Should employers approach the hiring of Gen Y differently than Gen Z?

Older students such as members of Gen Y a/k/a Millennials are more likely to have families and be pretty set in terms of where they want to live and the kind of work they want to do. They’re far more likely to be changing careers and the decision to change a career is one rarely taken without a lot of thought. Even before they enrolled, they probably knew what kind of a role they wanted and knew that going back to school to continue their education was the best and perhaps only way of achieving that goal. For employers targeting these candidates, best to approach them as you would lateral hires so more like a peer and not as someone new to the workforce.

Younger students such as members of Gen Z a/k/a Zoomers are more likely to be open to relocating and applying the skills they’ve acquired to jobs they may not have envisioned accepting or maybe even jobs they didn’t know existed. They tend to be more flexible, but that flexibility can also lead them into making poor choices that cause them to become dissatisfied and leave for jobs which are a better fit. For employers, it is important not to try to persuade one of these candidates to take a job simply to put a butt into a seat. You want to be confident that employee will be highly productive for years.