Managers to Millennials: Job Interview No Time to Text | Hacker News Reader

Managers to Millennials: Job Interview No Time to Text

cnbc.com

23 pointsspking51 comments

The trend reflects a generation of Millennials—ranging in age from 18 to 34—who grew up texting and using smartphones and social media

This is somewhat tangential, but I think grouping this entire generation together and attributing their behavior to social networks, texting, and/or the Internet doesn't make any sense. 34 year olds likely weren't able to join Facebook until their late twenties and 18 year olds likely don't even remember a world without widespread Internet use. Those experiences are wildly different and will therefore affect people in wildly different ways.

Also, the article talks about behavior seen in "recent college grads", which hardly includes 34 year olds.

It could be that the journalist made a typo and intended to write 18 to 24 year olds.

Indeed it doesn't, and the whole basis of this story is very anecdotal and shaky. But that's just it -- it's a story, not a factual report about what's actually happening in the world. A disturbing amount of journalism is storytelling, and the facts are just the raw material from which the story is crafted.

In this case, the story is a retread of a tired old classic: "Kids these days are doing some pretty crazy stuff!"

New article idea:

Millennials to journalists: anecdotes are not accurate representations of large groups of people.

The entire concept of "Millenials" has always struck me as somewhat of a square peg in a round hole. As you have identified, so freaking much changed over the last 34 years. So much. Almost every aspect of modern life is dramatically different in ways we now take for granted, and it changed in major steps throughout those 34 years. To think the lower and upper bounds of the 18-34 demographic have all that much in common is pretty silly.

That being said, generations are broad demographic sets -- not behavioral cohorts. They are highly heterogeneous sets, and always have been. In some cases, speaking of the "Millenial" demographic makes sense, especially in broad, economic terms (i.e., when talking about the size of the demographic vis-a-vis the future of the US labor market). But trying to treat the demographic as a homogeneous set, or in broad behavioral terms, is where things get dicey really quickly. Some generalities apply, but only in specific contexts.

I agree answering using the phone in interview is wrong. You should be polite in a interview.

However I have noticed any quirk can put you out of a job. Stutter? Slightly eccentric? Aspergers?

Its seems you are under a lot peer pressure to conform to a set standard and not deviate. Then companies wonder why they can not innovate. Fact is a lot of brilliant individuals(leaders, technically brilliant) are a little 'odd' sometimes. Sometimes brilliance is the other side of the eccentricity coin.

Brilliant individuals get hired. I don't believe this article was about them. The anecdotes are about the socially oblivious and the data was a survey of hiring managers, with no indication of how well constructed the survey was.

Not really. I have heard plenty of stories of people with aspergers having to to quit due to being ostracised by management or getting fired. Then going on to on to form companies or invent new technologies. Meaning they weren't fired for performance or skills reasons but because of their eccentricities.

One I can think of is Bram Cohen.

I see this opinion often on HN. Perhaps it is because a lot of us are somewhat socially awkward developers at heart.

The truth is that eccentric geniuses aren't all that hirable, despite their genius. After all, Steve Jobs got fired. If you can't be relied upon to turn in results, you're a potential liability. It might be better to hire someone with less genius and more predictability.

That's not to say that there are no jobs out there for eccentric geniuses- maybe they just have to be in charge (see Steve Jobs again), or just work by themselves. But I don't think we can argue with hiring managers who don't take on a risk. The distribution of responsibilities means they wouldn't get any of the credit if the employee turned out to be fantastic anyway.

Technically, Jobs resigned from Apple rather than having been fired.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs#Apple_Computer

I think "resigned" has to be in speech marks.

The parent said "slightly odd", which is different from "eccentric genius". He provided examples of trivial differences from the average, like stutter, which I happen to slightly suffer from. I wonder if I've been rejected on that basis in the past..

Steve Jobs was a genius now?

Where's the FUD about recent college grads in the 1960's interviewing for jobs with full, unkempt beards, and making allusions to radical politics?

