How Do You Make Gen Z Talent Your Competitive Advantage?

The first step is to understand how Gen Z perceives the world. Chris Larsen’s guest in this episode is Hannah Williams, whose upcoming book, Leader’s Guide to Unlocking Gen Z, will change the way companies mold Gen Z talent. Join in the conversation and discover the 5 key distinctions Gen Z has vs. millennials. If you understand these distinctions, you are well on your way to having loyal Gen Z’s in your team. Tune in!

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Making Gen Z Your Competitive Advantage With Hannah Williams

On the show, we have Hannah Williams. Her story began in a blue pickup truck when her father handed twelve-year-old Hannah the phone and asked her to close a deal on an investment property. After this unexpected introduction to the world of entrepreneurship, she found herself thrust into a climate of innovation, challenge and opportunity. She enrolled in college at the age of fourteen, graduated with a degree in international business at eighteen. Now, as a 23-year-old Gen Z-ers, she has consulted businesses from startups to Fortune 500 companies and was on a mission to help leaders leverage Gen Z talent as a competitive advantage and build radical empathy in the workplace.

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Hannah Williams, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Chris. I’m excited to be here on this beautiful day cooped up in the studio. It’s cooler in here.

The audience is in for a treat, as I was saying in the introduction. You and I got introduced to the real estate investing world in Asheville. I had no idea how young you were when we met. I remember asking you, which you’re not supposed to ask women, but when you told me your age and what you did, I was like, “You have got to come on our show and share your story and what you’re doing with our audience.” We’ve got some exciting news about your new book that’s coming out later this month. We’re going to tell the audience all about that too. Before we get into that, please share with the audience a little bit more about your background, your story and how you got to the point where you are?

My story, as you know, is a little all over the place. My family background’s a little untraditional. I am a 23-year-old Gen Z-er. If we look back at what I consider to be the beginning of my story, it was when I was twelve. My dad, as many investors here know in the Asheville North community has been in real estate for many years, pretty much ever since I can remember. I remember one day, I was twelve years old, back in that time period, you still went door to door to collect rent from your tenants. I was in the back of his blue pickup truck and we’re bouncing down the highway. It’s a hot day. I’m a studious student sitting in the back of the truck trying to get my homework done.

My dad, out of the blue, randomly hands me his cell phone. He says, “Hannah, the phone’s ringing. The guy at the end of the line wants to sell his house and you’re going to close the deal.” I remember being freaked out of my mind. You have kids, I’m sure you’ve pondered on this crazy idea that my dad had for me. He handed me that phone, I had no clue what I was doing and I took it because I trusted him. I fumbled through this call, but sure enough, two weeks later, we had the house under contract and my parents still own it. It’s a duplex. That was my first introduction to the world of business and entrepreneurship. Ever since then, fast forward two years from that experience, I ended up enrolling in online college when I was fourteen.

Chris, I’m sure you’re not thinking maybe along the same lines, but you’re probably considering like, “What are some alternate options for my kids besides traditional home?” That’s a very Gen X parent thing to do which I love. My parents encouraged my six younger siblings and me to think what are some alternatives to a traditional college. I ended up enrolling in online college when I was fourteen and graduated with my bachelor’s in international business at eighteen. Here I am, I flew through college because I wanted to get a business degree, get it up.

I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I needed to get some experience in the corporate world first. I was working with a wonderful company here in Asheville, Biltmore Estate. It’s amazing how the brand is. It is an international brand, which many of us locals take for granted. Because of the influence of the brand, all these leaders would come to Biltmore to the estate and the winery and get the incredible guest experience.

They would ask Biltmore leaders, “How do you do this? How do you create such incredibly happy and engaged employees?” I joined a division of the company at eighteen where I went out and with other Biltmore leaders consulted healthcare companies, financial services companies, real estate companies, in how to take that employee engagement from Biltmore and transfer their business. Here I am at eighteen, I found myself sitting at the bar, usually with my sparkling water, talking with all these incredible leaders from the Boomer generation and Gen X. They all ask me this question all the time, “What is the problem with you, Millennials?” I’m the only young person sitting in the room. They were asking me, “Why can’t I retain you? You’re so hard to find. Why do you want six months of maternity leave the second you walk in the door? What is your problem?” What was interesting is I didn’t find myself relating to a lot of the challenges that these leaders were sharing with me.

