Now we're concerned that kids' interpersonal skills start and stop at the keyboard. But such fears are no more realistic than the previous generation's, according to young adults in the workplace--and the technological dinosaurs who manage them. The reality is that today's teens and 20-somethings, while hardly a monolithic group, tend to be hypercommunicative. Where most knowledge workers today use two forms of communication--written and spoken--the employees of tomorrow see endless variations and protocols. Far from being awed by current technology, kids will find the tools they need to do what they want, or they'll remake the software and hardware to get the job done.

Businesses and this latest batch of young adults will both be bruised as each side harnesses the other to meet its own needs. But chances are, the combination will result in more agile, collaborative, and communicative companies.

Recruiters trolling campuses should keep their next class of staffers productive and creative, and surround them with E-mail, instant messaging, broadband Internet access, wireless communications, and a way to play music, advises Raj Goel, chief technology officer at Brainlink International Inc., an E-commerce and Web-hosting company. Only literally connecting young adults to a wall outlet would make them more plugged in than they are today.

"Anyone under 25 right now, especially in the 15-to 20-year-old crowd, will not function" without these connections, Goel says. He should know. Goel manages five to 10 high-school and college interns who set up firewalls, secure wireless communications, and install security patches for his company.

"In the office, our primary method of communication is IM, even if we're sitting next to each other," he says. It was actually the interns' use of instant messaging that turned Goel on to the collaborative technology two years ago. "I thought it was a waste of time, " he says. He bought into it when he saw "we turned from a standard 9-a.m.-to-5-p.m. shop to a 24-by-7 shop, because as long as they were on IM, they were reachable."

It may seem like common sense that kids used to frittering away hours chatting online with friends will find instant messaging a comfortable segue into office life, but it may be more surprising to learn that IM--the epitome of ephemeral written communication--is being used in extended weeklong, even monthlong threads.

Edward Maas, 22, interned at Brainlink this summer. Maas talks with his Brainlink colleagues three to five times a week via IM. While working on a major in computer science and a minor in history at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., he's keeping tabs on IT projects he worked on during his internship. "The ability to keep in touch keeps me focused," Maas says. "So when I come back [to Brainlink] for winter break or in the summer, I'll know what's happening, and that helps me not get lost." So much for the myth that tech-savvy teens are growing into self-absorbed anarchists.

Still, beware over-generalizing a generation. Some workplace newcomers are adopting a personal ethos about digital communications. Patricia Chu, a 22-year-old Stanford University computer-science graduate student, says instant messaging is "something I do with my friends to figure out where to go for dinner tonight. I wouldn't be comfortable discussing work-related things" on IM, she says.

Nevertheless, Chu gets frustrated when she calls a friend who happens to have his or her cell phone turned off. "You expect to be able to connect with people pretty quickly and be able to talk to them whenever you need to," she says.

Esther Rush, a 26-year-old Intel product engineer who's well versed in technology, likes to think she's not too removed from the school-age interns she supervises. But when it comes to how they communicate, the differences show. If Rush needs to contact someone for a quick hit of information, she'll send an E-mail. If she has a specific question and needs more information, Rush is likely to pick up the phone, then follow up with an E-mail. "Younger people have a different view of E-mail," Rush says. Her charges see it as a more-formal medium that deserves more in-depth attention. "If it's in their E-mail in-box, they feel like they have to take care of it right away."

During the summer, when Maas needed to communicate with Brainlink clients about an E-commerce project he was working on, he says he spent more time typing than talking. E-mail "allows me to be more verbose and explain better what we're doing," he says. "It's more formal than a phone call, especially when you don't have as much of a personal relationship with the client."

Comparatively sophisticated communication preferences, if not outright protocols, speak volumes about young adults' comfort with computers, data, and communication technologies. They tend to have little fear about deleting files, freeing up memory, even taking apart software and hardware to troubleshoot or just understand how it works, says Dennis Trinkle, deputy CIO and professor of instructional technology at DePauw University.

The desire to know how technology works by disassembling it is a hacker mentality, Trinkle says. And it could change IT support. Employees confident in handling minor technical problems might, for instance, make extensive use of Web-based self-service tools to tackle even bigger problems. "At the help-desk crew I supervise, the goal is to head off 60% of call traffic by using self-help resources," Trinkle says. But as those callers get younger, that figure could realistically rise to 80%, he figures, liberating the help desk to handle more sophisticated problems.

It would have cost Brainlink thousands of dollars to purchase or develop a knowledge-management system if the company had worked with a consultant, Goel says. But because the intern managed to design the system in a weekend, "it cost me paying him for two days of work," he says. The bonus: The intern worked closely with his peers to get their input on developing the system, so they all use it. Having that kind of buy-in and usage, Goel says, is priceless.

So will this next generation be nothing but a communications and innovation blessing for managers? Not necessarily. The hacker mentality that Trinkle praises could appear overly aggressive to some and create tension in the workplace.

And having interns troubleshooting snafus can be a distraction, says Mark Prazak, systems and programming division manager at Nationwide Insurance Systems, a division of Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co.--despite the fact that interns sometimes can handle a problem better than the help desk. "If there's a major release of software coming out and their time is needed to put together that code, they need to allow others with expertise to solve that technical-support problem," Prazak says.

People who come to the office with sophisticated preferences for how they communicate also can appear to be reluctant to adapt to a company's culture, or even its IT infrastructure. "There's a bit of a learning curve when you introduce a generation of kids who grew up on AOL E-mail to Lotus Notes," says John Rooney, a program manager with IBM's server group who manages a group of high-school and college interns each summer. "Five or six years ago, it wouldn't be unusual for a person to come in with little experience with E-mail and none with IM," Rooney says. "Now, they come with 10 years of E-mail and IM experience and they want to use what they're used to."

Of course, there will be those who show up on their first day of work unaware of how grating it can be to read an E-mail that ends with "talk 2 U L8er ;-)," says Naomi Baron, a linguistics professor at American University. "If you're sitting at a machine where you send casual, jargon-filled, acronym-filled, smiley-filled IMs, it's hard to shift gears" to writing a formal memo because, to a younger person, it's the same machine used for both media, she says.

The consequences in the workplace of such "shortcut communications" technologies can be seen in the unwillingness of some young people to use IM in a formal setting, as is the case for Stanford student Chu. It can also lead to a workplace culture that becomes increasingly more informal, Baron says. To thwart such changes, companies can train young hires to write and communicate more formally in professional settings. Or they can "only hire people who can write coherent prose," Baron says.

In many ways, the challenges and promises presented by the new kids in the pod are the same as they've always been. Kids today enter adulthood--and, pray their parents, the workforce--more accepting of the technologies their predecessors are tired of dismissing, ignoring, and fighting. In the new millennium, however, it looks as if the winners will master the art of rapid communication. The new generation appears poised to capitalize on that. If only they and their managers can harness each others' strengths, and not dwell on their differences.