On this very special episode, we deviate from our typical format to share a glimpse into the minds and hearts of the next-generation workforce!
Listen in as host Julie Fernandez experiments with her two sons, both recent college graduates and new to the world of (adult) work in their chosen careers. In true Gen Z fashion, Nicolas and Elias embraced the challenge to test a new podcast gadget and immediately replaced me with interview questions generated by ChatGPT!
We are grateful for every chance to learn from our own kids and from the next generation. We hope you enjoy this short “family experiment” in bridging the work styles and perspectives across generations!
Connect with the show:
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/hr-payroll-2-0
Twitter: @HRPayroll2_0 @PeteTiliakos @JulieFer_HR
Our HR & Payroll 2.0 Series is also available as a podcast on the following platforms:
Apple iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hr-payroll-2-0/id1643933833
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/10HlnoTCwGPVQEtUHNcCWl?si=197255cea5e949be
Audacy: https://www.audacy.com/podcast/hr-payroll-20-aa809
Scribd: https://www.scribd.com/podcast-show/649858828/HR-Payroll-2-0
Podbean: https://www.podbean.com/pw/dir-ur5np-280b3e
Transcript:
Julie Fernandez 00:00
Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of HR and Payroll 2.0. I’m Julie Fernandez. And today I’m flying solo. But I’ll be back again with my podcast partner in crime, Pete Tiliakos, shortly. We’re kind of in that weird in between the holiday season, at least at the time of this recording, and spending time with family with some of the activities that Pete and I have been working on. For the podcast, he recently suggested, I pick up a little piece of technology that allows me to do some recording on the fly, when I’m at conferences, let’s say with some practitioners or at events, and so forth. And so my homework was to actually give that technology a try and test it out and kind of make sure I got comfortable with it. So since it’s a tech thing, I immediately grabbed my two 20-something sons and asked them if they wouldn’t lend the hand. And the result was kind of fun. I thought I’d share it with you all. And so let me give you a little bit of information around the situation. I have two sons, they’re both very, very early in their career. Nicholas has been in his first job and engineering position at DornerWorks, which is a small firm in Grand Rapids, and loves it. And so he’s got a little bit of time under his belt. And my youngest son, Eli, has just started at Ford in a finance rotational program, and so loves it also. And the two of them were home. And we were, you know, poking around and talking about things, including the podcast, and I asked them if they maybe would just play around with it and talk to each other about their, you know, experiences this is their first, you know, kind of post college experience in the workforce. I would say they’re probably on the cusp, I don’t know if they’re really Gen Z or if they’re just above the Gen Z age. But they’ve just started right, just out of college. And so their approach to it was the first thing that was interesting to me. Nicholas was the older of the two, grabbed his cell phone and went straight to ChatGPT and posted a little question and he said, you know, ChatGPT, give me some questions for two brothers interviewing each other about their first jobs. And that generated a whole list of questions. And so you know, instantly, Pete and I, as podcasters were displaced by ChatGPT. That was fun. And it was fun to watch that that’s the first place he thought to go, certainly wouldn’t be my second danger. But already in the early 20, somethings, you know, this is this, Gen AI has kind of infiltrated their way of being in their way of thinking. And so with that list, Nicholas and Eli went and started a conversation running through the questions and kind of asking and talking to each other about their first employment experiences. And they finished up and it was, you know, kind of fun, interesting for me, mostly as the mom did listening, but also in my role in HR, you know, really just hearing a couple of very different and very unique perspectives from, you know, let’s just call it Gen Z, close enough to be Gen Z, in folks that were just starting the workforce, and maybe what they expected and what they’re seeing and experiencing and observing. And the whole approach to everything about this little experiment was just fun and interesting and eye opening. And so here’s, you know, the thought was, we’ll share it with you, I think this will come to you right around that holiday season, when maybe you’re with your own family and friends, and might trigger your thinking to ask or have some conversations, it was fun for me, we might find it fun as well. And anytime you know that you have your family and friends around, feel free. Or if you have folks that are in the younger generations that find this interesting or useful. Maybe we’ll do some occasional podcasts to make sure that all of us are learning and hearing and bridging that multi generational phenomena in the workforce. So that’s enough of the intro leave it to you to enjoy it or not enjoy it. Feel free to share feedback with us so that we know whether you like this sort of thing, something fun and different. Enjoy and thanks to my kids, Nico and Eli for being great sports and teaching me something new, which they often do.