I saw many of my fellow 20- to 25-year-olds entering the workforce and they didn’t really exhibit the same habits either. It begs the question, “Why am I so different from these Millennials that all these leaders were speaking about?” I did my homework. I went back home and I started researching my generation. Why is Gen Z so very different? Fast forward to the present day, I have had a wonderful journey of now years of researching Generation Z and speaking with hundreds of leaders and Gen Z-ers from across the country and also in the UK and Australia. It’s a little bit of international presence there.

At the culmination of this, I realized, leaders are asking me so many questions about how do I recruit, attract, retain, and engage the best and brightest Gen Z talent. I said, “Why not write a book? Why not put this out there and help more leaders gain access to this information?” I now have the privilege and my book is coming out later, it’s really exciting for me. It’s called A Leader’s Guide to Unlocking Gen Z, and it will be out soon. My passion and my work is seeing companies take these principles and use the competitive advantage. The companies right now who are getting ahead of a talent curve and understanding Gen Z are positioning themselves to be the greatest competition in 10 to 15 years.

It was interesting going back a little over a year ago before the pandemic, maybe it wasn’t even that far, but I started getting phone calls, I started getting connected with all these individuals. As I said, I asked you how old you were and it was because I’m in this string. I asked a couple of people and they said, “I’m 23.” I hired somebody, he was 23. He’s one of the best hires I’ve ever made. Another young lady she’s in the real estate business here in Nashville as well and she’s 23. I’m thinking, “What is going on?” When you told me you were 23, I was like, “What is up with this?” There really is a difference. For people that are reading, they hear Baby Boomers and Gen X, which I’m a Gen X-er. What’s interesting is my sister is only a few years younger. She for sure, is a Millennial. I’m thinking Gen X-ers, we’re in our 40s right now in 2021. We’re Baby Boomers. Most people know they’re in their 50s and 60s but where’s the cutoff between Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z?

Let’s break it down. If you have an employee or a child who is between the ages of 9 and 25, there is likely a Gen Z-er. If your people are generally 25, 40 roughly, and there’s the generation after Z-ers, which we are not yet talking about, but that’s Generation Alpha. A way to distinguish if someone is on that bridge, maybe they’re 24, 25, 26 or something like that. The real way to distinguish if they’re truly which category they’re in, is to ask them, “Did 9/11 significantly influence your childhood?” If they say yes, they’re likely a Millennial.

I was three when 9/11 happened. I don’t remember anything about it. I don’t remember where I was standing. I don’t even remember my parents mentioning anything about it to me until much later. What influenced me more, if you think about socioeconomic or political factors, was domestic terrorism. It was school shootings or the economic instability from the 2008 recession and COVID. If you’re trying to decide, “Does my child fall in which category or they’re of that line, talk to them a little bit about, ‘What influenced you when you were growing up?’”

That’s a great shortcut. It’s interesting if you look at the generations. You look at the ’60s how they affected the Baby Boomers. You look at our generation and we talk about Gen X, MTV generation. You look at Millennials and I look at my kids. It looks like my boys are probably on the cusp. I’m really interested in seeing how that is. We were talking before the show and there are some things that to me, were counterintuitive when it comes to Gen Z. I’d love for you to give the audience a bit of a sneak peek into your book. First, we talked about some shortcuts to determine who’s a Gen Z versus Millennial, and what traits separate them from Millennials? I’d love to talk about how business owners, how hiring managers like myself could use these strategies in our businesses to attract talent and help, not only the employees but also the businesses grow.

Let’s get broad-ranging for a second and talk about five key distinctions between the generations and we can get into some actionable steps. Because I bet that most leaders and most readers here are thinking, “I just modified for Millennials. We got that going, that talent strategy and now, there’s another generation. Where do I start?” I want to take a second before we jump into this and say, I’ve developed a pulse check for anyone reading this show. If you go to my website, you can take this short pulse check assessment to understand where you are right now in your talent strategy.

Where do you need to focus because there are so many things? You could talk about attracting Gen Z, pruning, retaining or engaging. There are those four broad categories, that you may be thinking as a business, “Where am I already doing well? Where I’ve been excelling and where am I not?” If you’re not driving right now, take a second and go to HannahGWilliams.com/chrislarsen. Go there to the show notes and there’ll be that pulse check assessment and you can gauge, which of these areas are you doing well in and which ones are our areas of focus you should be thinking about?

