A few months ago my 12 year old goddaughter stayed with me. She is incredibly bright and a wonderful observer of things around her.

One evening I suggested a DVD before she went off to bed.  We chose ‘Friends’  so I delved into my archives (did I mention I collect archive and cult TV) we watched one, ok we watched four.

The next morning over breakfast I asked her what she had thought of the series. ‘I liked it’ she replied then added, ‘although it looks very ancient, very old fashioned ’.

Taken a little aback I exclaimed, ‘really, I know the fashion was a bit of its time but its only 27 years ago’. It was then she said something that really got me thinking, she explained it wasn’t just the fashion  it was the whole package, the film quality (even though it was blu- ray), the sets, the way the script was structured, the type of humor (close to not being PC at times for her) and she said, ‘but Uncle Jason, if you’d watched Friends when you were 12 and it was 27 years old, it would have been made the 1950’s what would that have looked like to you’

Wow, that was a mind blower, imagine Friends, in black and white, humor like I Love Lucy or comedy delivery like Doris Day or Cary Grant all speaking terribly precisely, set design, fashion and even street scenes with modern, for the times, cars.

I think this is something that we must take into account when crafting our recruitment programs. The key is understanding the generational divides. Lets see, we have Traditionalists – prior to 1963 Baby Boomers – 1946 – 1964, Generation X –  1965 – 1980, Generation Y (Millennials) – 1981 – 1995, Generation Z – 1996 – 2010 and coming up fast, Generation Alpha – 2011 – 2025.

Each generation has seen social change, cultural shifts and differing world views. The me too movement brought to light truly appalling behavior and cultures that show the grass of previous generations was not greener and we now live in a society in which the world is much smaller. You can play a computer game with someone on the other side of the world, I can video talk to my brother in Australia whenever I want (time zones permitting) and there is no longer an expectation of a ‘job for life’.

With the past and present, one size does not fit all.  Successful employers and recruiters cannot afford to rely on ‘the way things were’ or ‘this is how its worked for us in the past’. As J.P. Hartley expressed in The Go Between ‘The past is a different country: They do things differently there’. The past isn’t coming back, so we need to grab the present.

We need to watch trends and analyse current motivators (more on this in a future blog), if you are fed up of trying to separate your younger team from their phones, don’t despair, instead use the device as a tool. At Brighton Palace Pier starter paper work and inductions are accessed by phone, training videos on all areas of Pier life and work are created with the help of our friends at Latest TV to be accessed on phones or tablets as a visual aid and reminder of training received. 

Gone are the days of CV’s being dropped off, we have to be proactive so create dynamic social media presences, you go to them now, they invariably won’t come to you, I’m learning Instagram, or I would be of I could get past the cat videos!

As someone once said to me ‘yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery but right now is a gift, that’s why it’s called the present’.