On the Friday 15 Podcast, Andy & Brian talk about the challenges B2B companies have hiring junior staff out of college.

Are B2B companies able to offer the opportunities that Gen Z’ers want?  And if so, why don’t members of Gen Z know that?

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Brian Beck: Welcome to Friday 15 everyone. My name is Brian Beck. I’m here with Andy Hoar, my partner in the Master B2B e-commerce community and thought leadership series. We welcome you to Master B2B. Happy Friday Andy, good to be here. We’ve got some really interesting stuff. In fact, Andy, our breaking news today has something to do with robots taking over the world. And here they come. What is this about?

Andy Hoar: So, we’re looking at robots from Elon Musk. Robot Army is going to show up and serve us drinks. What’s going on with this? Well, you know, this isn’t a real news broadcast, but it kind of felt a little bit like it this morning because we had a whole thing planned for the beginning and then we saw this and we’re like, we got to rip it up, new breaking news. So, yesterday, which I think might go down in history as a very momentous day in the grand scheme of things, October 10th. Elon Musk announces that the Optimus robot is finally here. They’ve been talking about it for a long time, but nobody’s really ever seen it, heard it, you know, in fact, he even joked that they used to dress people up in robots to make them look like this so they can fake it. But that’s not real and he launched them yesterday in a big Hollywood-like production thing. And all I got to say is, oh my God, if you haven’t seen this yet, you need to go watch the video. There’s videos of these guys, but essentially he opened a world where we’re going to have robots living amongst us, serving our food, cleaning our houses. Babysitting your kids, walking the dog, all sorts of stuff. It’s stuff that humanity used to do. Bu this just broke yesterday and that’s why we had to say something about it. And actually, the funny thing is we were looking at this as, hey, this is the kind of thing where B2B may be an early adopter of this stuff because these robots are already working in factories. They may just come forward. And so it might make it a cool place to work. But on the next slide, if you haven’t seen it yet, you’ve got to go online and watch at least one video. And it’s a video of this guy who’s not exactly the best spokesperson for things. But he’s talking to one of these Optimus robots. And you just don’t, you can’t believe it’s not a human. And that’s all I’m going to say. You got to check this out because it’s incredible. And a year or two ago, I think people would have thought the whole thing was fake. Like it was an AI video. But after ChatGPT and all the interactions we’ve had with these technologies, where it’s natural language, et cetera, you can now look at us and go, oh, yeah, I believe this. And that’s what’s stunning.

Brian: Yeah, this is amazing. Growing up, Andy watching movies like Blade Runner, where people are interacting with robots essentially. This is becoming a reality. It’s really, really fascinating. A little scary, too. Elon Musk is really interesting because he does make his own sort of thing happen. He doesn’t ask for permission to do anything. We’re chatting about that prior to our Friday 15 today. He just kind of goes out and does it. As a personality he’s also going to go down in history as someone who is a true innovator, just like Jeff Bezos and others in the conversations.

Andy: He does. Howard Hughes. And they’re all crazy when they get older. You know what I’m saying? Let’s see what happens.

Brian: The Spruce Goose comes flying in…Well, you know, this is fascinating. You know, it has implications for our topic today, which is – Is B2B destined to always be second choice for employment for Gen Z. The Gen Z folks, Andy, they’re moving into the workforce. You know, they’re in their 20s now and they’re taking entry-level positions. And this is a really interesting topic and it kind of comes out of some of the topics we’ve discussed in our recent Friday 15 episodes. And we asked the question, what are actually Gen Z’s career aspirations? What are they actually looking for? So again, Gen Z is the younger cohorts. Those folks, I think it’s between 12 and I think 25, 27, somewhere in that age range, if I’m not mistaken. So the younger portion of the workforce, obviously the 12-year-olds aren’t going into full-time employment yet, at least not in the United States. However, you know, what are these folks looking for? Well, you know, it’s interesting looking at statistics from a variety of sources here. This is some data from Morning Consult with the trade and industry development group. Says, you know, number one, work-life balance trumps job security. So they’re looking for, you know, that age-old, you know, hey, we want to be able to live a life at the same time we’re working. And we don’t honestly care. And I don’t know how different that is necessarily from how Gen Z or Gen X, my generation felt when we entered the workforce, but what’s interesting here is what kinds of jobs were they looking for? The top jobs, media and entertainment and healthcare are the top target industries, not our traditional B2B industries. 57% of Gen Z’ers said they would like to become a social media influencer, which is interesting.

Andy: I’m surprised it wasn’t higher than that, to be honest.

Brian: Everybody’s looking for, you know, there are 15 minutes of fame. And again, maybe if we had social media when I was coming of age as in the 20s, I would have said the same thing. Of course, Andy, I wanted to be a rock star, but as a piano player.

Andy: They’re still time, Brian. You’re going to Cleveland next week. They’re still time.