> Where's the FUD about recent college grads in the 1960's interviewing for jobs with full, unkempt beards, and making allusions to radical politics?

Gone the moment those people became the old folks who rant and rave about "kids today".

Or how about the story of the crazy cat lady that is 45 and doing the same thing as the crazy cat lady that is 25?

> "Newly minted college graduates soon entering the job market could be facing another hurdle besides high unemployment and a sluggish economy. Hiring managers say many perform poorly—sometimes even bizarrely—in job interviews."

First paragraph immediately stuck out. How is this a hurdle for new graduates? The fact that other graduates perform poorly means a given graduate will have an easier time than otherwise.

I'm surprised to hear that that this is a trend, even though my anecdotal experience seems to confirm most of what the article says. Ex: one recent candidate flat-out refused to do the simple coding problem with which I presented her (determine if a given number is prime). Other times new grads try to treat me as a "bro" or "buddy" instead of potential coworker or manager.

All together strange, although these behaviors make it easier to determine a person's team fit in the organization.

At least if they refuse to do a coding exercise it is really easy to go to the next candidate.

Heck I would probably just end the interview there if that happened to me.

Yes, I have the same experiences with recent grads and even people moving from first job to second. Their casualness, lackadaisical attitude, and general "go with the flow, man" attitude towards the job and the employee hierarchy just makes it very easy to say, "Next!" I've hired enough of those casual employees in years past to learn that it's not worth it to do it again. Can they be good employees? Absolutely - they are all smart, capable, and have the ability to perform. However, what I've found is that they consistently either try to use humor to downplay whatever problem is found (thus trying to diminish the problem, not their behavior), or they just nod, say "Yes, sir. Won't happen again.", and keep on doing the same things. That sort of attitude works fine in many large companies all over the world but, in a small company, it's a lot harder to get away with. I don't have time to train you on how to be a human - that's what your 16+ years of school was for.

I imagine Paul Davidson, author, to be a frustrated father to 1-3 young 20-somethings who are not able to get a job right now, and Paul felt that he had the perfect angle for a fresh story... Nothing like writing about your own life experiences!

I wonder if our perspective on the job market is tinted by the fact that (I suspect) the overwhelming majority of graduates on HN are alumni of Ivy League or other top schools.

Your suspicion is likely wrong.

Let's put it to a poll: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5628769

I think that, 4-5 years ago, perhaps a large percentage of people would have fit that bill but even then it was not likely to be anywhere close to a majority. Today though this is sort of the sophisticated man's Reddit and thus your suspicion is probably off by an order of magnitude.

I think the voting at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5628769 has slowed down now and we can safely conclude that it is still a majority (albeit not as strong as it was in the first few years of HN)

A bit higher percentage than I expected but such polls are often dependent upon participation of those who log in during the poll's time frame. Still though, far below a majority (as I write this) - the "Top 20" voting is 24.6% as of 5:30AM after 681 votes.

One quibble with the poll: For those with graduate degrees, that degree probably influences employment more than undergraduate.

Actually, now I wonder about the percentage of grad students here. We can't all have dropped out at twenty to found our startups.

tl;dr: Some people do weird things in interviews. Some people are aged 18 to 34 years. This article examines the intersection of these groups, cherry picking a few examples to suggest it's somehow endemic.

I'd expect this from BuzzFeed, not CNBC...

Accurate summary is accurate.

Clearly you aren't familiar the quality of the stuff CNBC publishes then.

What a load of garbage. Nothing like cherry picking a few underprepared individuals to generalize millions of their cohorts.

"The interview is still a traditional environment." --Jaime Fall, vice president of the HR Policy Association. As quoted in the article.

Something about his use of the word traditional sets me off. Oh well, they made a "jobipedia," whatever that is. If it helps graduates get past the often capricious nature of HR drones then I won't complain.

"The interview is still a traditional environment." is the line that irked me, and it only applies if you are trying to work for a traditional company

In this job market, that's an extremely frequent occurrence.

