Job Interview Suicide

When a close friend recently told me that her financial services company's human resources department was encountering Gen Y candidates for employment who, in the course of interviews, (a) talked like gum-popping adolescents, and (b) repeatedly checked their "smart" phones for email and text messages and, on occasion, actually texted, I thought that she might be exaggerating. I not only was unaware of the problem, I was completely clueless that it extended to law students.

Anna Ivey, former admissions dean at the University of Chicago Law School, had this to say (among many other things) about how law students could enhance their prospects of landing a job.

Talk like an adult. That means learning how to write a decent cover letter and sounding professional on the phone. It also means using grown-up speech patterns. Many law school students don't and won't, and it puts them at a disadvantage. (Reforming speech patterns is hard. I'm a product of my generation, too—Generation X—and I find myself slipping from time to time.) The client, boss, hiring partner, judge, etc., will be less inclined to listen to you if you sound like a high school babysitter.

The word "like" is not a conversation placeholder among the erudite, I suppose.

A recent USA Today article had even more depressing stories about interview behavior among those "of a certain age."

Human resource professionals say they've seen recent college grads text or take calls in interviews, dress inappropriately, use slang or overly casual language and exhibit other oddball behavior.

"It's behavior that may be completely appropriate outside the interview," says Jaime Fall, vice president of the HR Policy Association. "The interview is still a traditional environment."

Fall and other HR executives say such quirks have become more commonplace the past three years or so, and are displayed by about one in five recent grads. They're prompting recruiters to rule out otherwise qualified candidates for entry-level positions and delay hiring decisions.

Among the types of other "oddball behavior" cited in the article are bringing your Dad into the interview, either in person or by telephone, to negotiate a better starting salary, and bringing your cat to an interview and playing with it. I suppose flossing and playing video games during job interviews are soon to follow.

This simply cannot be due entirely to "peer pressure." Aren't parents giving these kids a "heads up" on proper social interaction skills? I assume that a majority of them are, because these oddballs don't appear to constitute a majority of the interviewee "pool." However, the fact that they exist in numbers that merit comment from the main stream media is depressing.

As a "silver lining" kind of guy, I always wax upbeat when I consider that these folks will be the future competition for the clients' legal budgets. As a citizen of a country (and a civilization) I love, I wane a little more gloomy when I consider the long-term implications.

Let's hope that this is a temporary phenomenon that will soon pass, like bell-bottomed jeans and tie-dyed shirts. After all, the country has survived the Baby Boomers. At least it has thus far. How much worse could Gen Y be?