’m sure I’m not alone in finding generational stereotyping a bit annoying. However, research-based insights into changing attitudes to technology, work and careers are incredibly useful.
My guest this week is Pranam Lipinski, Co-Founder, and CEO of Door Of Clubs. Pranam has spent the last few years conducting research to uncover insights into the mindset of the newest generation in the workforce, Generation Z.
In the interview, we discuss:
- The validity of generational stereotypes
- Smartphones in 4th grade and growing up in the era of fake news
- Attitudes to work and careers
- Inclusion, Stability, and Loyalty
- Providing unique employer experiences
- Becoming an input focused as an employer
- How to market to a generation that avoids commercial attempts on their attention.
Pranam also talks about the importance of personalization and shares details of how to get his one-page Generation Z research summary.
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast comes from ClickIQ. ClickIQ is an automated job advertising platform that uses the latest AI and programmatic technology to manage, track and optimize the performance of your recruitment. Advertising in real time spend is focused where it’s needed the most to reach both active and passive job seekers across indeed, Google, Facebook and an extensive network of job boards. To find out more about ClickIQ, please visit www.clickiq.co.uk. that’s www.clickiq.co.UK.
Matt Alder [00:01:00]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 205 of the Recruiting Future podcast. After about 15 years worth of articles and conference presentations about Millennials, I do, like many of you, I’m sure, find generational stereotyping quite annoying. However, research based insights into changing attitudes to technology, work and careers are incredibly useful. My guest this week is Pranam Lipinski, co founder and CEO at Door of Clubs. Pranam has spent the last few years conducting research to uncover insights into the mindset of the newest generation in the workplace, Generation Z, or if you’re in Scotland, Generation Z. Enjoy the interview.
Matt Alder [00:01:57]:
Hi Pranam and welcome to the podcast.
Pranam Lipinski [00:01:57]:
Thank you for having me Matt.
Matt Alder [00:01:58]:
Could you just introduce yourself and tell everyone what you do?
Pranam Lipinski [00:02:02]:
Yes. So I am the co founder and CEO of a startup called Door of Clubs which connects employers with college student clubs for hiring purposes and and my name is Pranam Lipinski and we’ve been doing this for around five years now and really started with a passion for providing visibility to student clubs. These student organizations that have so much untapped potential and passion inside of their groups and they don’t have any visibility. So we wanted to make the invisible visible through our platform and through that we’ve also gained a ton of knowledge and insight and survey data on the new generation by surveying over 10,000 college students over the last couple years. And we can cut the data by some really interesting things which we’ll get into today, but demographics and gender and ethnicity, et cetera. So really, really interesting data on the new generation.
Matt Alder [00:03:07]:
So pretty much for the, you know, the last decade, if not longer, we’ve been bombarded by information about gen Generation Y and what Generation Y wants and what they’re going to be like in the workforce and then what they’re like in the workforce. I mean, do you think that these generational stereotypes are useful? Are they, are they, are they valid? You know, what’s your view on that?
Pranam Lipinski [00:03:30]:
Yeah, I think that’s a great question. Because when I first started doing the research on Generation Z, I felt that it was a bunch of BS because I thought they’re just like every other generation. You know, every other generation goes through its maturity stages. And I thought, well, this is just going to be like every other generation. What’s so different? They’re just going through their own evolution and maturity. However, when I dug into the data and I dug into the shift that’s happening, it made me really realize how different this generation is compared to other generations. And why this generation is so different is because they grew up with a different infrastructure than we did. Drastically different. So I was on a call the other day and we were speaking about when was the first time you got your first cell phone? I was speaking to a Fortune 100 recruiting team. And for those of us who are millennials or Gen X, we said, well, high school or later. And there was one Gen Z on the call, and she was 23, and she said fourth grade. And so you think about that and the impact that cell phones have had on our brains, our lives. And that’s a huge difference that this generation grew up with that none of us had to deal with or none of us had to adapt to. And that dramatically changes the way that you view the world, the way that you process information, the way that you are interested in new opportunities or ads or things like that. So that’s one example. But there’s many where it depends what soil you plant your crops in, your plants in, and based on that soil, it will grow differently. And this generation has had a very different soil than we have.
Matt Alder [00:05:27]:
Want to dig into the kind of the workplace and career attitudes of the sort of the survey respondents that you’ve spoken to. But I suppose maybe a good way to start is to kind of expand a bit on what you just said. What are the sort of key differences that you’ve noticed the most from previous generations? What kind of really stands out?
