Another (Long) Story About Hiring Digital Natives
I used to work for France Digitale, a startup lobby organization in France, with more than 700 members for the past two years. Despite the awesomeness of the job, I wanted to keep on my journey and switch position. In my quest for the perfect job, I had more than 15 interviews with companies ranging from traditional corporates to startups (and you will soon discover I even met some mutants…). And the quest in itself was striking for many reasons, especially regarding the weird relationship between companies and digital natives. I thought my testimony could interest some youngsters looking for that special job but also for hiring managers. Here is the story.
THE REASON YOU GET UP IN THE MORNING: VALUES AND MISSION FIRST.
Japanese have found the perfect drawing to express what looking for a job as a digital native is like: the IKIGAI. Be reassured, if you picture yourself in this diagram and you’re >30 that’s also okay.
Ikigai means “the reason you get up in the morning”, that “thing” you do that makes life more meaningful. No bullshit. The Japanese believe that each person has an Ikigai. Well, mine was easy to find: my job is basically my Ikigai, and to sometimes this can be a problem, but that’s a whole other story…
Joel de Rosnay, a well-known French futurist and science author wrote: “These millennials are looking for a role rather than a job”. I can not agree more. At the end of the day, we want to have an impact and a meaningful job.
I’ve asked a lot of startup founders their values proposition and hiring process in place. One of them — building a bank dedicated to freelances did very well at putting their values at the core of the hiring process : “to check that the candidates are in line with the values of our company, we send a list of questions for them to answer prior to the first interview”.
Companies need to build a strong pattern of values: nothing can help the company and the employee more to find the perfect “market fit”! The values conveyed by the company must be clearly displayed in the recruitment process, as it’s unfortunately often a side subject in recruiting.
SAYING YES, SAYING NO
I was lucky that my previous job put me “naturally” in the spotlight. I worked at France Digitale, a startup lobby organization in France, with more than 700 members, and 25 events each year, which I organized. So when I officially announced that I was leaving, I received many job offers.
This put me in a somewhat tricky position. Even if I wanted to work with some of them, sometimes there was just no fit with the product, the team or worse, I didn’t believe in the purpose. I didn’t know it could be this difficult to say “no” to entrepreneurs. You feel so uncomfortable because as entrepreneurs, they are giving you a bit of themselves by offering you a job.
When you’re looking for a job, everyone (including your mother) has an opinion on the matter. It can be confusing. The best advice that was given to me was during one of those umpteenth coffees: “Define three things essential to your personal accomplishment at work. And when a company fulfils two of those criteria 100%, sign!”
“YOU’RE COOL AND WE’RE NOT. JOIN US” -
The more I was doing interviews, the more something struck me: many companies hadn’t really defined their needs. They were just chasing sexyness. And their instinctive reaction is always the same: to look for cool, young, dynamic employees. Their default solution? Digital natives, for sure.
A company invited me to a job interview. Right from the start, they used a rather old-school tactic to impress me: five people are waiting for me in the meeting room. The interview quickly turned into a generational conflict. Instead of talking about my experiences and what value I could bring to the company, they kept reminding me of the stereotypes about digital natives, our propensity to challenge authority, so on and so forth. Disclaimer : digital natives aren’t either wankers or “little kings”.
There was no space for dialogue. What ended up convincing me to never work with them was this memorable phrase “We are not cool enough, and we need someone like you, young and dynamic, to change our image”.
Sometimes startups are facing the same issue when hiring a “Happiness Officer”, as they actually want to fill a hole they have in their team culture and management… An acquaintance, who recently sold her own company in order to work in the happiness field, share her thoughts with me: “If you hire a CHO, you must have a culture of happiness, we can’t fulfill correctly our mission when managers aren’t doing their job. Our job is to help employees to have the best experience at work”. She’s now CHO at a French artificial intelligence company.
As a hiring manager, you can’t rely on the the magic powers of digital natives to settle everything you got wrong (for example, a non-existent communication strategy). When you identify a problem, it is necessary to find operational solutions, and eventually to recruit someone to fulfill these missions. Let’s not reverse the roles.
WHY 90% OF HIRING MANAGERS SUCK AT RECRUITING (SORRY NOT SORRY)
Recently, a friend of mine gave her resignation because she felt stuck in a big company. She’s really creative and talented, as she was going through the hiring process, she gave me this interesting point of view “I think that often recruitment processes are too standardized and do not allow to recruit any type of profiles. Recruiters are often bad psychologists and do not know how to evaluate people. And they tend to always surround themselves with the same type of people”. She may have just lost an opportunity because the recruiting process was too long and complicated.
On the top of get-me-out-of-here job interviews, I was impressed by the hiring manager or recruiter’s ability to forget about the team. In the long run, coffees are not enough to accept a job, even if you have a very good connection with your hiring manager (she might be your next boss). But what about having a chat with other employees, or taking a look at the atmosphere and workplace experience? Too many times, no one gives you the opportunity to get to know the team.
So, if you are worried about your next tech youngster employee, reminder that trial period can be used as… trial period. Our generation is pretty aware that work require attention, dedication and objectives. Hint: If we do not accept a permanent contract, we’re definitely into milestones to reach.
FINALLY, HOW TO BE 100% SURE THERES IS A FIT?
There’s no perfect blueprint to the hiring process. We give a lot of advice to employees looking for a job, however, I think it’s important to brainstorm the hiring process from the recruiter perspective as well. If you want to attract talents, you have to do more than offer challenges and fancy job titles.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the most attractive brands for my generation are the ones managing not only to communicate well their values and mission, but also to design a hiring process that makes us feel special (sorry, I’m too cliché). Even if we know that you most likely interview a ton of people…
During my last hiring process, one of the partners told me : “I have as many reasons to hire you as I have not to do it”. At this very moment, I knew they were my future adventure. Because when you look for a job, both parties take a risk. And daphni (those mutants I mentioned earlier) did exactly that with me, as I’m going to help them through Communication & Events.
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