Tuesday is one of my favorite days of the year: my birthday! Ever since I was little, I had trouble falling asleep the night before my birthday because I was so excited, and I’m a little embarrassed to admit that it isn’t any different this year. This year is a pretty big transition as I move on from my teenagers year and enter my third decade on this planet.

Pretty cool, pretty terrifying.

So, in honor of my 20 years, I compiled a list of 20 tips and tricks in order to work best with your Gen Z friends, employees, co-workers, nieces/nephews, or whoever else.

1. Try to limit/reduce your questions about our days/events etc. to as few as possible, especially early in the morning or late at night.
2. Talk to us as little as possible in the morning.
3. Be encouraging.
4. Call us on the phone instead of having us call you. (Recruiters – are you hearing this!?)
5. Try to accommodate our insomnia by allowing later wake-up times/work times.
6. Provide caffeine – for free! (good general rule for all people)
7. Be open to any ideas, no matter how wacky they may be.
8. Provide non-traditional spaces to get work done.
9. Be patient.
10. Bring food whenever a really hard/annoying task comes up that needs to be done.
11. Don’t be afraid to push us.
12. Provide guidance without completing the job for them.
13. When we have headphones on, it most likely means that we are focused/don’t want to be talked to.
14. Encourage activities that limit our constant phone use.
15. Give us space.
16. Acknowledge a job well done, but criticize when necessary.
17. Don’t stalk their social media profiles (at least not all the time 🙂
18. Embrace the youthful spirit as much as possible.
19. Try to give as much detail because although we may have questions, we’re probably too stubborn/scared to ask them.
20. If you just can’t with the hormone filled moments of rage, step away, roll your eyes, and try to move on. Chances are that’s exactly how’d we react too.

Young people are weird. But, we all were young and weird once. So, try and take that weird and turn it into something awesome.

That’s what I’m going to try and do in this new chapter.  Here’s to the next 20.

This post was written by Cameron Sackett (not Tim) – you can probably tell because it lacks grammatical errors!

HR and TA Pros – have a question you would like to ask directly to a Gen Z? Ask us in the comments and I’ll respond in an upcoming blog post right here on the project. Have some feedback for me? Again, please share in the comments and/or connect with me on LinkedIn.