Dive Brief:
- Members of Generation Z are attracted mostly to tech careers that have a high degree of job security, according to a new report by Indeed. On the whole, the youngest U.S. generation is also attracted to fair and inclusive employers offering purposeful work.
- Indeed polled Gen Zers on their career preferences and found that nearly half of the top 15 job choices are in the tech industry; four of the top five alone were tech jobs, including iOS developer, computer vision engineer, machine learning engineer and audio engineer. Indeed concluded that Gen Zers are naturally drawn to such careers, having grown up during both the Great Recession and the post-iPhone tech wave.
- Alongside careers requiring high eduction investment like dentist and anesthesiologist, respondents were also interested in taking service-oriented jobs that don't require additional years of school and can be filled immediately, including daycare assistant, bridal consultant and "game master" (the title of those who operate escape room facilities).
Dive Insight:
It is perhaps good news that the youngest entrants into the workforce may focus their job hunts on tech careers. Skills gaps have hit those in the tech industry particularly hard amid high demand, with growth in IT jobs alone being eight times that of other job categories, according to a Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of British Columbia study.
Gen Zers, defined by statisticians at Pew Research Center as having been born after 1996, have lived through unprecedented technological change and as a result might challenge the perceived "digital native" status that is often conferred on millennials.
Non-tech jobs were also high on Gen Zers' list of preferences, but most jobs today and in the future will require some technological knowledge and skills, a Brookings Institution study found. To succeed in their chosen professions, Gen Zers will likely need to learn new technical skills, even for non-tech professions.
Those looking to market job offers to younger hires will need to plan ahead for the accompanying disruptions of a five-generation workforce. Two particularly large areas of focus for HR on this front will be communication and employee benefits.
Research shows that members of multigenerational workforces find it difficult to communicate with co-workers of different age groups. And the unique life circumstances of both Gen Zers and millennials — compared to generations that came before them — mean that both groups could demand different types of benefit offerings from their employers.