Brian: That’s right. Rock and roll, hall of fame, here I come. And then nearly 40% of Gen Z’s have both a job and a side hustle. That to me, that’s a new thing, right? That shows some, entrepreneurialism and shows some sparks, some initiative. And then we looked at what are the top preferred employers in those categories. One of the things that jumped out is of course tech positions, and company’s like Google, Amazon, Apple, Disney. What’s not in here is a lot of, guess what? That traditional B2B industries like, oh, I don’t know, HVAC, electrical plumbing, building materials and all the traditional chemicals and metals that our audience are leaders in these categories.

Andy: Yeah, banking and stuff like that. The auto industry, those are at the bottom of the list. I mean, when we were younger, those were kind of the rock solid industries. You wanted to go into banking or the auto industry or, you know, even retail. Those things have declined. Even some of these famous brands like Sony and Nike, Starbucks, they’re well down this list. So we’ve known this for a couple of years now. Everybody wants to work in high tech. Maybe that has maybe peaked and started to slide a little bit. But what people don’t realize is to work at Google and Amazon and Apple is not a cakewalk to get in the front door is quite an undertaking. I used to go into Silicon Valley and I know people who had 20 interviews for some of these companies and still that told them. For Apple, definitely one to two percent of candidates are actually hired. Now, they probably get a lot of people who want to work there. But it doesn’t change the fact that you don’t just walk in the front door. You have to be very well educated. You have to work your tail off. You basically have to be at the place, now with return to work mandates. You got to be there six, seven days a week. And so it’s a lot, it’s a hard job. It’s sexy and it’s fun. And everybody’s got an iPhone, but it’s a lot of work. And then Google, just as another contrast, the interview process can take up to seven rounds. I knew people who had 20 rounds of interviews. And you know, and even then once you get there, there’s no guarantee. You’re not guaranteed the job for any period of time. You have to keep producing and improving yourself and it’s hyper competitive. We know about Amazon. Amazon, we’ve thrown Amazon in this too. How difficult is it to get to work at Amazon and then how difficult is it to stay at Amazon?

Brian: These are very metrics driven and to your point, very competitive. So yeah aspirationally, folks can say, hey, I want to work with my, with my passion or in these sexy industries. But then, this is a great quote here from Scott Galloway, if anyone knows Scott Galloway he’s a professor at NYU and has written books. He started a couple of businesses and successfully exited them over the years. But he said something really interesting. He’s a well known personality. He said, passions don’t often pay the bills. Acting has a 99% unemployment rate and 83% of them, the employees don’t have health insurance because they don’t make more than $23,000 a year. So his point is simply that following your passion, this sort of notion, this romantic notion of following your passion is sort of silly if you’re practical about it.

Andy: Yeah, is this social media influence the new acting basically? Remember back in the 80s, I was like, I want to be in the movies, I want to move to Hollywood, I’ll be a waitress for a couple of years and I’ll get my big break. How is social media influence any different, right? Oh, I’ll just film a video and I’ll put it up and I’ll go viral and like I paid hundreds of thousands of dollars on my own TV show and a reality show. It sounds very similar. And I think these numbers probably apply the same to social media influence.

Brian: And you can see how successful I’ve been in my rock star career, Andy. Clearly, I’m playing in arenas.

Andy: I thought B2B was your passion project.

Brian: Well, it is. It is. It has evolved to become my passion. Andy, don’t worry. So we asked, we wanted to know, so let’s match up. Does B2B actually have what Gen Z wants from their employer? So we went and we found this checklist from Deloitte Insights and it says, what do these folks want? And what do we find, Andy?

Andy: It’s work life balance, diversity, inclusion, mental health awareness, clear career progression, which is a big one, and now I’m introducing some non-traditional benefits. 15 years ago, most companies didn’t have any of this stuff. B2C, B2B, period, right? Then B2C adopted it first, but B2B is doing this stuff too now. And so we talk about this, that people think of B2B as kind of some island out there that nobody goes and visits. You have to take a special ferry there. It’s not any different from B2C in any regards. And in fact, for B2B brands, they’re very similar to B2C brands. They have different audiences and make different products. But the companies are very functionally similar. So when we went down the list, we said, wait a minute. B2B offers all these things that B2C offers and all that Gen Z seems to be looking for. And so, maybe Gen Z should take a reality check here and look at this and say, wait a minute. And by the way, B2B is hiring. They want people and they’re the ones that make things that keep the world afloat and working. It just isn’t quote unquote sexy, right?

