This is an amazing Glass Door post savaging me as one of the the “rudest and [most] unprofessional hiring managers” a 23 year-old millennial has ever encountered (in her distinguished career):
So, real talk: No; this person didn’t actually get an interview. This person sent an application and bragged about her tremendous writing ability, but submitted writing samples that were riddled with problems. So I workshopped some of her writing. Literally, I spent some time editing it, redlining it, making comments on it, the whole nine. I’m not joking. Here:
Then I wrote this person back. And the first words out of my mouth were: “Thank you for your application. Congratulations on finishing school. I appreciate your enthusiasm and professionalism, but based on the writing samples you provided, I do not believe you are a polished enough writer to work in my organization.” I then gave her some general guidance on her writing; some over-arching problems I see; some basic things she needs to change. And I did – indeed – tell her, that my English and history professors at Cornell would have ripped her writing to shreds. And done exactly what I had done in the sample I edited.
I did not have to write this person back. I could have just ignored her and thrown her application in the trash. But I wrote her back to give her some specific guidance on how to be a better writer. I was trying to help her! And as a result, I apparently infringed on her safe space.
When I was in college, I had the tremendous fortune of studying with the Pulitzer Prize winning historian Michael Kammen. He was my history professor and eventually became a dear friend and advisor from then until the time of his passing. I submitted my first paper in his 400-level history seminar. He absolutely gutted it. He wrote notes all over it. I saw him after class to talk about it, largely because I felt like I really did a terrible job on the paper, wanted to thank him for the feedback and tell him that I would dedicate myself to improving my writing.
He smiled and told me it gets a D+ for everything technical — overall structure, sentence structure, typos, awkward phrases, use of the passive, etc. For goodness sake, look at this absurdly written sentence here on the 3rd page! But it gets an A+ for substance! And that averages out to a B paper. Since it was the first paper, and since Professor Kammen was tough but so magnanimous, he explained that he always gutted everyone’s first paper, and that nobody got better than a B. He let everyone do revisions and re-submit. He also explained that the first paper didn’t count for that much because, after all, it was the first paper and nobody really knew what they were doing (at least not in his eyes). I thanked him. I really appreciated the feedback. But times have changed.
Real talk: There are many wonderful, hard-working, well-adjusted millennials out there. The best lawyers on my team are all millennials. I love them and would trust them with anything. But don’t kid yourself: There has been a dramatic generational shift. I graduated from Cornell in 2004. Back then, college was still a sort of rough and tumble place. You know, people had different ideas and might say stuff that offended you. There weren’t trigger warnings and safe spaces. If you got a bad grade, then you got a bad grade. You couldn’t be all like, “Professor, I demand you change my grade because you didn’t take into account how I’m triggered and in personal turmoil over the riots in Baltimore even though I grew up rich in Fairfax, Virginia and have no real, personal connection to that situation but, like, it really is part of my entire being and I’m woke as F but really triggered too. So this C you gave me is really a microaggression. I deserve an A.”
The evidence is not simply anecdotal. This is not an isolated instance. There’s a trend here. This is an entire culture that some of you folks out there have created by being helicopter parents; hovering around your kids; never letting them fall off their bikes; insisting that they get trophies for everything even when they lose; arguing with their teachers to get them better grades; coddling them and holding their hand through absolutely everything and never letting them sink or swim on their own. This is the monster that you have created.
One final note: I’m not the hiring manager. I’m the owner.
– JP
Pollard Media 