This is just silly.

I got an email about an audio conference about faculty recruiting titled "How to Recruit Gen X Faculty Members". I shouldn't pre-judge, and I should be glad that anyone is trying to improve the faculty recruiting process, but it's sad that anyone needs to be told this stuff. The premise is this:

The era when colleges and universities could rely on prestige and a little cash to recruit top academic talent is gone. Increasingly, up-and-coming faculty talent is from Generation X, the much derided and little understood generation that is much more than the Gap-employee stereotype you heard about a decade ago. This generation has a different set of work priorities, and colleges that understand these priorities stand a better chance of landing the best candidates and keeping them.

Riiiggght. It must be because of their generational culture, not the fact that two income families are vastly more common now, and there are many more women faculty candidates then forty years ago, etc. The topics to be covered include:

Why prestige and tenure may not matter as much to this generation as previous generations, and what that means for recruiting.

The importance of being "family friendly" and how job candidates judge that now that all colleges are claiming that they are.

How Gen X professors view hierarchy and what that means in the context of departments.

The importance of transparency and collegiality.

So, basically we can sum this up in a few words that generalize beyond the university setting: People don't want to work at places where they will be treated poorly. People may want to actually have lives outside of their jobs, and like to work at places that understand that. Smart, educated people don't like being told what to do by people who are clueless just because the clueless have seniority. People don't like it when their employers are rude or have obscure, byzantine policies. My goodness, those Gen X slackers are totally unreasonable.