Twenty Somethings: CIO’s Need You! Most Managers do!
You were weaned on technology. At 3 you helped your dad with his computer. You played video games before you learned how to read. In fact, that may be how you learned to read. And social networking is a natural for you.
Kate Evans-Correia of SearchCIO says it succinctly:
“We are digital immigrants. Our kids and perhaps many of the people we’re now hiring are digital natives. We need to get over the “them vs. us” mentality. Bottom line: Digital immigrants will never be as fluent as natives, but that doesn’t mean, as immigrants, it’s OK to pretend we don’t live in a new world.”
As senior director, news, for SearchCIO.com and SearchSMB.com Evans-Correia is talking to an audience of Corporate Information Officers. She’s urging them to get on Facebook and MySpace so they don’t view it with suspicion or simply as a way to do background checks on new hires. She’s challenging them to join a brave new world that scares the daylights out of them. In other words, she’s urging them to reach out to you.
So how do you position yourself in that job interview? Look at skills you consider natural because all your friends are doing the same things. Think about ways you have helped your parents and your less-techy friends. Your brain is hardwired differently than most people even 10 years older than you. And that hardwiring is exactly what is needed in this highly networked world. Actually, anyone of any age who is a gamer has developed some valuable skillsets corporations are hungry for now.
James Gee, a Professor of Learning Sciences in Wisconsin has reported in a recent Discover Magazine interview, that gaming and other video skills improve your cognition and make you better system thinkers. I would agree. I’ve noticed that my younger hires are much better than I am at analyzing a problem and figuring out the system to solve it.
Here’s the deal — what you consider to be easy to do and prevalent in your social group may be the very skill you have to sell to corporate managers. Don’t go into your job interviews with the same old resumes that a 40-something helped you write. Offer your expertise in systems thinking, your ability to assist the higher ups to understand social networking, your knowledge of the tech world on levels that can’t be taught in a college course.
You may have to think creatively and come up with a whole new way to approach that interview. But if you think of it as a video game, you may just figure out how to navigate through all the levels to the top.
All the best,
Beth
~~~
Beth Terry,CSP, is a Professional Speaker, Author, and Trainer who has interviewed and hired thousands of people in her business career. She has managed people in 18 states, and teaches interviewing skills to management and to people looking to learn how to be interviewed better.
For more on twenty-somethings, go here
©2007 Beth Terry Seminars, Inc.
