How Gen Z Gets Hired in 2021
If you also graduated in 2020, my sympathies. I came into my senior spring semester pumped. The market was roaring. Campaign volunteer opportunities. Immense investments in exciting new companies. I was optimistic, but something gnawed at me. 2008 was 12 years ago. Something was overdue for a correction.
When the market dropped in March, I realized I would be facing a similar economy as graduates in 2008. Many of whom have not recovered financially to this day.
My prediction was not wholly realized. Many of my (Ivy League) classmates had a normal transition into the workforce.
But the hiring landscape had changed, and in such a dynamic time adaptation is difficult. Thousands of small businesses, employing half the US workforce, have shuttered their doors. I know many Ivy League graduates who are collecting stimulus checks at home. The world needs new ideas right now. Things have changed.
Whether you’re out of college, in college, in high school, even elementary school, or a parent, understanding the new job landscape is vital.
1. Master Social Media
Social Media is a double-edged sword: either a massive time sink, or vital for getting found online. There are two types of users: producers, and consumers. Many of us are consumers of social media, enjoying (or not) the content of others. To use social media effectively, you must start producing content.
To produce content that gains recognition, you need a niche, consistency, and a goal.
Your niche is what you’re knowledgeable about. You can repeat information from elsewhere, as an aggregator, or add unique insights. You will need to have a focus. Something people remember you for. Some way people find you. Something that creates a community you can position yourself as the leader of. This might be software engineering. Real estate investing. Environmentalism. Applying lessons from philosophy in business environments. Craft your content to appeal to a niche audience, while offering value for a general audience. For an English major, you may discuss what an average person may glean from the writings of Milton. Your discussion of Milton would cater to a niche audience, while your conclusions would appeal to a general audience.
Consistency is producing content on a regular basis. Daily is the maximum, weekly is the minimum. Producing too many posts a day confuses algorithms. Not posting often enough doesn’t give you an adequate online presence.
A goal is where you want to be in life with your online presence. Creating a tailored online presence demonstrates your identity and your ability to communicate. Your content acts as passive networking, even passive income. You never know who may discover you, or who your story may inspire. Your online presence is the reputation that precedes you, and is the first form of mitigation when your reputation is on the line. Whether you want to land a job, network, or attract talent to your company, you have created your own background check.
What mediums (pun unintended) should you create content for?
All of them. The types of content fall into the following categories:
Short form writing → Medium form writing →Long form writing
Short form video →Medium form video →Long form video
Image
Short form writing:
Think of Twitter like a mini-blog. Twitter is where you write bullet points. You can A/B test/gauge sentiment, and find the existing thought leaders in various niches. Find these leaders and make sure to interact with their content to gain visibility. Threads are also very popular, so don’t feel limited by the character limit. Using images to hook readers on Twitter is less necessary than other platforms.
Short form video:
Tiktok and Byte are fantastic platforms for reach. Zoom job interviews and video job applications are now commonplace. Mastering your on-camera presence is vital in 2021. Seeing and hearing oneself on video is painful for everyone, but it shows you what you need to improve on. You can always practice on Snapchat of course. Linkedin, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube now have stories as well.
Medium form writing:
Linkedin, Facebook and Reddit is for writing longer than a tweet, but not as long as a blog post. Images are good ways to bring readers in. On Linkedin, that may mean posting an image, and keeping your writing to a description. On Reddit, that may mean posting an image and putting your writing in a comment.
Medium form video:
Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter also allow you to post videos. Keep them short on these platforms, but you don’t need to be as rushed as on Tiktok.
Long form writing:
Medium is an excellent platform for blog writing. Again, thumbnails are important. Find popular keyword phrases in your niche, and use them as titles.
Long form video:
Use your blog posts as scripts for Youtube videos. Having a workspace set up for filming will help on Zoom calls. Lighting, audio, and camera quality can make a big difference in impression on an interview.
Image:
You cannot exclude Instagram and Pinterest from your personal brand building strategy. You can post images of your posts on other platforms, like your tweets. You can create infographics relevant to your niche. Images play a vital role in driving viewers to both your writing and videos, so master the element.
2. Learn How to Persuade and Establish Rapport
The landscape has changed, but the fundamentals stay the same. You will still need to know how to persuade people to listen to you, hold their attention, and earn their trust. Whether it’s your audience or an employer in a job interview, you need to know how to communicate.
A good place to start is learning copywriting, storytelling, persuasion and cold reading. If you can write persuasively and concisely, you can speak that way as well. Whether you’re emailing or cold calling, effective communication is key.