Nicholas Fernandez 04:41
You’re live with Eli Fernandez, who’s just graduated in the last year with a degree in finance and has entered the workforce with one of the big companies, Ford Motor Company. So Eli
Eli Fernandez 04:53
Thank you for the welcome. I’m glad to be here.
Nicholas Fernandez 04:56
Well, Eli, why don’t you tell the the listeners here? What motivates each of you to choose the respective career paths right out of college, this being you and me. We’ll start with you.
Eli Fernandez 05:07
What motivated me? Yeah. Well, it was kind of a mix of passion and logic, I guess, because I found something that I was good at. And that pushed me to pursue that as a profession, as opposed to pursuing my passion, which I kind of would rather keep that as a hobby. So I don’t get bored of it and, and have to work day and night, you know, making that work. So I found out I was, I was decent at finance. And I didn’t mind doing it, loved it, and decided to pursue a career in it also, figured it would help me in my personal life, with my personal finances and all that. So it kind of doubles down as something that can help me outside of the job as well.
Nicholas Fernandez 05:46
Well, I like building robots. Can you share your initial expectations about your jobs and how they compare to the reality of work? What were you expecting?
Eli Fernandez 05:55
I was expecting a lot more work. Honestly, I think, I don’t know if it’s my job specifically. But I do think that college conditioned me to work my tail off. And then I got out into the work world, and it’s like, you’ve finished your nine to five day and there’s nothing, it’s just an open gap where I would usually be doing homework till two in the morning, you know, whatever it may be. There’s just there’s nothing there. So I guess that was kind of a letdown a bit. I have a lot of free time. I don’t know what to do with it.
Nicholas Fernandez 06:26
It won’t last long. Were there any surprising challenges or obstacles that you encountered during your first month? On the Job?
Eli Fernandez 06:33
Relearning accounting, that was a pain, I’m not going to lie. I didn’t touch accounting since sophomore year of college.
Nicholas Fernandez 06:40
I’d say code version control. It’s not something they teach in school. So how to work in a big project with a lot of developers, I had to self teach that one. They had some mentors and stuff like that. But you had to pick up a lot on the job. How have your experiences different considering you’re both in different fields?
Eli Fernandez 06:56
You can take charge on this one.
Nicholas Fernandez 06:58
I don’t know exactly what your experience was like. But I went to work for a small company. And it’s very family focused, in the sense that there’s a camaraderie and I know everyone around the office, everyone in my building, who comes into the office and doesn’t work remote and stuff. And so I’ve garnered a lot of friendships from that I organized my work rectly team, and actually hanging out with several of my coworkers outside of work, which I thought was really nice. So it almost created a separate community, instead of school where it was a lot bigger. And I just had a couple friends in my program that I got really tight with, but no, like larger sense of community. I thought that was interesting.
Eli Fernandez 07:43
I have no work friends.
Nicholas Fernandez 07:44
You have no work friends?
Eli Fernandez 07:46
Not one.
Nicholas Fernandez 07:46
Do you have a cubicle or are you in an office by yourself?
Eli Fernandez 07:49
I am wherever I want to be. Sometimes I am in an office by myself. Sometimes I’m in open desk layout, where it’s monitor, monitor, monitor, monitor, and you just have a row of people working, but the office is usually empty anyway, all buildings. So I work at three or four different buildings, and they’re all typically empty.
Nicholas Fernandez 08:07
Interesting. Have you found any commonalities in your experience, despite the different industries you work in? I don’t know if it’s too many things that I found in common. I think it’s just looks different. Because I stayed in a different city. I don’t live at home to set cash. So we took a different approach there. And then I think maybe some of the same experience of like having a lot of time outside of work. I have certain things that I have committed myself to like my rec leagues, or lately I’ve been into swing dancing or you know, different clubs or associations. I actually have the liberty to do that. Where in engineering school. I did not have a life, which was interesting. So I think that is the same. I don’t think anything else.
Eli Fernandez 08:57
interesting.
Nicholas Fernandez 08:59
Or saving, making the big boy cash now and sacking it away.
Eli Fernandez 09:02
I do. More of it though, I need a part time job on top of this.
Nicholas Fernandez 09:11
Can you share any memorable moments or anecdotes from your early days in the workplace?
Eli Fernandez 09:16
I’m gonna buy interesting, I made a lot of mistakes. Right out the gate. They were like, Hey, do this journal entry. And it was my first journal entry ever doing with their system. It was like $3 million. I was like, I feel like I’m not qualified to do is. And I submitted it. And of course, it was wrong. But luckily, they had a lot of checks and stuff. So it had to be approved by a supervisor so immediately got rejected.
