Posted on 01/18/2014 7:32:23 AM PST by grimalkin
Edited on 01/18/2014 8:26:28 AM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
Ask agency execs to tick off the biggest challenges they face, and they’ll mention talent. More specifically, attracting young talent. Agencies are dependent on armies of young workers across all disciplines.
The other side of this thirst for young talent is a familiar one to anyone in business: the newest generation of workers often seems, well, different from other generations. Much has been made of the millennials. They’re confident. They’re optimistic. They’re an ADD generation. They’re suffering from separation anxiety after having spent their early years receiving the constant attention of helicopter parenting and winning trophies for finishing in 16th place. They have been told they’re the best, and their opinion is equal to anyone else’s, even those far older and more experienced than them.
It’s enough to leave managers in their 30s, 40s and beyond scratching their heads and feeling very much like grumpy old cranks who want those damn kids to turn down their music and get off their lawns. Digiday asked agency executives, with the promise of anonymity to not offend the delicate sensibilities of their young charges, to share their frustrations in managing the ad world’s next generation of leaders.
Next week, Digiday will publish the views of millennials on adjusting to life in agencies. Please get in touch if you’d like to contribute.
Agency Exec 1
There’s a major difference between those of us in our 40s and them. I came up with bosses who were all Baby Boomers. They expected you to go and fetch them coffee and be grateful for the opportunity. You did it without complaining. It’s now a shift in mentality. They’re a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately generation. A paycheck doesn’t seem to count as part of that what you have done. You have to give up so much more time to reviewing and patting them on the back. I can’t imagine ever asking for a performance review unless it was a way to up my salary, but I’m constantly asked for them. You do realize it’s only been four months since your last one, right? It’s a big cultural difference: their constant need for reaffirmation of how great they are. As long as I kept getting paid, I assumed things were going in the right direction. They constantly want feedback and expect you to be constructive. It’s funny because considering the level of unemployment, they all seem to treat their employment as a right. It’s like the onus is on the employer to prove themselves.
Agency Exec 2
Only at the agency a few months upon graduation, a young lady walked into my office and told me her dad thought that she was underpaid. I replied that her dad should call me so that we could discuss the matter. He never called.
Agency Exec 3
The biggest thing I see is that some of them think career variety is equal to career growth. It doesn’t. But they are positively reinforced by getting jobs they are not qualified for because they know how to use Facebook. So they hop around, and we stop questioning why they only spent a short period of time in three gigs in three years. There’s a level of career impatience that used to be reserved for the “kids that were too smart for their grade,” justifying misbehavior with boredom. Now the entire grade feels too smart for their grade — and we have to manage that. Not an easy task. Technology has taught us the wrong lesson — that we can get more done more quickly. The real lesson should be that we can get things done better. It’s the latter lesson we need to impart. It’s not all of them. Some of them. And it’s not even them. It’s cultural.
Agency Exec 4
No doubt, millennials have a unique approach to work. I’m always reluctant to gravitate to the standard “these kids today” cliche. Perhaps they’re a bit more entitled as a result of helicopter parenting, but they’ve also been empowered in ways that we couldn’t have imagined. Personally, I encourage our junior employees to speak up at meetings and voice their opinions. My big thing is that they don’t exploit their power and treat the media community fairly. My one recent anecdote is when one of our new hires sent me an email requesting dual monitors and that one of them be a large one. I simply forwarded the email to that girl’s manager suggesting that she come check out my dinky 15-inch monitor that I’m rocking.
Agency Exec 5
I’ve met millennials I admire for their work ethic — and millennials for whom the concept of paying dues is completely foreign. Among creative professionals in the latter group, there is a theme, which would be hysterically funny if it didn’t create so much extra work and wasted time for everybody. It’s the attitude of “Hmm, I don’t really do [that task I was hired to do]. I’m more of a conceptual [role the person should be performing].” So you get writers who can’t or won’t write, art directors who can’t design. A lot of millennials don’t seem to understand that mastering a craft is what makes you valuable. If I am creative-directing a project AND I’m rewriting emails and banner lines because you don’t care enough to do that stuff, well, then … why do I need you? Your Big Ideas better be really good — like, consistently ******* amazing. But it’s extremely rare for someone to walk in the door with that kind of mind and that kind of conceptual rigor at age 22 or 23.
Agency Exec 6
I have a quick story about a millennial I hired. He was a young strategist. Had all the answers and could actually see the future. He was everywhere. He knew everyone. He knew who was doing what. I brought him in to help with things. It was like asking an actor that plays a doctor to do real surgery on a real patient. He didn’t know how to do anything. He could talk about stuff and criticize what agencies were doing but really added no value. At one point, I walked by his desk and saw Facebook on one monitor and Tweetdeck on another. I told him that he’s so good at social media that he’s totally unproductive. We let him go a few days later. In his mind, he nailed the task and moved on to help get the ad industry back on track. Sigh. The overconfidence, zero accountability and zero remorse is 100 percent millennial. They don’t get the concept of learning.
Too many of the new generation are entitled brats.
Now we know why there are so many pointless and incoherent commercials on TV.
We made sure everyone was equipped with large, dual monitors a couple of years ago. We calculated our ROI and it has paid for itself in a short time.
It's a general problem, convincing a manager that a relatively small expenditure for capital equipment can significantly improve employee productivity.
I had a discussion with a manager some years back, where I was consulting to the company for $$$, telling him that a couple hundred bucks for a removable drive would have him a lot of money in terms of my time. His response was "To buy stuff I have to write up a request to senior management justifying the need. Your time is already budgeted. Request denied."
I wind up using dual monitors for cross referencing applications, where one screen has a drawing in AutoCad, and another screen for modeling hydraulics (a calculation app) and a pdf of a pump curve. Quad screens I have used for control of process units (chemical plant).
It is ironic to think that the millennials may end up being the next "Great Generation" because they will suffer the most since the Great Generation. Hard times, rampant unemployment, scarcity, hyperinflation, etc. These life stressors will harden just about any generation. The difference between these two "Great" generations is that the latter will be able to text mom and dad when they actually do get a job.
That was my first thought as well!!
I’m sure you agree, can’t get enough real estate.
The 1960s generation, I liked their music.
This article seemed to be more of a little office whine than offering anything meaningful or insightful.
“Has anyone else noticed that it’s harder and harder to find proper candidates?”
Hire old people.
They probably need to suplement their pensions, and so would work for less than the punk trash.
“Your time is already budgeted. Request denied.”
People who should never be in charge of anything are in charge of just about everything.
I want one of these huge touchscreens:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLduqQTMSso
(I lust after the screens Tony Stark uses in the Iron Man movies, and yes I know they’re just CGI)
Hard times + getting passed over for "affirmative action" candidates will produce a generation that will thoroughly hate non-whites.
Millennials were kept out of the kitchen because they could get burned. Gen X was warned not to touch the oven because they could get burned. Baby boomers were allowed to touch the oven and get burned.
It’s not just you; it’s been a disaster in the hiring pool and I don’t think it’s going to get better any time soon.
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