Pranam Lipinski [00:05:48]:
Well, they grew up in an era where, you know, fake news started to become prominent, where five years ago, 10 years ago, we didn’t even have that term. We could trust every media outlet, for the most part, that seemed like a reputable organization. Now there’s, there’s amazing things such as deep fakes and, you know, there’s bot interference in elections, and different publications are being scrutinized. And so you don’t know who to trust or what to trust on the Internet. And that, that plays A huge part in the authenticity of this generation and how important it is to cut through that noise or that filter that they have towards anything that feels inauthentic. And then the other key thing is the political differences that they’ve experienced growing up. You know, they had the first, you know, I’m based in the US And Gen Z had President Obama as their president, as their main president, and, you know, growing through their formative years, the first black president. And that’s a huge, you know, pioneering change in the United States towards equality, inclusion. No matter how you feel about President Obama, he was such a symbol for that. And then now you have President Trump who, you know, is going to bring to light all the issues of equality and inclusion, but in a very different way, as we know. But those things, very polarizing. Very first of its kind political environment that this generation has had to grow up with that we never had, it was all kind of the norm, relatively speaking, compared to what they’ve had.
Matt Alder [00:07:35]:
So in terms of sort of attitudes to workplace and careers, what are the sort of, the sort of the top headlines from the research that you found?
Pranam Lipinski [00:07:47]:
Well, the main things that we’ve discovered is that Gen Z really cares about three things. And it’s. It’s a simple acronym called isa, ESA and I stands for inclusion, and inclusion being their calling card, their trademark. Cause it’s not that they don’t care about the environment like Millennials did. Of course, the environment is as important as ever. But. But to Gen Z, their cause of inclusion and equality is such a critical part that they are signaling from employers that they care about so much that employers can’t any longer just kind of fake it or talk about it. They have to really be about it. And then S is for stability. There is a return to loyalty with this generation. I am sure many employers will be happy about that. So I predict that you’ll see the first employers start to go back towards pensions. And the reason why is because Gen Z saw their parents go through the Great Recession and they don’t want to end up in the same place. And so they really value financial stability over, say, a dream job like Millennials. And then back to what I mentioned earlier, the authenticity piece. They have this natural reflex to tune out anything that feels like an ad because they’ve seen it since they were in fourth or fifth grade ads at an alarming rate on their cell phones. And so the statistic is that Gen Z sees or grew up accustomed to seeing 4,000 ads a day. And 30 years ago, the average consumer saw 800 ads a day. So it’s a 5x increase on the number of ads and it causes a reflex away from anything that feels like a commercial attempt at their attention.
Matt Alder [00:09:40]:
That’s really interesting. And I think it’d be quite good to sort of examine, you know, each of those in a bit more detail. So the, the inclusion aspect of this. Inclusion is a, is a, is a big topic for most employers at, at the moment. And for the employers, it isn’t a big topic for. It certainly should be. What, what does inclusion mean to, to that generation?
Pranam Lipinski [00:10:04]:
Well, inclusion means all of the differences that we have in terms of gender, in terms of ethnicity, in terms of even gender neutral pronouns. You know, the he, she, or they, them that we see now. You know, and just to be clear, that’s, that’s how, you know, an individual wants to be termed or called to if they are, you know, being called upon. Whether it’s he or she or they or them, they term themselves. And that’s going on in middle school today when they’re going through. What pronoun are you? This generation is going through that in middle school. Millennials never had to even think of that. And so just a lot of this, the understanding of how we’re different and making it easier upon the language, easier upon basic forms, acceptance. You can even point to how this new generation views, you know, biracial marriage or gay marriage or friends of a different race much higher than millennials did. The statistic is that 77% are in favor of biracial relationships versus 66% of millennials. So, like, there’s very different things that even compared to millennials, they’ve gone different and become more accepting of all the, all the ways that these differences are formally recognized in society, but in the workplace as well.
Matt Alder [00:11:45]:
So moving on to the stability aspect from a career perspective, you mentioned that loyalty was back. How are people looking to structure their careers? Do they want to stay with a specific employer for, for a long period of time? You know, how they’re structuring their careers and also what are they looking for in the workplace?
Pranam Lipinski [00:12:07]:
Yeah, so, and I spoken to a lot of employers about this, and what you’re finding is they’re both starting to meet at a similar place. So employers are realizing that they want to have the long term employees, but they need to provide an experience that has unique potential for the employee. And on the flip side, the employee, the young employee, is seeking unique experiences, not necessarily that they have to change companies always. So you’re finding that they’re meeting in the middle, they’re finding each other by realizing you can have unique experiences under one roof, under one brand, under one employer. And so that’s a big thing, a big focus for Chros as they think about the future. How can they create a very unique experience with multiple titles, roles, jobs, countries, all that for the employee who wants this in an ever changing, more globalized world, which is what Gen Z is used to, that’s a critical part of how they’re meeting each other in the middle, so to speak. And that’s what you find with this, you know, loyalty. That’s how the new generation is going to be looking at this is can they count on an employer to provide what you know. Here’s the second part to your or the part to your second question is the number one thing that they look for in an employer is growth potential. And we’ve done studies on this multiple times. You know, I’ve read thousands of articles on this generation and growth potential. Meaning that they have a clear path of how they can, how they can improve, grow in the ranks and, and just keep, keep becoming more self sustainable and more independent. And, and the reason why it kind of goes back to they want to have that stability, they feel most stable if they’re self reliant. And so as an employer, if you can make it clear, hey, this is how you can keep growing, this is how you can become self reliant so that your skills are marketable no matter where you go. And we’re obviously going to provide you with a great experience and package. That’s really where the future is going and that’s really what Gen Z is looking for.
