I recently had the privilege of volunteering as a judge for the Platte Valley Legacy Foundation. On May 6, the morning of the Platte Valley Expo, I joined other community members in the business wing of the Platte Valley Community Center as we interviewed students from Saratoga Middle High School and seniors from Encampment K-12 School.
I must say, I was pleasantly surprised.
Being a member of the dreaded Millennial generation, I’m all too familiar with the assumptions people make about you based on your age. Having been out of school for *checks calendar* 16 years now, I am rather out of touch with what exactly is taught compared to when I was in school. My son, Jareth, is still in elementary school and so isn’t quite ready for the applied parts of education.
When I was in high school, one of the things I was taught was how to create a resume. Things were a little different back then, however, and most job applications were done on paper. Now, nearly everything about applying for a job is done online. I have experience with that, too, as I’ve had to upload my resume in one web page and then enter all that same information in the next. I’ve also gone through my fair share of job interviews.
The resumes and cover letters that were presented to the judges were all in pretty decent shape. As part of the process, the students we were to interview and judge had written their cover letter, resume and created a job application. The company on each of them was the same, but the job being applied for ranged from being a ranch hand to doing housekeeping to being a lineman.
As most of the interviewees were younger high school students, it goes without saying their experiences were limited. Some of them had at least one job under their belt while others listed babysitting or yard work under their work experience. In the interview process, I tried to relate those previous experiences to the job they were applying for in hopes they could find ways to apply those experiences to their potential job.
As each interview ended, I asked the students what they felt their experience and their time was worth. At first, each student appeared to think of it more in the abstract as in how they would be a benefit to the company. I would clarify what I was trying to get at is how much they believed they should get paid.
Nearly all of them responded with “Whatever you think is best”. When one student who had applied to be a lineman said this, I answered back that $5 an hour sounded just fine to me.
“Does that sound fair to you?” I asked.
“Well, no. No it doesn’t. Starting wage for a lineman is $35 an hour,” they replied.
“Do you think you’re worth that?” I asked.
“Yeah. Yeah, I do,” they said.
This was the point I was hoping to get across to each of the students during their interviews with me. Some of them, when I pushed them after the “whatever you think is best” answer replied they were satisfied with minimum wage but were unsure of what the minimum wage was.
For the record, standard minimum wage in Wyoming is $7.25 an hour and tipped minimum wage is $2.13 an hour but that’s due to federal standards. Technically, according to the United States Department of Labor, Wyoming’s minimum wage is $5.15 an hour but employers must pay $7.25 an hour due to the Fair Labor Standards Act.
I have no idea if any of this had an impact with any of the students. I was just one of three judges they had to go through that day. As I stated previously, however, I was pleasantly surprised with the students that were in front of me.
All of them were courteous and nearly all of them had well written cover letters, resumes and applications. Not a single one of them, from my perception, was trying to get away with doing the bare minimum in this process and all of them appeared receptive to comments from myself and the other judges.
The kids are going to be alright.
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