This week I’m focused on Gen Z and all they bring to the workforce of today. I mentioned in my Instagram post earlier in the week that about a decade ago I had an incident with a younger member of a client team so today I’m here to share that story. In actuality, I have three stories I’m going to share but stay until the end because I promise it gets better as it goes.
Story 1: First job out of college.
About 15 years or so ago I was working with a small startup, a tea company. Somehow our CEO was wrangled into hiring an employee straight out of college (her mom was a friend, the girl needed a job). If you know me personally, you know I’m an inclusive person, I always side with a “the more the merrier” type of approach. The challenge came in communicating with this fresh, green, employee what her role was and what her boss expected of her. I was a vendor, an outsourced extension of the team, but not part of the internal group. But at some point, this young lady and I were to work together on some content creation.
Now, I’m all for people younger than me who have grown up in a digital world, who could post before they could walk, being involved in implementation of a social plan. There’s no doubt they know a lot about how to create great content and use the tools. This is especially true with personal accounts. But when it comes to business accounts, there’s a difference that matters. I’ll get to this a bit later.
I was called in for a meeting regarding the strategic plan for rolling out a new line for the product. The person in charge of creating this strategy? The newest, most inexperienced person at the company. Okay, fine. Let’s see what she’s got. She came out with a science-fair looking tri-fold cardboard representation of her idea. Her main idea? Stop targeting Costco customers. Her reasoning? She didn’t shop at Costco.
Well, of course she didn’t shop at Costco. She was 22, not married and had no children. Why on earth would she need a case of 24 bags of goldfish? But our main customer was a Costco shopper and our sales at Costco were higher than other stores. So what was happening here? This was an example of plugging the wrong person – the wrong skills – into a task meant for someone with knowledge of the sales reports (or the inclination to ask for them). There are some times experience matters. There are other times young, fresh ideas matter. It’s important for a company head or team leader to know the difference.
That company is not around anymore.
Story 2: A middle schooler? Really?
At one point we were working with a dental office – specifically with the dentist. She wanted to grow her personal Instagram to show more of her lifestyle and behind-the-scenes life. She wanted to build credibility and trust with her patients. It was a good idea, and it meant we needed a lot of content. Some of this content we would shoot in the office, and much of it came from her own camera which we would edit and publish on her behalf with appropriate captions. Keep in mind this was a time when any deletion of a post on Instagram would penalize your account severely with very low reach and views.
At one point her daughter – who was about 12 or 13 at the time – was watching closely what we were doing with her mother’s social. It didn’t resonate with her. She didn’t like it. So what did she do? She, the teenager, logged on to the account and DELETED every post we had published. Her mother trusted her daughter – the teenager – more than us. It was uncanny, to say the least.
Of COURSE the content didn’t resonate with her young daughter – her daughter isn’t the target market. She doesn’t make her own choice about what dentist to see and she doesn’t have her own health insurance. For goodness sakes.
We fired that client on the spot. We need collaboration and trust – and good lord some respect – to accomplish what we do.
Story 3: The intern.
One client we had was, much like the CEO of the tea company, strong-armed into hiring a friend’s child as a summer intern. She was about 20 years old, did not yet have a college degree, and had LOTS of opinions about what our team was publishing. We had been working with this client for several years and had a great relationship with both him and his online community. We knew, scientifically, what worked and what did not work.
I’ll never forget the moment it happened.
I was in Chicago, in Nordstrom. I was visiting friends and family with my daughter. We were up on the second floor and she was looking around, I was waiting by a bench at the top of escalator, about to head back down when Candace, my teammate who handled Instagram on that account, called me.
“Did you see what happened on XXX’s account this morning? I think Instagram pulled a bunch of content down. Any idea what happened?” My heart dropped. I had a flashback to the dentist’s daughter. I knew before I looked. The intern had bulk-deleted a litany of posts. They weren’t her style. She, who was still in college and had an unpaid internship was making judgments about the content we were putting out for a client she was decades away from being able to afford, if ever.
It took about three months for us to get back to the numbers we were earning on reach and views. I was furious. I asked the girl if she had any experience with business accounts. She had no idea business accounts even existed, she said. She thought the client’s account was the same as her account in which she shared sorority pictures and content from spring break.
So… you might be able to see why I would hesitate about clients bringing on new interns or fresh-faced teenagers who know how to make content.
But today it’s different.
Now, I won’t say every college student getting ready to graduate has a great work ethic (Exhibit A the encampment kids who skipped class to protest in favor of hate). But I have seen first-hand what Gen Z has to offer.
My daughter and a gaggle of her friends worked hard to earn internships in New York City this summer. Newly 21, just back from their semesters abroad, these young women tackled the tough job market and landed amazing positions in each of their fields in one of the greatest cities on earth.
Since my daughter and I are in similar fields, I got to watch what she created in real time online and really appreciate the technical talent she has and the creativity to go along with it. She gets branding, design and the proper use of verbiage. She just gets it.
I got to watch first-hand the types of questions she asked of her boss, the kinds of feedback she requested from her boss and her boss’s boss (my goodness, the bravery in doing so) and the feedback she received. The proof is in the pudding as they’ve asked her to stay on through the school year on a part-time, remote basis. So while other kids are wrapping up their internship, hers keeps going.
She asked questions throughout her tenure at the company – not in a “am I doing this right” kind of a way but in a way to understand the strategy and purpose of what she was creating so that it wasn’t off in left field.
I applaud the people at this company who gave her enough trust and credibility to create visual graphics that met their needs, but they also coached her to make sure their objectives were being met. The last thing they want is to spend time and money on an intern who creates more work for them.
Some of her friends are completing internships that offer full-time jobs post-grad based on their work product this summer. Congrats to her friend, C.B., for earning such a position as well as her friend, L.D. who earned one last year and has just started her new, post-grad career.
In the world of social media advertising, those positions aren’t yet hiring for next year so if you’re in the fashion or beauty industry in NYC or Chicago and you’ll be hiring next May or beyond, have I got a great employee for YOU!
If you are in a position of hiring a Gen Z employee, don’t sleep on their fresh eyes, their strong work ethic and their engagement in their job. They are looking to be a part of something. They are examining your culture, and they bring a lot to the table (especially those with solid, hands-on internships). Sheesh… my internship required me to get coffee, fax forms and open the mail. My daughter created content being used by an international organization and she’s got the experience her future boss is looking for.
Sometimes I am afraid of the future when I see the parents on the college groups asking “where can my daughter get her hair cut in her college town” when the daughter doesn’t need her mother asking this question to an internet full of strangers, and likely never asked her mother to ask the question in the first place. Today, I feel confident and excited about what’s to come.
Embrace this generation. They are ready.
by 
