The Boomers were self-indulgent, Generation X doesn’t trust anyone over 50 (or under 30), and the Millennials are too busy building their self-esteem on Facebook to put in a solid day’s work:
Advertising executive Owen Hannay, for one, has placed a moratorium on hiring people fresh out of college unless they’ve done a work-related internship or have an advanced degree. That’s quite a shift for the 45-year-old principal of Slingshot LLC, whose Dallas agency is known for its leading-edge marketing.
It’s not that millennials lack the creative genius or technological know-how that he’s looking for. Far from it, he says. It’s more that they lack the real-world grounding it takes to deal with responsibility, accountability and setbacks…
“[The Millennials have] been overparented, overindulged and overprotected…They haven’t experienced that much failure, frustration, pain. We were so obsessed with protecting and promoting their self-esteem that they crumble like cookies when they discover the world doesn’t revolve around them. They get into the real world and they’re shocked. “You have to be very careful in how you talk to them because they take everything as criticism.”
The Millennials are geniuses at networking, though, usually via several technologies at once.
“a moratorium on hiring people fresh out of college unless they’ve done a work-related internship or have an advanced degree”…I see the point about the internship, but why would having an advanced degree make this syndrome less probable?–the opposite seems likely to me. The Kindergarten-to-grad-school conveyor belt is exactly the problem here.
Maybe he should try some people with experience in Iraq or Afghanistan–it is unlikely that they have been overindulged or overprotected.
I predict a lawsuit from the ACLU over this. This is blatant age discrimination.
In the US it is perfectly legal to discriminate based on age against the young. It is only people who are 40 years old or older who are protected.
-Mark Roulo
My experience with grad school - in the sciences, mind you - was that you couldn’t slack and succeed. And you needed a certain amount of toughness - if you were the kind who crumbled into a pool of tears when your major advisor said that your hypothesis was crap and you needed to re-think it, you wouldn’t make it.
I knew several pretty intelligent people who washed out of grad school either because they couldn’t stand their work being criticized, or they couldn’t deal with the amount of work.
I always figured grad school tested a person’s tolerance for being able to do mind-numbing tasks (like weighing bunchgrasses) over and over and over again but that it also tested a person’s guts to question whether it was necessary to go on weighing the *(%&$ bunchgrasses or whether enough data had been collected already.
I love how business interests complain about the lack of a work ethic from younger generations. Yet, they often invest zero loyalty to their own employees. And Boomers really LOVE to fall into the “kids these days” rants. It seems like a physical/biological imperative of some sort.
But after growing up and seeing our parents sacrifice everything (including family) for a company(s) that doesn’t hesitate to increase their hours, decrease their benefits and then dump them for a temp hire…. Well, we’re returning the favor. We don’t have that wonderful “work ethic”, under those conditions, because it gets you nothing except a nasty divorce followed by bankruptcy and a heart attack without health insurance. Or I could be self-employed and stay home with my family.
“At will employment” cuts both ways. In fact, it’s legal BECAUSE it cuts both ways. I’ve never seen an employment contract that hasn’t had the “there is no obligation between employer and employee and this agreement may be terminated by either party without sanction or prejudice. Employment is entirely at will.” So then don’t be surprised when your employees ditch you for a better offer after two months.
The problem with US business (ok A problem with US Business) is that it wants two conflicting things: Total flexibility in disposing of and controlling its work-force AND complete respect, total dedication, long hours and loyalty from the same workers. That only happens for so long before people decide to start playing by different rules. Boomers created the rules. GenX complained about the rules. And everyone else is looking for ways to rewrite the rules.
My peers tend to be more concerned with personal fulfillment, and family over the corporate ladder. This is not a sign of being coddled as such. It’s much easier to travel on the highway of expectation even if it ends in a personal/financial hell than it is to blaze your own trail.
A large number of my peers have their own small companies or freelance, they have started the voluntary simplicity movement, they home school. They have dropped out of law school to start families. (really THINK about that. Getting into a top tier school and dumping it because you would rather be poor and spend time with loved ones rather than racking up billable hours.) Their companies thrive/fail/start again. I have lost two business’s by the age of 29 and am on my third. In many other ways they prove their intelligence and dedication daily; But on a different metric of success.
Sure corporate managers and boomers like to deride it as lazy. GenY has simply begun redefining the victory conditions for life. And I would argue that it has more in common with the Pioneer/Great Depression generational mindset than any other.
I would much rather hire one college dropout with a burning passion and desire for creativity and problem solving than a dozen MBA’s. Sure they make mistakes (often new and creative ones), but if you give them the right environment and encouragement they make FAR more breakthroughs. It’s harder to win their loyalty (it takes more than posters) but once you have it - you can really depend on it.
