I once heard a government agency CIO speak, and he set a goal – “25% of my new hires will be under the age of 25”.
That statement had a significant impact on me. As someone who has a couple of years (OK, a couple of decades) on the average 25 year old, I know that I do things differently than they do. Some things better, some things worse, but different nonetheless. And, as a sales leader, I recognize that the average age of my customer is closer to 25 than 40-something. Is that age gap between me and my customers putting me at a competitive disadvantage in the market?
Young people bring fresh ideas and new ways of doing things to any organization. It’s important for us, as leaders, to bring in new perspectives to any team. It’s easy to default to the belief that young people don’t have the experience to succeed, but think back to your first few years out of college – did you think you couldn’t succeed? If you’re reading this, you probably thought you could take on the world… and you probably did.
Actionable Idea: My challenge to you is to look at your current team. Do you have a good distribution of tenured AND young professionals? If not, are you missing out with the lack of young, hungry rookies with fresh ideas? Should you approach your hiring differently?
Photo by Jens Schott Knudsen, license: CC BY-NC 2.0