3. Consolidate
If there’s one thing I want readers to take away from this article, it’s this: Gen Z cannot face the job market solo. Solo, it’s dog-eat-dog. There’s too many people. Consolidating makes it easier on employers. Forming squads allows an employer to meet one member, and get the whole squad as referrals. Employers appreciate anything that saves them time.
You can’t wait for one to form. You need to team up with people with the same goals, mutual interests, similar background (etc). Your content should refer to one another, hype each other up, and give the impression of an in-group.
👁 👄 👁 did this very well, as does Morning Brew and many Youtubers. Alone, your content creation gets swallowed by the algorithms. Together, collectively bringing one another up increases exposure.
Teamwork is more valuable than money. If you have a team, even a remote one, the market is your oyster. Define rules, and set goals.
The squad works together to accomplish collectively what would be exhausting for an individual: Content creation, cold calling recruiters or investors, collaborating on a startup, etc.
How do you find squadmates? Ideally, college. You can also find people over Reddit, Discords, video games, Riff, Clubhouse, Twitter, Muze, Twitch, Meetup (remote of course), or Linkedin.
4. Pangea
5. Don’t submit resumes
Job sites get inundated with applications. Make a post on Fiverr or AngelList and you’ll have multiple applicants within seconds. Distinguishing between real people and bots is impossible. Do not confuse silence from employers as rejection. They likely haven’t seen your resume at all.
You need to establish relationships with people. You do this by interacting with their content on social media. Hopefully they follow you back.
Alternatively you find companies first, and then find the people involved. You can find companies with AngelList, Linkedin, and Crunchbase. You can connect on Linkedin and get their contacts free, or get their contacts from RocketReach. RocketReach does not yet offer a student discount, so join me in tweeting at them they should offer one.
When you have contact info, you can call or email them and establish a relationship.
6. Go Around Back
When reaching out to people at a company, HR would seem like a good candidate to start with. But everyone is reaching out to them. Take a lesson from how I got my first restaurant job. I walked into multiple restaurants, spoke with the hostess, got an application form, submitted it. Never heard back. One restaurant I go to I find a guy smoking out back. I ask him who I should talk to about a job. He introduces me immediately to his boss, who brought me onboard immediately. My friend did something similar to break into the film industry. He went to a film set. Everyone on set was too busy to talk to him. So he was going to give up. He passed a set technician on break, again, having a smoke. He asked him about working on the set. The technician introduced him quickly to his manager, and once my friend got his foot in the door has had many successful film gigs since.
The digital equivalent of this is finding people at a company that aren’t the founders, HR, or recruiters. Find regular employees and start a correspondence with them. Share your content with them. Get their thoughts. Incorporate them into your content. Bring them into your squad, invite them to play video games.
7. Go the founder route
In a recession, the demand for jobs exceeds the supply of jobs. As I mentioned above, teamwork is worth far more than money. If you have several people collaborating, put their individual talents to use. Start a startup. Instead of contacting companies asking them for a job, ask them to be your clients. Find ways to provide services that people need but can’t afford at an affordable rate.
8. Learn to Code?
The world is awash in programmers. Chances are, if you don’t possess technical experience someone you know (or someone you can find) does. There are also a variety of no-code or low-code options for software construction. Learn the computational thinking, product development and systems design aspects of software engineering. These are universal, and don’t enslave you to a language, library, or paradigm. Whether you choose to start coding or use no-code, these skills will apply. Having a squad is useful whether you’re coding or learning to code. It’s extremely difficult to do alone.
9. But, you don’t have enough job experience
Dave Ramsey and GaryV agree on a very controversial solution for getting a job without adequate work experience: work for free. Prove that you’re capable of the job before the company takes a risk on you.
Companies have ridiculous job requirements because they can. There’s enough workers across the world that they can find someone who matches any job description, even when they are literally impossible.
More important than experience, is storytelling. That’s where the copywriting comes in. If you sound like you have experience, or demonstrate that you’re smart enough to learn as you go, that can be as valuable.
This should not concern you. As mentioned above, if you’re uploading a resume through a website, you’ve already been rejected. People hire people they know. You have to cultivate relationships. Job requirements are wishlists. Conversations are reality.
But there’s no escaping the fact that self-taught developers, people pivoting careers, and new graduates are stuck in a catch-22 of needing experience without the requisite experience to get hired to get that experience.
If you wish to collaborate on something that makes entry level jobs easier and allow people who lack experience to build resumes, find me here.