I’m checking that out right after we’re done.

Let’s dive into these five areas. This will be helpful for any leader. I did a lot of research upfront before writing this book to see what type of tool is the most helpful to a mid-level manager or even a founder of a business who wants to get practical with Gen Z? I broke it into 29 critical areas. Each chapter is very short. It’s 4 or 5 pages. At the end of every chapter, there’s an exercise where you can take what you learned in the chapter and immediately take steps in the positive direction. I know a lot of teams who’ve called me about this are taking their entire team, using it as a 29-week study where they’ll read a chapter a week and take the action steps on a Tuesday morning meeting or whatnot. That way, we’re not talking theoretically right now about five key differences. It’s nice to know about them, but what do you do with the information? That’s what the book is for.

Let’s dive in. Five key distinctions.

The first and really primary way of thinking that differentiates Millennials from Gen Z-ers is that Millennials were raised to think about the world in a very ideal thick fashion versus Gen Z was raised to be pragmatic. What I mean by that and I know you’re a testament as a Gen X parent to this, is if you think back to my story with my dad and him handing me this phone and closing a real estate deal, he really taught me to be very pragmatic when it comes to how the world functions. Our thinking and our thought process as Gen Z-ers, we’re trained to see the world is our oyster. We have a lot of opportunities, but it’s going to take work and effort to get there.

The world is challenging. I’ve seen it myself as a business owner and other Gen Z-ers I know have certainly seen this, that if you try to start an online business, it’s competitive. It’s not like you can start something up and you have subscribers in a month. The world doesn’t work in an easy way. I think that’s a very important distinction to know when you’re coaching or mentoring Gen Z. I know many readers who managed Millennials have run into this. The reason they stereotype about snowflaking or whatnot exists is because Millennials were raised to be very idealistic. Their Boomer parents were very positive about the world saying, “You can do anything, find your happiness and bliss,” which many of those things are very positive ways to approach the world, but when reality hits you, you’re likely to be disappointed. That’s what happened with Millennials. Many of them thought that the world would be easier than it is.

Now, they’re seeking whatever it is, a job or relationship or whatnot that fits this perfect mold of what they think they should be, they should have or be entitled to have. Those two distinctions are huge. If you’re managing Gen Z-ers, they’re likely going to approach work with potentially, their work ethic. I know you’ve seen that with the 23-year-olds that you’ve been hiring. There’s a different way of looking at the world that Gen Z-ers seem to have.

I’ve seen there’s a different work ethic there. They’re more apt to put in the work upfront and be more accepting of failures or be a little more patient as well. I agree 100% with what you say. I’ve seen Millennials as a little more idealistic and if something doesn’t work out, they say, “This isn’t working out for me. I want to do something different.” Simon Sinek has a great video talking about patients. It’s about Millennials. He’s like, “I’m talking to this young lady and she’s really disappointed. She feels like she hasn’t been making an impact in this organization and they’re not recognizing her for her contributions. She thinks she’s going to leave.” Simon says to her, “How long have you been there?” She says, “Three months.” It’s interesting that difference and it comes with a very subtle difference in years. We’re going to keep rolling through these. That was the first key distinction. What is the second one?

The second is that Gen Z, although the assumption and the stereotype are already there, they’re not tech lovers. We are tech natives, not tech lovers. What is the stereotype? You think of all the Gen Z-ers is constantly on their phones, families sitting around the table, everyone’s on their phones, no one’s talking. Yes, those things exist for sure, both, but to draw the distinction between Gen Z and Millennials, Millennials, we’re put into a position where they stumbled into technology. They grew up and social media came their way. They didn’t know what to do with it in a lot of ways and they had to figure it out. Gen Z has been born into technology, but for us, even though teenagers exist and we use our phones all the time. We’re constantly either connecting with people or on social media or networking or sending emails or whatever it might be, we don’t love technology. We love what it does for us, but we view it as a means to an end.

I don’t know about your generation, Chris, but certainly, my grandparents, for them, walking down the street after school one day, picking up a piece of pie from their neighbor’s house, sitting on the porch for a five-minute conversation, that was very typical for their generation. If you can think about that type of mentality and apply it to technology for Gen Z, you’re going to get a good grasp of how we view it. It’s something we take for granted and expect. If companies are behind the times in it, we notice. However, we don’t love it. Here is how it flushes itself out in recruiting as a specific example. When Gen Z-ers were surveyed and asked, “Where do you go to find jobs? When you go to thinking about looking at a company or at an industry, where are you going for your job search?” What percent of them said they’re looking on social media?

