CURATED READS FOR GEN Z—AND THEIR Z-CURIOUS COLLEAGUES

first up

Welcome back! This week, we’re talking about the entry-level job market, the new McKinsey book on leadership, and why one Hollywood heavyweight is coming to Gen Z’s defense.

To the class of 2024—congratulations! You did it. Now that school is behind you, you’re about to embark on bigger, better, and more lucrative horizons in the corporate world. Er, sort of.
 
The job market for corporate entry-level workers in the United States is feeling the squeeze. As company executives across sectors continue to do what they can to protect their bottom lines, the result has been fewer promotions. That means fewer people are advancing to make room for newbies coming into the fold. What’s more, to reduce the time it takes to onboard a new hire, employers are looking for experienced candidates—often asking for multiple years of work experience—even at the entry level. 

It’s not hard to see that the math here doesn’t square. How are new graduates, or Gen Z career switchers, supposed to snag entry-level work that requires middle-level qualifications? 

Before anyone gets too discouraged, there’s a bright side. Despite tightness in the labor market for professional services, things aren’t nearly as bad as they were for millennials after the Great Recession. Sure, it might be hard for new grads to land their first job out of school, but it’s not impossible. Employers may want experience, but they’re also increasingly looking to hire candidates based on skills.
 
“One of the things that I’ve seen in the skills-based hiring world is that people are hiring for the most critical skill of a given role or the hardest-to-find skill of a given role,” explains McKinsey senior partner Brooke Weddle on an episode of the McKinsey Talks Talent podcast. “They’re not hiring for all of the skills in a given role.”

The disconnect between what employers are hiring for and what candidates might include on their résumés could be contributing to Gen Zers’ woes. In Europe and the United States, there’s a gap in the supply of and demand for higher cognitive skills, such as critical thinking and designing for product and user experience, and the demand for “softer” skills, such as adaptability and creativity, is expected to grow, according to research from McKinsey senior partner Eric Hazan and coauthors.
 
This brings things back to the question at the heart of the matter: How do you build skills without prior job experience? New grads may not be able to qualify for internships once they’ve graduated (never mind that corporations may be offering fewer internships this year, anyway). But Gen Zers can consider externships, or short-term job-shadowing experiences, as well as volunteering, contract work, and courses focused on developing a specific skill (plenty of free options are worth their weight in résumé gold, by the way).
 
The real responsibility here, however, rests with employers. One way that businesses can improve their hiring is to rethink what an ideal candidate looks like. While interviews with potential employees often focus on the technical aspects of a role, hiring managers might undervalue how candidates execute their job responsibilities. The hows of a job (which include maintaining a good attitude, volunteering for nonrole tasks, and helping teammates) can determine an employee’s performance as much as whether the employee can, say, build a spreadsheet. Subsequently, employers can continue to invest in employee skill development—an important driver of Gen Z retention—even if budgets are tight.
 
HR leaders, take note: instead of searching for a holy grail candidate, remember that the best companies evaluate candidates based on their capacity to learn, their intrinsic capabilities, and their transferable skills—at the entry level and beyond. 

VISUALIZE IT

In a survey of more than 1,000 global C-suite executives, about 40 percent say there’s a shortage of workers with critical thinking and other higher cognitive skills.

WAIT, DON’T SCROLL

The extinct imperial CEO. Aspiring leaders, take note: McKinsey’s latest book, The Journey of Leadership: How CEOs Learn to Lead from the Inside Out, outlines the newest leadership playbook—one in which introspection replaces imperial rule. Preorder a copy and wow the crowd at your next networking event.

Hold the Holland malaise. The Netherlands is known for its high employment and productivity rates, but an aging workforce, declining productivity, and low birth rates are causing tightness in the labor market.

Reuse, recycle, resell. About $2.6 trillion worth of material in the consumer goods space—some 80 percent of the material value—is thrown away and never recovered. The circular economy could help reduce that waste and give companies a competitive advantage.

NOT US; STILL GREAT

All gaslighting, no breaks? “Are we asking [young people] to fix everything, or are we making fun of them for not being equipped to do so?” asks one Hollywood heavyweight. [The Guardian]

‘Literally dead.’ The skull emoji gets the linguistic treatment. [WaPo]

CROSSWORD

—Edited by Alexandra Mondalek, editor, New York