Does your business have trouble either attracting or retaining Gen Z sales reps this year? Potential Gen Z sales reps are part of the emerging talent pool for your teams.
Within the next decade, Gen Z will represent almost a third of employees in North America.
So, you need to recognize the ways they may respond differently to your advertisements and your business working ethos.
The older ones entered the workforce in 2019 and currently they’re hopefully seeing your ads.
All of them are digital natives and some are already digital entrepreneurs in their own right. (A few are already in decision-making positions with SMBs you’re marketing to!)
But the main factors contributing to your possible difficulty in recruiting and keeping them are:
- their online expertise,
- their facility with free online courses to help them learn quickly, and
- their way of looking at life this decade.
The challenge isn’t whether you want to hire Gen Z reps but how to help them want to work with you.
Here are five business issues you might consider.
Rethink the Job Description for Gen Z Reps
Job specs haven’t changed much recently – except for the addition of the vague “AI familiarity” request.
Older Millennials and Gen X are comfortable with having to plow through long lists of “essential” and “preferred” requirements.
Not so Gen Z reps. They understand that certain key skills are essential and all the rest can be coached by you or gained online quite quickly. If you list too many required skills like an all-encompassing menu, they will self-disqualify fast.
Linked to this is transparency.
Many of the older Gen Z cohort haven’t worked in large teams or traditional hierarchies. The endless list of requirements says to them “obscurity and obfuscation.”
They value everything being clear – not simply because they may not understand how things work in a larger business but because they’ve been “deceived” by adults a number of times. Think Covid rules, exam adjustments, job promises, the economy, the climate, etc.
Which means the smartest response is to cut through the noise: Prioritize 3–4 main skills (e.g. communication, persistence, coachability, curiosity) and train for the rest (see below).
Here’s a tip: If your ad reads like a wish list, rewrite is as roadmap.
Example roadmap: Instead of ‘3 years of B2B sales experience,’ try ‘We’ll teach you how to sell effectively if you bring a genuine interest in solving customer problems.’
This is absolutely clear, and they can measure themselves against it immediately.
Offer All-Round On-Site Training to Gen Z Reps
Gen Z have had to work hard to manage life amid all the global shapeshifting. Many are acutely aware of what they don’t yet know.
Countering this is the fact that they’re very willing to learn on the job.
The worst mistake older leaders can make is to expect them to know all manner of stuff from part-time student jobs and early office exposure they’ve never had.
What’s likely missing? Office etiquette, teamwork, CRM basics, internal communications systems, feedback routines, etc.
But also, something basic. Digital life and technology have limited many risks for them. They may not have had much experience of failing, thinking on their feet, or working through to success.
In sales, these are pretty important skills!
The solution to this is not to bemoan Gen Z reps and call them snowflakes but to offer a clear plan for mentorship and learning paths – flagged up from the start, in the ad, in the interview, in onboarding, and in personal sessions with them.
So what about keeping them in your teams to avoid quiet quitting?
Define Upfront What Flexibility Means in Your World
Despite the current assumption that Gen Z reps want to work from home and do as little as possible, this isn’t necessarily true. They do expect to have a life and work within paid hours, though!
However, this doesn’t mean they expect flexibility to result in a blank check.
They want autonomy not anarchy. They value security and “knowing.” That’s why so many have had side hustles before coming to you for an interview. They’ve been delivering results their way.
So – discuss hours, hybrid options, and expectations early. The clearer you are, the happier they’ll be, because, as we said, they’ve had a rough time with adults quite often. Ambiguity always leads to an element of mistrust and confusion.
Explain how you will
- allow (for example) flexibility of hours in how they handle prospecting or admin, but also
- how they must contribute to maintaining some sort of cadence to your team’s collaboration.
How to Compete with Gen Z’s Side Hustle Mentality
This is a smaller point but significant. Gen Z reps often have (or have had) a side gig. Unless you show them how your sales career can deliver the same learning curve and ownership they get from a side hustle, you’ll lose them to it.
Demonstrate with examples that you offer visible progression based on performance not tenure. Otherwise they’ll leave. They don’t put up with waiting their turn till someone older moves up!
Offer extra digital skills development – applying what they know to benefit your business where appropriate. For example, using their knowledge to do their sales role better.
Assure them this is the kind of initiative you value and reward. (And make sure you do!)
Gen Z Reps Value Feedback with Intent
Because of the uncertain times they’ve grown up in, Gen Z reps value leaders when you give concise, constructive, and consistent feedback that explains why.
Structure will help them: regular short touchpoints with learning, goals, and debriefs to ensure they advance in terms of performance.
It’s good to listen to them, too. They may well be more current on AI tools than you are!
To put this in the context of hiring and retaining, your investment in mentoring is your best retention tool.
And if all this sounds like lowering your standards, it’s not. Better to view it as modernizing your expectations!
The same fundamentals apply as ever: clear goals, good leadership, and a sense of belonging and purpose.
360 Consulting Can Help with Hiring Gen Z Reps
We’ve worked with many leaders in many verticals who’ve struggled to keep good talent or failed to find them at all. It’s our belief that the Gen Z cohort are hard workers but have had a different background to much of Gen X and Millennials.
If you offer to train them and trust them, they will be your star players in future. Call us if you’d like help!