I would say 90%.

It’s 32.3%.

It’s totally counterintuitive.

Social media advertising, at least for careers for Gen Z, is not effective. This is what 61.9% said is they’re going to friends and family and referrals. We would much prefer to have that face-to-face high-touch, personalized connection with someone in order to trust a company. That is a huge distinction. We’re also first-generation, not the first generation, but since it’s been happening, and this is in high contrast to Millennials who are into career centers and job fairs in staggering numbers instead of clicking the apply button.

I love to hear that because I think that’s one of the best things I learned. When I was looking for a job, and I give this advice, “Go find somebody that knows somebody within that company and work with them.” Maybe because I’m a pragmatist, that’s interesting.

Tech native, pragmatic and number three is that Gen Z, unlike as many Millennials, is open to non-traditional education paths. The world is changing. We’re talking now, especially the job market, the way it is about how do we create talent instead of hire talent. Gen Z is the perfect generation to focus those efforts on. If you think about it, in other generations, there is this embedding mentally that you have to have a degree or at least you have to have a Bachelor’s and you’re pursuing your Master’s as a way to be pro. Gen Z doesn’t think that way. If you think about my story, it is not very unsimilar to many Gen Z-ers out there who are learning from TikTok. Take real estate as an example and you’ve got people like Danny Miles, who’s a Gen Z-er himself. He’s in Alaska investing in rental properties using banks in the US and he’s got almost 900,000 subscribers. They’re going and learning from him on TikTok. It’s exciting.

What’s crazy is my nine-year-old, do you know what he wants to be? He’s like, “I want to design cars. I want to be an engineer.” I’m like, “You practically get aerospace to design cars when you’re my age.” Do you know what his second career choice is? He wants to be a YouTuber. That’s wild. It blows my mind. I see that and the things that my sons learn off of YouTube, they’ll tell me stuff. I’m like, “Did you learn that in school?” “No, I watched this guy on YouTube. They’re learning about dinosaurs and history.” It’s phenomenal and in a lot of ways, it’s better than the school, which is another conversation that I know we’ve got into a little bit here. We’re more than halfway through these differences. I feel like we could do a show on every one of these. You said there’s five and we’re only through number three so far.

Number four is that Gen Z is very similar to the generation before Boomers, which was the silent generation in terms of our loyalty. Again, the oldest Gen X is 25, so we have yet to see exactly how this will play out. If you think about the distinction between Gen Z and Millennials, Gen Z is more loyal and Millennials were job hoppers.

It’s hard not to be more loyal than a Millennial, though to be fair.

Millennials held on average 7 to 10 jobs by the time they were 30. Gen Z-ers or at least 61%, are saying that they would prefer to stay with a company for ten or more years if the culture and people they work with are in alignment with what they need. You have a generation who understand to think back to the economic influences of what we’ve grown up with. If we’ve had two economic recessions in our short lifetime already, we’re so in need of stability in our life that if an employer can offer that stability in benefits, a spree, or learning and development or mentorship. If we are offered those items in a workplace, then we are very likely going to stay because unlike Millennials, we didn’t grow up with this idea that we had to find our bliss.

We will instead want to grow with a team and learn things from them. Coming back to talent strategy, if you’ve put your talent strategy around Millennial job hoppers, stop for a second and think about what this means for your company. On one hand, what it means is you have something to look forward to but on the other hand, what it means is you have to do an exceptional job at leading a culture, management and leadership styles that resonate with Gen Z. Gen Z, while we’re the most loyal, we’re also much more picky and selective than even Millennials were. We expect personalization and we expect high standards.

That is fascinating. If you’re a company and you’ve spent the last few years really trying to cater towards Millennials to attract that talent, how do you straddle the two? How do you balance that?

