This is a message for Baby Boomers: Get ready to throw away  some of your traditional notions about managing people. Generation Y, your future employees, are graduating from college right now, polishing up their very short resumes, and beating a path to your door.

These young people often have a different set of priorities and values than you do. Getting to know them is the key to devising strategies for effective hiring and managing of this new generation of employees.

What are some workplace characteristics of these casual, coffee-drinking, iPod-toting longhairs? Here´s a primer.

• They are task-oriented - but make sure they know the task is valuable. These kids are not slackers. Give them a meaningful task, and they´ll do it well. But understand that they expect to know the "why" in the situation, not just the "how."
• They don´t care about workplace politics. Gen Y sees the kind of office schmoozing that is second nature to Baby Boomers as a waste of time - time that could be spent working.
• Your past experience is an important motivating tool. Gen Y doesn´t automatically respect the opinions of superiors. If they know you started at the bottom and worked your way up the ladder, they are more likely to take your word as gold.
• Gen Y wants the shortest distance between two points. They don´t want to have to run a decision by a manager, who runs it by a supervisor, who gets final okay from the vice president. Train them and empower them to make most daily decisions themselves.
• The most important thing about the workplace to Gen Y is their relationship with their direct supervisor. "The company" or "the future" are vague concepts to a generation that is more concerned about their current quality of life. If they don´t get along with the person they report to, they won´t stick around very long.

Here are some tips for hiring and managing Gen Y:

1. Use pre-employment tests in your selection process.

While you may want to adapt your management style for Gen Y - it´s still vital for you to have reliable, stable workers on the job. Using a pre-employment personality test will tell you, whether this applicant will show up for work on time, do the job effectively, and remain motivated. What´s more, a High School or College diploma is no longer a guarantee that the candidate is qualified for the job. Ability and/or skills testing is the best way to ensure that a candidate has what it takes to succeed in your position.

2. Micro-managing will not work.

Provide direct and clear expectations, support, feedback and guidance, but don´t hover.

3. Use 360 degree reviews.

Gen Y workers don´t want to take their boss´ word for how they´re doing on the job. A 360 review system (such as Wonderlic´s online 360 degree platform) which surveys direct reports, peers, supervisors, customers and others with regard to an individual´s job performance provides the Gen Y worker with concrete evidence of how his or her workplace performance affects a broad range of people. This kind of wide scope feedback is critical for Gen Y, and it´s a powerful tool in management, retention and motivation.

4. Embrace their input.

It´s vital to Gen Y that they be heard. Build a mechanism to regularly solicit ideas, input and suggestions form individual employees, and just as importantly, act on them and provide feedback of the results.

For more information, visit Wonderlic´s website at www.wonderlic.com.