Nicholas Fernandez 09:40
I got a pretty good one. So when I was first happening on the teams meetings and stuff like that, I got put onto my first billable project, and I was working with a senior engineer at the time, but he was remote out of Florida. So he didn’t work in Grand Rapids office, one of the few people that’s remote my company, and so we have like code debugging sessions together over teams. And one time, he hopped on a call, and I had my video on, and he had his video on. And he started sharing his screen and presenting the code. And we’re going through and doing a review. And in the middle of it, he takes off his shirt. And I don’t say a single thing. And then at the end of our debug session, he closes out sharing his screen, realizes he’s shirtless, and says, Oh, I’m sorry, it’s just hot as hell here in Florida. And I didn’t realize I had my camera on that whole time. And that was one of my first like, I thought that I mean, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know I thought he was just going with the flow. And that’s how like, relaxed about developer he was. And I just thought that was company culture, like, okay, we’re relaxed here. And I just let him go the whole time shirtless and not say anything that he had his camera on.
Eli Fernandez 10:49
I’m glad you didn’t think it was protocol, and then proceeded to take your shirt off. Oh, this is how we roll here?
Nicholas Fernandez 10:56
Well, I was in the office, I thought maybe it was like work from home, you can work out you want to work? I guess? I don’t know. What have been the most valuable lessons you’ve learned at your first jobs, and how they share shaped your career outlook?
Eli Fernandez 11:14
Definitely the fact that nobody is going to tell you what to do, you kind of have to, at least in my experience at my job so far, I had very, like little training right out the gate. And then from there, it was like, Okay, now you can figure it out your a big boy, you know, like, do these things on your own and stuff, like after a four year degree where your professors are delegating all of your work and everything you need to know. And it’s you don’t have to really think for yourself, you do have to manage your own time. And that’s like the step from high school to college is okay, now I’m on, you know, my own terms that I have to figure this out. But then it’s like, from college to the workforce. It’s like, okay, now I really got to figure this out. Because nobody is there to help, at least in my experience, I don’t know if that’s a poor experience, that might be an HR issue.
Nicholas Fernandez 12:04
I thought mine was like not not having metrics anymore. So it’s like, you have to generate your own metrics to quantify your own success. Like in software development, like we have tasks and resolving tasks feels good. And getting code merged in and like, contributing to projects is feels good. But the besides the feedback, which is like from senior developers for like, how to best practice with the code, there’s no like grade associated with anything. And so there’s no instant gratification of like, I did really good. So the only metrics you have are like your salary, your title, your so you just have to find something because those things might change, you know, yearly, or every few years. Yeah. Right. And it’s like, if you don’t get that instant gratification, like what milestones are you setting up for yourself, in the meantime, to like, satisfy that hunger and that craving for like, validation that you’re doing a good job, or at least not being a bad employee? You know, I thought that was like, I had to fix that real quick. How is your relationship as brothers evolved as you support each other through the ups and downs of starting your careers?
Eli Fernandez 13:13
I think, you know, the fact that we’re moving on in life and progressing through our careers and stuff, but then retaining the same connection that we had before, I would be so upset if our relationship was just like talking about our jobs. Yeah. And it’s like we never do like I know very few things about your job, because we just talked about other stuff. We talk about life, we talked about, you know, women, we talked about going out and socializing and all that stuff.
Nicholas Fernandez 13:40
Yeah, I don’t talk to alot people, tend to fall asleep when I start talking about what I do, or what it means. There’s blank stares. It’s isolating, for sure. But it’s fun to work at a company of engineers, because then we can all be nerds. And then it works in that way. So I don’t, I wouldn’t bring a lot of that. Maybe have some people finding like new common ground with their sibling would bring them closer, like being in the same stage again. Or if there was maybe more of a age gap between siblings. It’s like now you’ve since careers and career lasts so long, you know. So it’s like your your sibling could be like 10 years older than you. And you finally enter your career and your siblings been in it for 10 years. You’re finally in like the same stage of that aspect of your life. But we’re so close that it’s like we’ve had we have been in the same stages overlapping for many years. So yeah, I think it’s kind of hasn’t changed, because it’s always been like that. What advice would you give to recent college graduates who are about to enter the workforce?
Mr Fernandez 14:43
Come and get it guys!
Eli Fernandez 14:45
That’s dinner. The question will remain unanswered for the rest of eternity. When there’s hot food on the table, make sure you’re there.
Nicholas Fernandez 14:54
Don’t assume you the smartest person in the room. The bigger ego you have the more room you have to fall and swallow your pride.
Julie Fernandez 15:02
Goodbye!