I've had many years of experience of managing people, from the interview process to training them, to the exit process, and yes, younger people aren't as reliable as older people, but not by as quite as large a margin as perceived by most.
I've hired some 18 year kids right out of high school who worked hard, who were eager to learn and advance, who never missed a shift, etc, etc; and I've hired people my age , 50-60 or so, who were absolute **** in every facet of their job performance.
I've been retired from that career for a couple of years, but a couple of months ago our manager, who works directly with the hiring personnel, asked me to stop by for a visit. Like everyone else in the country, we've been struggling to fill our ranks, so he asked me if I had any ideas on how we might better accomplish that since nothing they were trying was working.
I shared with him a few things they might do, but I told him the first thing I'd do is target every local high school's most recent graduates, ( and of course those who will be graduating). Many of those didn't go to college, and that's a very large labor pool.
Our hiring process is waaaaaaaaay too long, sometimes taking up to 3 months. Part of that is running national background checks on older people. People who've moved around quite a bit, moved from job to job over the course of their lives....which is of course 99.9% of us, so they can take a while to compile. My argument was simple: 18 year old's, for the most part, have lived in one place, their parents', and they haven't moved around from job to job: their backgrounds come back WAY faster.
In the past two months they've hired six new people, and they are all 18-19 years old and seem to be very good hires. Our overtime has drastically decreased and everyone is much happier.
( This is the first full weekend I've had off in 5 months)
I've hired some 18 year kids right out of high school who worked hard, who were eager to learn and advance, who never missed a shift, etc, etc; and I've hired people my age , 50-60 or so, who were absolute **** in every facet of their job performance.
I've been retired from that career for a couple of years, but a couple of months ago our manager, who works directly with the hiring personnel, asked me to stop by for a visit. Like everyone else in the country, we've been struggling to fill our ranks, so he asked me if I had any ideas on how we might better accomplish that since nothing they were trying was working.
I shared with him a few things they might do, but I told him the first thing I'd do is target every local high school's most recent graduates, ( and of course those who will be graduating). Many of those didn't go to college, and that's a very large labor pool.
Our hiring process is waaaaaaaaay too long, sometimes taking up to 3 months. Part of that is running national background checks on older people. People who've moved around quite a bit, moved from job to job over the course of their lives....which is of course 99.9% of us, so they can take a while to compile. My argument was simple: 18 year old's, for the most part, have lived in one place, their parents', and they haven't moved around from job to job: their backgrounds come back WAY faster.
In the past two months they've hired six new people, and they are all 18-19 years old and seem to be very good hires. Our overtime has drastically decreased and everyone is much happier.
( This is the first full weekend I've had off in 5 months)
