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Youth Hiring Tips: Pens and Something Called a Pension

For the Native peoples who used to live along this Pacific Coast that we now call home, the tides would serve dinner twice a day.  Rolling back into the greater sea, a host of options were readily available for their culinary delight.  It is hard to imagine this lifestyle being anything short of utopian.  While some periods were certainly better than others, the constant promise of a receding tide made the difficult times more bearable.   Walking through the Vancouver Education & Career Fair at the Vancouver Convention Centre recently, it was clear that the upcoming generation has the same outlook on life.  These teenagers, for better or for worse - and make no mistake, there are benefits to this outlook – have grown up in an age of bounty.  They are firmly aware that times can be difficult, something called the dot com bust happened fairly recently, but with Google.com telling them that Apple Computer, Inc. is trading at $121.14 today, down from nearly $200 during the Christmas season (our modern day tide change) it is hard to blame them for imagining the dot com bust and our modern day recessionary fears as being anything more than simply a wintery high tide.

Talking to these students, whimsically jaunting between employers and schools, life in the post-secondary world is looking extremely bright.  Employers with names like Fairmont, Mercedes-Benz, and the Oak Bay Marine Group are interested in talking to them.  Times are good - as Google refreshes to reveal Apple is now trading at $121.94.  When asked what they are looking for in these potential employers, thoughts of money immediately come to mind.  Money, benefits, raises and something called a pension.  When probed further terms like excitement, outdoors, variation, relaxed, flexibility, promotions, and travel come about excitedly.  The Worksafe BC person in attendance was pleased when he heard that one student mentioned ‘safety.’  This is certainly a generation in a unique situation.  When asked how they typically found their current or last job, terms like craigslist, Monster and Workopolis were not heard once.  The most common tactic used?  “Usually I just walk around my neighborhood and look for Help Wanted signs.”  With the abundance of them in the city, what else would you expect?  The future certainly holds a lot of promise for this latest generation to enter the workforce.  Epitomizing the day’s encounters, one group of boys, after thanking them for their time and insight, quietly commented, as I walked away, “Shouldn’t he have given us a pen or something?”  Apple is at $122.03 now, why bother refreshing…  

Darryl Sheepwash is an Account Manager with Talent Edge Solutions, a local recruiting and retention firm specializing primarily in Management positions within the Retail, Tourism, and Hospitality sectors.  If you feel jealous of the outlook these students have, either from a employer or employee standpoint, send an email to dsheepwash#talentedgesolutions.com.