We always start our new cohorts with a semester we call the “launch” semester. In it we build camaraderie and teamwork through the adventure challenge, introduce students to the classroom, work on communications skills, teach how to cook, clean and maintain a home, and prepare for the marketplace through resume building, interviewing and soft skills training. 

Ever since I’ve taught the marketplace aspect of launch, I’ve dialogued with students about the importance of building the soft skills, character, and integrity necessary to succeed in the marketplace. Much of Gen Z grew up in an economic era in which employees had the upper hand in the employer/employee relationship, where hiring managers and small business owners were so desperate for workers that they would hire pretty much anyone as long as they could show up to work somewhat consistently and didn’t have major criminal histories. 

Of course managers wanted their employees to show up on time and ready to go, with can-do attitudes. Of course they wanted someone who could make customers feel welcome and run a register without pulling out their phone or having a headphone in their ear. Of course they wanted someone who could make sure the grilled veggies didn’t run out, even if the line cook didn’t show up that day (looking at you, Chipotle!). 

Unfortunately, many managers resigned themselves to the realization that these expectations might just be too much to ask in the current job environment, and they had to take what they could get to keep their business open. 

Obviously, this market cycle can’t last forever. Ever since 2020, we’ve warned our students that the economy is a living, breathing organism, and, in turn, so is the job market. Employees won’t always have the upper hand in hiring relationships. Businesses will scale back and managers will be able to afford to - no, they’ll have to - demand more from their employees than just being able to show up and collect a paycheck. 

They’ll once again be looking for problem solvers and critical thinkers. For people with integrity who do what they say they are going to do when they say they are going to do it and who show up on time. Every day. They’ll be looking for people who have people skills and who are motivated to grow and get better. People who clean the bathroom when it needs cleaning, even if it’s someone else’s job. Who, gasp…enjoy showing up to work everyday. Heck, they’ll even make them show up physically to work, refusing to allow for the WFH lifestyle many of us have grown accustomed to. 

This new day in the job market isn’t that far off.

Our next cohort arrives in April, and when I give my spiel, I won’t tell them this day is in the future. This day is now.

If you’ve been paying attention, you might have noticed the string of tech layoffs in the years 2022-2024, with almost half a million industry jobs being shed. Or the massive banks and tech giants that have grown impatient with the output of WFH employees and have ordered everyone back to the office at least on a hybrid level, if not all week. You might have seen President Trump commissioning a Department of Government Efficiency to literally hunt out fat and waste in the federal government’s spending and cut it out, and demanding that employees come back to the office. I’ve heard friends in the federal government and Fortune 500 companies of the past joke about how hard it is to fire someone who isn’t doing their job.

But not anymore.

The era of “just getting by” as an employee is coming to an end, and employers are once again becoming able to have higher expectations of their staff.

What does this have to do with Gen Z? Everything. Because of the lax era they’ve grown up in, they mostly haven’t been prepared for this new season in the job market.

I recently read an article in Fortune Magazine that demonstrated the point perfectly. The first part of the title read “Bosses are firing Gen Z grads just months after hiring them…”, so naturally as someone who works with Gen Z and bosses, it caught my eye. 

The article stated that 6 out of 10 bosses surveyed had recently fired a Gen Z college graduate just months after hiring them. 75% of those surveyed said that some or all of their recent graduate hires were unsatisfactory in some way. Here were some of the reasons:

• Lack of motivation or initiative
• Being unprofessional or unorganized
• Lack of communication skills/using appropriate language in the office
• Timeliness to work and meetings
• Capacity to handle workload

You’ll notice that none of the above are technical issues. They all have to do with character and soft skills. 

We wrote a blog last year about how employers were replacing the traditional college degree with soft skills because they needed to hire people with the character and integrity to succeed in the marketplace. For the most part, they could teach them the skills needed to do the job, but not the character and integrity to sustain it. The employers from this article emphasized the same, citing a positive attitude and the ability to take initiative as the characteristics that would make someone more hire-able. 

The problem for employers is that it takes time to develop character and soft skills. And many don’t have time to teach it. That’s why it’s imperative for those of us working with Gen Z to put a priority on character development and soft skill training. These “intangibles” might seem less attractive from a curriculum or “training” standpoint, but they are everything to the marketplace, and honestly, to the future health of our economy and workforce.

At Excel, we don’t just let students by not showing up to class, we ask them where they were at and hold them accountable. If they have trouble showing up because they don’t get enough sleep? We help them get to the bottom of it so they can create healthy habits and get better sleep to get to class on time. 

Why do we do this? We’re not their parents. But their job future depends on it. 

When students commit to a job, we teach them how to commit and stay faithful to it. If they need to transition for whatever reason, we coach them on how to do it well, setting up their employer well without burning bridges. Why? Because integrity and faithfulness matter.

We’ve helped students who were thriving move into promotions and negotiate pay raises. We’ve helped students who got fired learn to take ownership of the reason they got fired and improve for their next job. We’ve even had mentors drive students around to their first interview, coaching them on how to succeed. We help students negotiate insurance rates, build a budget, learn to pay taxes, and more.

This is a lot more work than just teaching a class, and you might even be wondering if getting this up close and personal is a college’s place. We would ask, if not us, then who? 

The future of our health as a nation and economy depends on Gen Z’s success in it. Let’s all invest in it together.

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