The Chief Skill Employers Want Isn’t in a Textbook
By Tim Elmore Several years ago, I met with Rich Katt, Cory Epler, and their team at the Department of Education in Nebraska. Our focus was Career and Technical Education. We were determined to create a resource that would cultivate career-ready graduates based on Nebraska’s twelve career-ready standards. We wanted it to be different from any other curriculum we’d seen. In those
Three Doable Ideas to Retain Generation Z Team Members
By Tim Elmore When I talk to managers who say they lose young team members almost as quickly as they hire them, I am troubled. Corporate managers are asking a recent graduate to join a workforce that seems impersonal, like they’re a cog in the machine. While we know it’s tough for those young team members to make the leap from
Six Ideas for Building a Work Ethic into Generation Z
By Tim Elmore Bob Wagner is hiring for three positions at his plastics manufacturing company. In the past, he’s filled these positions with high school and college students as well as recent graduates. These days, he is interviewing older job candidates. In fact, his top candidate is 72 years old. Why? you ask. Bob would tell you he can’t find young adults (from
What It Means for Teens Who Are Going to Work for the First Time
By Tim Elmore What It Means for Teens Who Are Going to Work for the First Time I spoke to a Chick-fil-A owner/operator recently who told me a story I almost couldn’t believe. He said he interviewed a sixteen-year-old high school student who was so sharp, he hired her on the spot. Upon getting her uniform from this notable restaurant brand, she
Now is the Time for Leaders to Step Up
Have you heard about the latest trend? People are resigning from their jobs in droves. By the millions. Inc. magazine reported on The Great Resignation, detailing the numbers; and they’re staggering. The Great Resignation, is a term coined in 2019 by Texas A&M's Anthony Klotz to predict a mass exodus from the workforce. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, during the
Three Social and Emotional Skills to Prepare Gen Z for Their Careers
Laura is an HR executive who just finished her 14th interview in a single week with a prospective job candidate. We spoke by phone at the end of her week, and she told me she was exhausted. When I said I understood her natural weariness, she said it wasn't the volume of candidates that wore her out but rather their
Five Tips for Accelerating Growth through Feedback
The ability to think about yourself from the outside in, like a camera observing from a corner of the room, is a distinctly human capacity. But unless you are actually watching a recording of yourself, the ability to get an accurate outside perspective is limited. You can’t even hear your own voice the way others do until you listen to a
What Employers Should Expect from Generation Z: Vocation Rotation
My head was spinning after talking to Zoe, a 21-year-old who’s quite ambitious. She is taking college courses, has a job on campus, as well as two-side hustles, one as an Uber driver and the other, an app-based non-profit leader Zoe started herself to launch her career. She has some “gigs” going and feels very empowered. This is what’s trending in the
How to Lead in Times of Change
As a kid, I vividly remember getting my first cavity. I had never heard of such a thing, but the dentist explained that I had a hole in my tooth’s enamel that needed a filling. If that news wasn’t bad enough, he went on to ask, “Do you think you and your mother can stay a bit longer today, so