The survey, conducted by education website Intelligent.com, interviewed 966 hiring managers to gauge their opinion of their young employees.
Like a bad job interview, the survey results did not go well. The business professionals complained the new hires have a entitlement mentality (65%), get offended too easily (63%), and have a poor work ethic (55%), among other complaints.
Generation Z is currently the youngest workers in the current work force and also the greatest in number.
Defining the Gen Z generation differs but it typically describes people born between the late 1990s and the early 21st century, roughly from 1995 to 2010.
Elsewhere in the survey, a whopping 79% reported the new hires were placed on a corporate plan to improve their performance. Another 60% reported some of the new hires were eventually fired.
Sandra Kirby, herself a Gen Zer at the American Principles Project, says part of the blame falls on the useless, wasteful school subjects that students have taken going back several generations.
“Pursuing an intellectual life, the more we see it taking away from people's ability to live our real life,” she says. “So these kids aren't learning any real-life skills.”
Among the problems supposedly plaguing Gen Zers, they are accused of embracing the Internet and social media but lacking basic interpersonal skills.
In the survey, poor communication skills was cited by 59% of the business leaders.
Kirby predicts employers will be “really hurting” soon for employees who can perform their jobs.
“Or we're going to see a severe decline in quality of work everywhere,” she warns.
Kirby is a graduate of Thomas More College of Liberal Arts and the Graduate School of Statesmanship at Hillsdale College. She is now director of government affairs at APP after interning there in 2018.