Matt Alder [00:14:34]:
Moving on to the last aspect you mentioned which was authenticity. You mentioned the use of technology, the attitude to media and the desire for authenticity. How, how do employers target and reach the talent they’re looking for within this generation? What kind of, what sort of marketing approaches should they use? How do they get, how do they get attention?
Pranam Lipinski [00:15:05]:
Yeah. And you’re finding that with the new generation it’s, there’s even a return to older forms of advertising. So the more, you know, physical billboards or the in person meetups away from just the digital onslaught of advertising. And the statistic compared to Millennials is that gen Z considers 24 employers for their first job, whereas millennials considered 18. So you know, they have more options and so they’re going to be more selective and the ways to cut through the noise are just doing things that really feel like it’s different. You know, the in Person pop ups would be a good example. Or you know, physical interaction with them, you know, whether it’s on campuses or even from a, from a. Really, if you want to talk about just digital or technology, highly personalized ways of getting to them. So doing something, whether it’s buying a technology that provides personalization or spending a little extra time personalizing, messaging to the generation is going to go a long way. The days of spamming or just paying for ads that are, that are going to show up on the side of their computer or on their phone, that’s not going to work and it’s not going to cut through all that noise that they’re already so accustomed to.
Matt Alder [00:16:34]:
Final question. I mean, how would you summarize all this for employers? If you’re going to give employers some sort of top line advice about targeting and bringing this generation into the workforce and getting the best out of them, what would be your advice?
Pranam Lipinski [00:16:52]:
So I mentioned earlier, inclusion, stability, authenticity, ISA as the keys to this generation. And if you, if you think about what kind of holds those keys together, what’s the keychain, what’s the, you know, the, the one common denominator of it all, it’s, it’s about input. So most organizations that I come across are really focused on how do they have all this output towards employees, towards potential employees, you know, memos or advertising. And it’s a lot of just push, push, push. Let’s keep pushing things towards our employees or potential employees. And what I’m saying is that you need to shift from that output focused mindset where, hey, we’re going to tell all the interns what they’re going to do and that’s how they’re going to do it. And that’s how it’s always been done, to input. And as an example, there’s a lot of technologies today that are around collecting real time feedback from employees. There’s startups like Reflective, if you’ve heard of them, where they’re just, it’s all about having a finger on the pulse and really becoming an input focused organization. And in general the Internet is going to, you know, move towards a more input focused world where, you know, this generation, they’ve, they’ve provided their comments, they can DM people so easily. They’re so used to having that voice that as an employer you have to focus on how can we gather, collect, welcome, embrace more and more input and get away from us just directing the narrative and kind of telling them exactly what they need to do on our terms. It’s all about understanding them on their terms through data and input.
Matt Alder [00:18:45]:
So where can people find you and find out more about the research?
Pranam Lipinski [00:18:49]:
So they can go on to doorofclubs.com and of course you can see more about what we do there. But if they would like to receive a one pager about Gen Z, which is very interesting and it can kind of summarize this for you so you don’t have to think about reading a 50 page article or book or deck or things, just send me an email and I’ll send you one back. I really do think that those who are thinking about Gen Z right now are on the forefront and it’s gonna be Gen Z is gonna be talent for the next 15 years. They’re gonna be entry level talent the next 15 years. So I’d love to be able to send you a one pager. Just send me an email to Pranam, which is P R A N a m@doorofclubs.com and I’ll get you that gen Z1 pager so you have it handy and you can share it with your teams.
Matt Alder [00:19:47]:
Pranam, thank you very much for talking to me.
Pranam Lipinski [00:19:49]:
Thank you Matt.
Matt Alder [00:19:51]:
My thanks to Pranam. You can subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts or via your podcasting app of choice. The show also has its own dedicated app which you can find by searching for Recruiting Future in your App Store. If you’re a Spotify or a Pandora user, you can also find the show there. You can find all the past episodes@www.rfpodcast.com. on that site you can subscrib the mailing list and find out more about working with me. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next week and I hope you’ll join me.