Brian: Right. Well, what’s interesting about this too is it strikes me that yes, Gen Z probably should take another look Andy. But also that the companies themselves need to do a better job of telling Gen Z in the hiring process that they offer these things, right? So we asked our community. We posted this on LinkedIn and got a lot of very interesting comments, particularly from folks in consulting and executive search. So Harry Joiner, those of you who may know Harry, he’s been in e-commerce, he’s known as the e-commerce recruiter. That’s the name of his company. He’s been doing this for a long time. I’ve known Harry for probably 15 years or more. And he commented and he places folks in these e-commerce roles. He says in general, they meaning Gen Z don’t seem to like the idea that B2B relationships must be nurtured. And kicking the tree does not hasten ripening. I love that. They like the instant gratification of direct to consumer. They also like the fact that in DTC you never actually talk with the customer. They don’t like a phone. That’s hilarious Harry. Thank you for that.

Andy: I like how he’s on the phone in the picture too.

Brian: I know, right? He’s on the phone. Well, he’s not Gen Z. He’s one of us.

Andy: This doesn’t surprise me at all. And I used to call this generation the text not talk generation because they don’t want to talk to people. And unfortunately, that’s kind of a requirement in the job in B2B especially when it comes to customer service.

Brian: Rick Wingender who commented actually last week on our post, he’s the director of Integrated Marketing at Mueller Sports Medicine. He said something interesting, B2B businesses will be seen as stifling to them, meaning Gen Z. They don’t take direction well. And so they’re better suited to small startup consumer businesses. Interesting. And Rick did studies on this in his graduate work. He cited that in his last or earlier post. So he’s saying that maybe they’re better suited for other kinds of businesses and all the process and things might be stifling. But Gen Z, a notice to you – those companies like Apple and Google and Amazon all have processes you need to abide by and work within that are, I’d argue probably even more stifling in some ways than the B2B companies.

Andy: And at places like Apple and Google, you’re on the clock constantly, meaning, if you don’t produce every year and at a certain level, they’re going to kick you out. Not to say that B2B is not going to hold you as accountable, but B2B is a little slower moving. It’s a little bit longer term time horizon. They tend to value the contributions make people make over time. I think you can get better work life balance in a B2B company than a B2C company. Certainly better than in Silicon Valley because again, I used to work there. And the work life balance was, do I get Sunday off? I mean, that’s the work life balance. People lived in their offices and it’s like, yeah, you want to work there and have work life balance? Good luck.

Brian: You took a day off last year. Come on. We’ve got one more quote I want to highlight here, Andy. This is from Dmitry Con, the founder of Access Solutions. Dimitry, thanks for your comment. He says, as the sexy quote unquote, verticals become saturated compensation in B2B will rise, making roles in these classic sectors increasingly appealing. In the end, what might be a missed opportunity for one person, you mean one of the job seekers, could very well become a gain for another. So what he’s saying is, hey, be smart. Don’t write these companies off. B2B companies, when you’re job searching, pay attention. They’re going to pay better and they’re going to appreciate you more, right? So there’s a real opportunity here.

Andy: More opportunity, too. You get opportunities in B2B. And let’s be honest, in places like Apple and Google, there are going to be people who are better, smarter, faster than you are. You’re not going to get an opportunity to move laterally into a different area and say, hey, I try this, because the guy over there, the woman over there who’s already doing it has been doing it for five years in this world class. And a B2B company, I hear this all the time from B2B companies. We bring people in, if they perform, we’ll give them opportunities in other areas. And get that at Google and Amazon and Apple.

Brian: Yeah, so it’s just harder. I think B2B deserves a strong look from Gen Z. For some of the key reasons that Gen Z’s looking for, in terms of career advancement to your point, Andy, it’s one of the key five things they say they’re looking for. B2B is going to be a great place for you. These companies are now investing in employee programs, development programs. We’ve seen this from a variety of companies in our community for new entrants and new folks. And we see there’s a loyalty in B2B that doesn’t exist in a lot of other industries and loyalty to employees. You hear stories of family owned businesses or even large companies that are staying loyal to employees, even in times when the economy is not cooperating. So there’s a real benefit, I think, to B2B for Gen Z. So we asked our audience, though our LinkedIn community doesn’t necessarily agree. We asked the question, is B2B destined to always be Gen Z’s second choice for employment? 65% said yes. It’s okay, fine. So maybe it’s not sexy enough. But those 35%, the people that say no, that they should look at it, that they think it’s something worth evaluating. There’s real opportunity for you there. And frankly, I think it’s smart of the younger folks who have a level of maturity to look at this stuff in a different way and not try to be social media influencers. Because there ain’t that many.

Andy: Well, and the thing is, let’s be honest here, I think most of the issue lies with B2B. They’ve done a very bad job collectively of promoting and marketing themselves. They think it’s just good enough to be who they are. And I remember years ago B2C companies thought that too. And then they had to learn how to market themselves to a younger generation. B2B needs to do that, and it hasn’t done it yet en masse. Some companies have a little bit, but there’s a massive opportunity here for companies to onnect with younger generations. Because like we said, they’ve got the pieces here, but they’re not telling the story.