Gen Z: The Transformative Gen?

In many ways, Generation Z, those born between 1970 and 2012, has been affected due to the coronavirus pandemic. Uncertainties worry them about meeting parental aspirations, examinations, and their dreams like graduation celebrations, which now happen virtually, along with increasing concerns for getting employed. Gen Zers are currently facing a tremendous uphill battle to land a job in the middle of the pandemic where there is a lack of access to proper training and scanty internship or placement opportunities. 85.92 per cent of students are seeking internships to kick start their careers whereas 45.9 per cent of graduates are found employable, according to the India Skills Report 2021. The report also stated the hiring intent for the fresh lot of Gen Z stands at the rate of 19 per cent.

However, is being tech-savvy, industrious, self-motivated enough for Gen Z to enter the workplace in the times of COVID-19? Let’s understand their challenges even before they enter the workplace culture and an organization’s expectations from the next generation. 

Challenges of Gen Z waiting to kick start their career  

One of the major issues that have been observed with freshers is that they are confused. With a plethora of new and old career options, they are unaware of which career option to opt for or what kind of job, they want and may end up appearing for wrong job interviews. This would also imply a lack of proper and “Traditional” SWOT analysis or skill assessment on freshers' part. 

Not knowing their aptitude level, skills- both technical and soft, domain knowledge or attitude would fuel the employability issues. For instance, when college gives assignment and projects to complete as part of the education curricula, often students buy projects from the market for submission, thereby missing the sole purpose of thinking, researching, problem-solving, analysing, putting efforts through these assignments in the first place. Also, freshers are often seeded and nurtured through an unchanged approach towards change in the skill needs of employers for freshers.

Society and the workspace world have been intolerant to the experiments and trials that led to failures. Therefore, “failures” that are an integral part of success have never celebrated, creating fear of failure in a way that pressurizes and overpowers the winning fundamental part of one’s being. 

COVID-19 pandemic has impeded the career and earning potential of this cohort of Gen Z, which is the youngest and least experienced generation. The inequality in access to both offline and online training, due to infrastructure issues like no mobile phones or poor internet connectivity has only topped the trials of this generation. Getting an internship or a job is another paradox for graduates. Employers prefer candidates with experience between 1- 5 years over freshers. Where will these youngsters go? 

The solution to empower GenZ

The first step could be test driving career options, starting at an early stage of students’ education/ graduation period. To enable this – one must pick internships/project-based work along with studies to learn, assess themselves for various and different technologies. It simply means to explore career direction as well as career options in your preferred field, to begin with. Then understand the path to establish your career. 

There is a growing need for more and more innovators and leaders in the world. Gen Zers must comprehend their strengths and hone them further by experimenting while failing/winning. It’s time to celebrate both experiments and failures equally. 

Moving towards the lower employability issue, shows the presence or absence of both technical and soft skills. To bring the transformation, Gen Z will have to prepare holistically. Communication coupled with attitude, problem-solving, resilience, analytical and critical-thinking skills is some of the skills preferred by employers. Ignoring these skills like basic communication may result in an inability to comprehend what to talk even during an interview session, increasing their chances of losing the job before even getting one.

There is a need to take on the mantle of connecting industry alignment and accountability to the education system. While leveraging technology, corporate, academia and skill providing companies must come together to design structured programs that could prepare the graduates to handle real-world problems while familiarizing them with the corporate ecosystem.

Gen Z stands the best chance to be the transformative generation we are all looking at. The collective efforts from the government, academia, corporates, training institutions and skill providers can empower Gen Z bringing out the real transformation we all expect. Our youth needs many more initiatives like NEAT 2.0 on a much larger scale.  Reaching out to them across the length and breadth of the country would lead the nation to become the talent pool for the world. 

Om Narayan

Guest Author The author is Head- Enterprise Business Solutions and Academia Relations, Mytat