Agreed. Another line that irked me: "They don't realize (the interview) is a sales event."

I don't think it is. You're interviewing me and I'm interviewing you. You're potentially getting my time and my soul. That's not just for sale - we need to see whether it's a good fit. If we can't even move past your desire to see me put on an act in the interview room, maybe it's not a good fit.

However, things like answering cell phones are valid concerns. That's blatantly rude.

And sales when aiming for SME organisations can be very informal.

>things like answering cell phones are valid concerns. That's blatantly rude.

Yeah, but not unique to millenials.

Yup. As always, a story is just a reflection of the author's limited view/scope of the world.

They didn't have high school jobs with any amount the frequency of the people before them. There weren't jobs to have as the adults had them all.

If texting during interviews doesn't affect future job performance, then interviewers shouldn't disqualify applicants on that basis. The same goes for dressing wrong and so forth. Of course, in the typical scenario there's a large stack of decent applications, so the employer has the freedom to make these dealbreakers and still employ well-performing people.

If you're unable to give someone your full attention for such an important occasion, why on earth would an interviewer expect you to perform well at any task. Ridiculous.

The problem with recruiting and the interview process is that very little hard data on anything. People just guesstimate everything. If we assume that young people are about as good as old people (when they were as young and experienced), then the most plausible expalantion is that there has simply been a change on social convention.

Some young people apparently have learned the social etiquette that it can be okay to text during discourse without it being rude. Social etiquette evolves and there's a clash of values. If the interviewer was as young as the interviewee, maybe there wouldn't be any problems with the texting.

Human resource professionals say they've seen recent college grads text or take calls in interviews, dress inappropriately, use slang or overly casual language, and exhibit other oddball behavior.

If only we could convince the human resource professionals that earth is doomed and there was an effort underway to recolonize another planet.

Let's examine this.

Suppose in ten, twenty years from now, all us old fogies are retired or dead.

Who are left? The Millennials.

Imagine you're a Millennial hiring manager. You're interviewing someone. The interviewee texts in the middle of that. Would you feel offended? Maybe.

Or maybe you are also texting your colleagues and HR during the interview.[1]

This is assuming that something like Google Glasses is not more ubiquitous. That is to say, Buckminster Fuller's notion of ephemeralization (tech gets smaller and smaller until it becomes invisible and everywhere). That is, non-localized communication technologies becomes invisible and everywhere.

This is also assuming that our current hiring practices are still relavent.

There's an excellent Wired magazine articles about the kids born after 1993: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2013/04/genwired/

Something to think about if you're looking to stay relavent in tech.

[1] Caveat: I set aside time daily for mindfulness meditation. For me, texting during the interview isn't so much as rude or inappropriate as much as you're scattering your attention to multiple places, so you are not as effective. On the other hand, if the people you are texting are helping you with the interview, then more attention is on the interview than any one single person can muster.

Good points, Hosh.

From that wired article "But none before has felt as free to call bullshit on conventional wisdom" Bingo - I had a conversation the other day with someone explaining an interaction I had with a 'non-connected' neighbor and how that neighbor only knows what they've learned from those people immediately around them and what TV tells them. And that there is a divide between them and those who are connected. All I can think when talking to them is 'bullshit' since the facts are readily available.*

* I suspect this is a good thing but I also think there will be a partial boomerang with those who have access to 'all the collective knowledge of the world' looking for true 'wisdom of the elders' for lack of a better way to state it. Especially those looking to cut through the noise and all the fucking notifications.

Yeah, the internet isn't the end-all, be-all. We're trading one mode for another, and at least for the moment, people who are connected have some material advantages.

Probably the big thing is learning how to be with just you yourself. To be fair, this wasn't any more popular in the pre-Internet days.

Awesome for me.

The younger generation is coddled and entitled; surely this is the End of Times (again).

i knew better than to read the comments on that article. i knew better, and i did it anyway.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com