This comes down to what you’re trying to accomplish. If you’re talking about recruiting, I would say, you’re going to need messaging that is different for each of these offices. If you’re targeting Gen Z, we need to get intentional about what that messaging looks like. One great example of this is if you look at military recruiting over the past several decades, you’re going to notice that the advertisements change heavily between generations. The type of messaging that resonated with Millennials was very team-focused. “Come join this greater mission of this team that accomplished X, Y, Z.” The messaging for Gen Z, and this brings us into 0.5 of the distinctions, is very much focused on the individual. Gen Z is very individually-minded. We are not team-minded. This can come with a lot of pros and cons, but it’s important to note that.

Back to your point, Chris. If you’re looking at recruiting, I would highly suggest if you are a business with recruiting resources to separate the messaging when you’re trying to reach Gen Z versus Millennials. When it comes to communication in the workplace and engagement, having this awareness and knowledge of what distinguishes the generations, will give leaders a tool so that when you sit down that first week as a manager with your staff, you’ll be at a different conversation with your Gen Z-er than you would with your Millennial hire. Meeting those needs, I would strongly suggest to leaders that if you have the tools in your toolbox, whether it’s the discussion or hundreds of other resources that I include in the book from other phenomenal brains on this or on LinkedIn or on my website, you can take a look. There are so many people who are talking about the different nuances of Gen Z versus Millennials in terms of how they consume goods audit. How does that applies to how you have better conversations with the two generations?

All of this goes down to the fact that we’re all human and we all have core needs and those don’t change no matter what the generation is. We all want to be seen, heard and have a purpose. What does change is what we’ve grown up with, the political factors and the economic forces that have shaped us. In talking about retention, this comes down to the individual. Fill your toolbox with as many tools and resources as possible, so that when you have that conversation with them and are mentoring these Gen Z-ers or Millennials, you can mentally switch between the two and straddle the two generations and meet them where they are.

Being in sales for more than twenty years, if you go back to my first job when I was twelve and a little bit younger than that if you count the trash that I used to collect at our local beach. We talked about different personality types. It doesn’t mean that you convey different information. It’s the way you convey that information. That’s the important thing. If you understand that this is a layer on top of the way you communicate with somebody, treating them as an individual, who they are, where they came from, their background, but also what their generation is and what probably is important to them and resonates with them. This can be very valuable. Hannah, I said, this is so fascinating to me. I know a lot of readers are thinking like, “I want more.” Your book is coming out. I was fortunate enough to check out your cover as you were selecting the cover. I can’t wait to get my copy and read this. What’s the best way for the audience to connect to you? What’s the best way for the audience to get your book and stay in touch with you?

Go to that unique link, HannahGWilliams.com/chrislarsen and there will be a link to order or pre-order the book. You’ll also find links on there to my LinkedIn page, where you can follow me. I post three tips a week for leaders on how to better attract, recruit, retain and engage Gen Z talent, and come to a community of people who are having better conversations about bringing radical empathy into the workforce between generations, the movement that I’m leading. Come and be a part of it. Reach out to me personally. You can do that on my website. I am happy to help in any way that I can and point you in the direction of resources or software or whatever that can help you with the specific needs you have when it comes to Gen Z talent.

Hannah, I’ve been waiting to have you on the show for over a year now. It’s been awesome talking to you and connecting again. I can’t wait to read your book. Thank you so much for sharing all this with our audience.

Thank you for having me, Chris.

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I hope you found this episode valuable. I have one more thing to give to you. We have a page for my coaching clients where you can get a free copy of my book as well as much more from previous guests on the show. Check out NextLevelIncome.com/coaching to get a free copy of my book, audiobook, and much more. I’ll send you a copy of my book and cover all the shipping costs as a thank you for reading. Also, please like, share and take 90 seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts.

Important Links:

• Hannah Williams

• HannahGWilliams.com/chrislarsen

• LinkedIn – Hannah Williams

• NextLevelIncome.com/coaching

• Apple Podcasts – The Next-Level Income Show

About Hannah Williams

Before long, Hannah was religiously consuming business books. She enrolled in college at age 14 and graduated with a degree in international business by 18. Since then, Hannah has consulted Fortune 500 companies and boutique luxury brands and has had the pleasure of working with some of the best and brightest leaders across the globe. Hannah is now on a journey to help companies connect with her generation, and her first book will be published in the Summer of 2021. In a time when the world is increasingly divided, Hannah has made it her mission to foster #RadicalEmpathy in the workplace – helping both young and old gain a voice.

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Tagged: talent, competition, pragmatic, millennials, tech natives, leadership, Group 3