With our interns I have noticed a disturbing trend, and that is that they don't know any of the classics. By this I mean classic movies, music or TV shows. Now some of you may be thinking that I'm just old and expecting 20 year olds to know all the lines to Tommy Boy is ridiculous but I beg to differ.
In our internship program we have added a cultural enrichment portion that goes over such classic movies as Tommy Boy, Rocky and Old School. We also go over great music like AC/DC, Rolling Stones and Frank Sinatra. The point of this is that kids these days are going to be interviewing with people that are my age. As such they should be able to relate to those people by understanding cultural references that people of my generation make.
There is so much talk about understanding the IY generation but in my mind I feel it's really their problem to understand my generation and relate to it as I already have a job and have accomplished things.
If you are a young person and you want to be successful in this field or any field, then you must have a mentor. The best way to get a mentor is to find a successful person in your field that you can relate to. The best way to relate to a person is to understand their experiences and where they come from. You cannot do this if you don't understand a joke they make that is a line from Tommy Boy and you have never seen the movie.
It is a fact that people only do business with people they trust, people only trust people they like and people only like people they can relate to. So if you are young and want to do well in any field, I suggest that you embrace all the things my generation grew up with and you will go a lot further, a lot faster.
This seems like a silly concept or a trivial issue but I assure you that being able to relate to the people that are responsible for hiring you is crucial to your success.