Job Search & Career Blog
CV, Cover Letter and Interview guide. Here you
can find CV Example and information on how to
write a CV.
Job Search and Career Development for Generation Y
April 23rd, 2008
Generation Y has been getting a pretty bad press from everyone. They’re called the Millennial Generation, those born in the early/mid 80s.
Generation Y are described as overconfident, overpaid, you name it, they’re something negative.
The irony is that neither the Baby Boomers or Generation X, who are bleating about them, are in a position to judge. Neither of those generations grew up in a world like this, or a society like this.
Generation Y has arrived in a completely different world. Distances and social insularity have evaporated, as have the old career paths and social hierarchies. The Baby Boomers came into the mid 20th century, a period of massive growth and prosperity. Generation X came into a turgid, fluctuating society.
Generation Y is part of what can only be called a multi faceted, multi level, society. Capital now does things that were unknown 50 years ago. Equity is worth trillions, and it’s global. The entire global economy is totally different.
So are jobs and careers. Economics makes jobs and careers, not traditions. Generation Y has had to evolve into survival mode. They’re now in their mid 20s, and they’ve been seeing nothing but change, all their lives.
It’s unrealistic for anyone to try to tell them what to be, let alone who to be.
That’s another odd phenomenon. Generation Y are college oriented, unlike their predecessors. The world for them is a sort of ongoing education, because that’s the world they’ve grown up with. Their identity is being shaped by themselves, not a social image.
That’s inevitably given them another label, of having unrealistic expectations. They’re accused of wanting big salaries, etc, which is somehow seen as unrealistic in a society which demands success at all costs, and charges a fortune for everything. Their college fees, alone, would have been an early retirement for some of the older Boomers.
That’s another little qualifier which seems to have been overlooked. Generation Y has had to grow up in an almost unbelievably expensive world. So-called unrealistic expectations, compared to mindlessly increasing expenditure on charges Generation Y are expected to pay, would seem to be much more than realistic; they’re necessary expectations, just to cover costs.
Their group ID isn’t of some easily recognizable genre. They’re not even particularly career-oriented, according to some critics, just opportunistic. Career change is a real option, they’re not nailed to a profession. They don’t expect stability. They’ve never seen it. They’re looking for viability, instead, and some of the older generations obviously don’t get that, at all.
To the mid 20s, the seminal period in which they grew up is ancient history. They’re not looking for some sort of straitjacket as a way of life, nor do they have any reason to believe that life is like that. To tell them to adopt an obsolete mindset is pretty useless, and it’s being treated with the contempt it deserves.
They have their own fashions, their own culture, and their own ideas. That’s more than can be said for the Boomers and Generation X, who tagged along, somewhat noisily, with the old economics.
Generation Y have skills, and they’re using them. They’re financially literate, much more so than their parents, and a lot less vague about money, generally. Ironically, not having the set-in-stone career paths has made them much less trusting of such things. They’re wary of getting stuck in the financial quagmires of mortgages, loans, superannuation, and other mysterious adult things that confused previous generations and left them stranded.
Another great crime of Generation Y is that they’re quite at home with technology. They’re not pining for the non-existent Good Old Days of paper by the ton, and hopelessly inefficient, inadequate systems. They expect to just click and go there, and that is exactly what they do.
They can even multitask, do more than one thing at a time. What level of advanced senility considers that a crime is anyone’s guess, but as time management, it’s about a thousand times more effective than the old pantomime of looking busy, or playing the game at work. Maybe middle aged management still, 40 years later, hasn’t woken up to that, but they have.
Multitasking has had an odd, pretty funny, side effect. Because they’re not glued to some turgid methodology or another, they’re considered lazy, too, because they have time on their hands. Absurd, but true.
So the complete picture is of a generation of young people who:
Aren’t impressed with the horse and buggy days,
Aren’t trying to live in the 1950s,
Expect to get more than a mortar board and gown from their degrees,
Aren’t in a state of denial about the world they live in.
Pretty scary, eh?
Here’s something even scarier:
The same people, who at the same age as Generation Y are now, demanded individuality, entrepreneurship, personal identity, personal freedoms, social equity, higher standards of living, self determination for career goals, and the rest of the litany, are complaining that their own kids are achieving that, on their own terms.
How idiotic is that?
What, exactly, is wrong with their viewpoint?
Even in a hopelessly muddled, messy, quite inept, society, with even the basics of health and education falling to pieces, they’re achieving a lot more by doing things their way.
What are they supposed to do, become their own grandparents?
When is 1950 expected to stage an encore?
Why on Earth would they want to even consider some fossilized mentality about jobs, money, careers, and lifestyles?
What good could it possibly do them, if they did try to do that?
It’s ludicrous.
Generation Y, if it has a brain in its head, which it seems to have, will ignore this rubbish and get on with being itself.
Leave a Reply
