Employment Pool: Gen Y Comes With New Needs

Some call them Gen Y. Some call them Millennials or Generation Next. Whatever its name, the reality of this group remains the same — it's the generation now entering the workforce.

A big challenge for employers in every industry is not only knowing how to attract those potential employees, born roughly between 1980 and 2000, but also how to pique their interest and turn them into leaders before the Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, retire and leave gaps in the labor force.

So what are employers in this industry doing to spark Generation Y's interest in tradeshows, conventions and hospitality?

For some organizations, it's a matter of scholarships and special rates to meetings — giving students the opportunity to experience the industry from the ground up while they're still in college.

The Jan. 11–13 Assn. for Convention Operations Management Annual Conference at the Westin Seattle is one such opportunity. For the past few years, ACOM has offered students a discounted registration fee, but this January will be the first time a student will be able to attend at no cost because of a scholarship, the Donald S. Freeman Jr. ACOM Conference Scholarship.

Freeman representatives also will mentor the scholarship recipient before, during and after the conference, which is collocated with the Professional Convention Management Assn.'s Annual Meeting.

PCMA is another organization that offers a special rate to students — early registration for them is $230, compared with $650 for professional members — and scholarships to attend the annual meeting.

And it's working to get students there.

The 2007 meeting in Toronto marked the first time the PCMA student chapter from Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Mich., attended, said Amy M. Dorey, an assistant professor in the university's hospitality program. Four students went, and six plan to be there in January.

"They want much more than they are finding in the classroom, and they expect much more interaction (than in the classroom)," Dorey said of her students.

In August, the Ferris hospitality program started a new minor, meeting planning. In anticipation of it, Ferris students launched a PCMA student chapter in August 2006.

PCMA also helps out by holding faculty and student sessions the Sunday before the meeting starts.

"This allows students to attend sessions geared directly to them," Dorey said. It also leaves students time later in the week to attend the professional sessions at the meeting, so their knowledge of the industry is up-to-date.

"It's exactly what they're looking for when they go to these conferences," she added.

Demographers widely report that members of Generation Y are the most educated workers ever (record numbers are graduating from college), and that they want, and are used, to cutting-edge technology. Dorey also said her students want the ability to network with professionals and use those connections for guidance and mentoring, another characteristic this new generation of workers has that its elders might not have had at the same age.

However, for Karen Varrone, president of The Mission Group and executive vice president of business development for Exponation, attracting these Gen Yers to the tradeshow industry isn't the problem.

"What I think is a larger issue ... is retaining them," she added.

Varrone said employees she has trained often exhibit another characteristic largely associated with the young generation: the ability to move on.

"We are a small company, and I tend to hire people based on aptitude, not (academic) degree," she said. It takes a particular skill set to manage events, and Varrone said when she finds people that demonstrate proficiency for the work, she hires them over someone who has a degree.

Varrone also is involved with another dimension of Generation Y in the industry: She's a mentor in the Intl. Assn. of Exhibitions and Events' Future Leaders Program.

IAEE started the program in 1996. Varrone was in the first round of people nominated to participate.

"It was very successful from the start, but when it started, the association only had about 3,000 members," said Steven Hacker, IAEE president. After three years, he added, the association found it didn't have the membership to maintain the program.

IAEE changed membership requirements a few years ago, and attendance leaped to about 7,000 — more than enough to resurrect the mentoring program. In August, the first class of 30 members in the redesigned version had three days of orientation and training.

Hacker said the program matches participants with mentors who are responsible for initiating and maintaining contact.

"Another important aspect is that we will then place each of the graduates into a leadership role in IAEE," he added.

Varrone thinks the program is important because it develops and brings people into management roles and keeps them interested in the industry.

"It's hard to find talent who will stay," she said. "I think IAEE, by offering the program, makes people put a stake in the ground for where they want to be in the future."

The Society of Independent Show Organizers also is making an effort to attract talent to the industry, focusing on students in college.

Cherif Moujabber, a 30-year tradeshow veteran and chair of SISO's education committee, said he realized students don't have much exposure to the tradeshow industry, but a program still in the planning stages aims to remedy that.

"Our members would be going to schools, business schools in general, to make presentations," he said. "It is ready but has not been used yet, but will be soon. We hope it's going to be dozens and dozens of schools when the program is up and running."

SISO has another plan for raising the tradeshow industry's profile in academia.

"There is no case study on the tradeshow industry ever," Moujabber said. "That's our ambition ... ultimately to go and have a case study done on the tradeshow industry. We have already allocated the funds."

The idea is to have students at Boston College research how a company is presented with multiple choices for spending its marketing dollar, and how it (hopefully) spends it on tradeshows. Then, the students would present the study to the Harvard University School of Business for possible publication, Moujabber said.

The students involved in the research will finish their work sometime in the second half of 2008, he added.

SISO also has students visit tradeshows with their professors to see the operations the general public doesn't see, Moujabber said. One such trip had about 20 students attend the Intl. Boston Seafood Show & Seafood Processing America at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in March.

And for the past few years, SISO has offered a scholarship to fund student internships within member companies, Moujabber said.

"That way they get exposed in a hands-on way for long periods," he added.