The Internet and Google has changed our lives. And yet many companies attempt to recruit Millennials like it is business as usual. When speaking to business executives and organizations, the one thing that seems to startle the audience and help put change in perspective, especially when recruiting millennials, is a popular meme that highlights how much faster people adapt to new technology.
Here’s an excerpt from a recent interview that explains how disruptive technology is accelerating and how companies must adapt to change faster, especially with Millennials now making up the largest generation in the workforce. By 2025 Millennials are expected to make up 75% of the workforce.During the interview I reference the meme about how much time it took to get people to adopt popular technology like the TV, Internet, iPod, and even Angry Birds.
To be fair, the gauge for telephones, radio and TV appears to be the number of U.S. households with that technology, which is tracked by the U.S. Census Bureau, while the Internet, iPod, and “Angry Birds” numbers include users of all types, although it isn’t at all clear exactly what’s counted.
But that doesn’t negate the basic idea behind the scenario. Even if the time spans for adoption aren’t perfect, the premise is – technology is disrupting norms more often and the speed of change is accelerating, whether people like it or not. That has huge implications how companies reach customers and go about recruiting Millennials and candidates of other generations too.