Blog: Experience: A Thing of The Past?
Is being experienced as relevant as it once used to be?
A few months ago, I met with a Japanese friend of mine who has his own IT business in Tokyo. We hadn’t seen each other for about 10 years and had a lot to catch up. We both started out in software engineering back in the 90’s and worked our way up -and sometimes down- and made it thus far. He stayed in the industry while I endeavored into other industry segments. We talked about how important it was back then to work towards gaining the right kind of experience as a software engineer and how we tried to achieve that goal in our fields and the challenges of keeping up with the technology especially in the ever-changing IT and software fields. While much of that is still true, we remembered the good old days of how after graduating from college and landing a job somewhere, the “let’s-fill-up-that-bag-of-experience-race” started. The unwritten rule was (and in some cases still is), the heavier the bag the more secure the job and the position. We also both admitted that we are now seeing a new trend/attitude emerging where the last wave of the Millennials and especially the Generation Z, does not seem to have the urge of wanting to necessarily carry around a bag with them let alone filling it up! While this may not apply in every field, in my opinion, it becomes relevant in B2B marketing and to some extent product management and here is why.
Most sociologists today agree that the new generation is more globally aware, independent, self-reliant, and feels very confident about being able to instantly find what they are looking for or ask for what they need at any given moment from virtually anyone who is willing to give them an answer. I think we can all agree on the fact that this new trend and/or attitude is not emerging due to the fact that the Gen-Z got together and collectively decided to do so from one day to the next, however this phenomenon is happening because things are taking their natural course with the way the technology has progressed. I believe, just like trying to feed and fatten that bag of experience used to be the norm -and still is in many cases- the behavior of the new generation and what they value is becoming today’s norm and will become a concept of great importance going forward. After all, Gen-Z is becoming the customers of today, can already greatly influence consumer purchasing decisions, and will be the workforce and the decision-makers of tomorrow.
Now let’s do a quick reality check. Today, the majority of businesses find themselves constantly in uncharted territory. As companies try to come up with new innovative ways of finding customers and marketing their products while wanting to take advantage of new concepts like the big data, IoT, blockchain, AI, machine learning, digitalisation and so on, they are starting to notice a gap:
The current workforce with the big heavy bags reaches hard and deep into their bags but comes up empty!
At the same time, going forward there will be no other way but to embrace and take advantage of what these new technologies have to offer to beat the competition and ultimately survive. In order to fill this gap, organisations will have no other way but to 1. Look for internal resources who are willing to reinvent themselves even learn from the new generation –perhaps such statement would have been considered sacrilege back in the 90’s-, 2. Look for external resources who can get creative and are even willing to leave their bags at home and come to work, or 3. Create adequate and attractive positions for the new generation according to the new emerging norms defined by them. In my opinion, the more traditional mid-size B2B firms are those who will be struggling the most going forward and may be shooting themselves in the foot without even realizing it because the organisation as a whole will find it very hard to get creative when it comes down to challenging their existing ways and processes. Going about this the old-fashioned way, meaning creating cookie-cutter positions and making sure the candidate has X years of experience and a proven track record in Y and Z would be one example of what I mean by shooting themselves in the foot. Why don’t HR or hiring managers instead ask a potential candidate to come up with a solution to an arbitrary problem during the interview and score or evaluate his or her approach, or probe for those soft and social skills that everyone claims to have?
No matter how we look at it, due to the ever-changing business landscape, technological advancements and consumer behaviour, reinventing ourselves on both individual and organisational fronts and getting creative will be the key to success and survival. Watching and learning from the new and upcoming Gen-Z would be a great place to start.
by: Ali Hoorsun – November 2017