Career Ladder or Lattice? Gen Z aren’t tuned in

There is no such thing as right or wrong…” goes one quote. Another one says, “Choice, by nature, are not right or wrong. They are only different paths, all ultimately leading to the same end.”

I am sure you have heard of career ladders. What is a career lattice? It is a career path involving lateral and diagonal career movements, along with upward vertical progression of corporate hierarchy. As organizations became flatter, for over 10+ years, managers could no longer offer promoted titles to motivate employees. As a result, expectations of a higher level became significantly different from the level below. Corporations wanted employees to be ready for the higher level first by demonstrating readiness through performance of a higher level. Demonstrating competencies at a higher level becomes an essential condition to be considered for a promotion. Doing a good job at the current level and being tenured wasn’t sufficient to be promoted!

The lattice path hence brought more variety and prepared professionals better, to take up higher roles as and when the role came up. This puts significant pressure on senior managers to explain why it takes time to get promoted in a merit-based work culture.

What about Gen Z? Are they even tuned in to these frameworks?

A lot of them don’t want to be like their parents. Work long hours in a dull job, coming home tired, and not having any energy left to enjoy time with family. They aren’t thinking what they will become 10 years from now. Many are confused with career choices and 2 years of stay at home during pandemic hasn’t helped the networking that typically brings out different career options and what each can consider taking up.

 So, what are they really looking at? I am sure that a very large number of them aren’t sure!

What happens when you hire such a professional? A colleague recently said some very prestigious MNCs are wrapping up interviews in 10 minutes or even less, to roll out an offer! I can imagine firms having to deal these Gen Z who themselves are not clear about their career choices!

Do we have a way out? Why not try working with people on a short-term basis? Give assignments to 2 or 3 people for every position to close, and to be delivered over a period of 1 month.

QWIRK can host these profiles for that period.

Such an approach would also help firms assess candidates on-the-job, including attitude and commitment, instead of crunched interviews.

QWIRK is a freelance marketplace that helps businesses find curated qualified employees for short-term assignments and projects.

Skills categories you can find & hire:

Fullstack developer, PHP, PYTHON, HTML, CSS, Angular, Node, SQL, API, Website Developer, Shopify developer, Rest API, Javascript, Data science, Data analytics, R Programming, AWS, DevOps, AWS Lambda

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