Mark Roulo,
While it may be legal, now, to discriminate against those under 40, when the ACLU gets through with it, it won’t be.
I think you are unreasonably optimistic. There are a *lot* of areas in which it is legal to discriminate against the young, but not the old (or, alternately, to give preferential treatment to the old). The ACLU can’t just say, “Hey, we don’t like this!”
Additionally, this is *very* hard to prove…
-Mark Roulo
I also suspect that in addition to being hard to prove should the ACLU effect the changed described, the companies in question could outline the behaviors and qualifications they were looking for in a legal and not age-based way, so many years of employment or experience, for example. Young people fresh out of school aren’t automatically entitled to employment.
On a different note, it’s one thing to make choices about what will make you happy and entirely something else to have an entitlement to the employment that you want. If people are happy with the freedom and pay at the jobs they are taking, it won’t really be a problem for anyone. But there’s no guarantee that they’ll be happy with that choice forever, and meanwhile the good paying jobs will be filled by someone else, internationally if that’s what it takes. For every self-employed millionaire there are probably 10-20 people at home living with their parents well into adulthood because the real world is too harsh to provide the job and earnings that they want.
And I think we’re really talking about a different issue with the millennials anyway. Generation Xers were also sometimes inclined to forgo the corporate route, but I don’t remember employers being reluctant to hire those who did choose it because the ones who did accept the jobs weren’t especially demanding as employees. The problem with the latest generation, if there is one which is probably questionable, is that the newest generation of “adults” require so much feedback, direction, and praise beyond that which was previously required, and yet even when you’ve made that investment in them, they still leave at the drop of a hat.
I think there’s an attitude that they can be selective in the employment that they accept, but I think they’re a little delusional about what a global community really means in this case: the nice folks in India will be happy to do the job that you feel is too stifling.
It isn’t “entitlement” or “selective” to demand basic benefits and competitive living wages. And there’s a real easy way to fix the Boomer created problem that destroyed our economy.
Kick and scream if you want, but good old Tariffs are on the way back into fashion. Unregulated trade/investment/capitalism as it currently stands isn’t sustainable. Not even in India.
Why would ANYONE think it’s a good thing to have US workers competing against slaves in India and soldiers in China? You think that’s good do you? It would be SO profoundly stupid on both a work force and economic level to be lured into direct competition with 3rd tier nations.
Please don’t spout ignorant crap about free market ideology unless you really know what that means. That means going down to our lumber yards, steel mills and paper mills and letting the nice workers know that the “nice folks in India will be happy to do the job” unless they work for .05 an hour. Without benefits. That means telling your doctor that elective procedures can be done in India SO much cheaper - Even with airfare. That means getting used to recalled toys, food, and medications as daily reality.
Seriously. “Entitlement” indeed. Thankfully the lazy GenY’rs do not share the “greed is good” ideology.
Imagine relying on guidance from adults who neverever did anything but attend school. Adults, who youngsters are told to look up to…the highly educated, albeit unproven, in actually doing anything outside of attending school. Imagine a world where your children are guided towards building their futures by people who have never done anything more practical than researching and drawing conclusions of those who really make the world go ’round.
Imagine your typical school teacher…public or private. A person who started cumpulsory education around age 5, completed the K-12 scenario, went to college for at least 4 more years to get an education degree, and then started a career as an educator…still in school until disillusionment or retirement. Oops, did I just repeat myself?
Imagine an employer looking to hire someone who can actually produce something measureable. The pool of potential appears pretty shallow.
First, I’m 25 and know a lot of millenials. (Chronologically I am one, but I’m much more of a GenX person.) I would only hire a handful of the millenials I know. Most of them won’t be ready for the workforce until they’ve failed at something. It’s a generation of kids that has been raised on relativism and, as such, doesn’t know how to cope with failure.
Phoinix - Please don’t spout crap about protectionism unless you know what that means. I’ll be the first to say it: free trade sucks. At the same time, it happens to suck less than unfree trade. Anybody care to remember back to the heady days of the Great Depression when the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act saved the economy?
Phoinix said “…slaves in India…”
Wow. Try getting out of your country occasionally.
Indians are highly educated, multilingual, and the ones who are doing tech jobs there are living quite well on half or a third of the pay that the same job would require to be “competitive” wages here.
They just don’t have to pay Silicon Valley rates for housing and food.
If you can’t get out of the country, try finding an Indian or Pak restaurant and striking up a conversation with the customers. You might learn something.
I wasn’t trying to promote the global economy and free trade; I was just pointing out the harsh reality. And I’m not a boomer.
Your example about what American workers can expect isn’t that far off the mark when you consider the number of factories that have closed and relocated to countries where employees will work for a lot less.
American workers have plenty of competition for jobs, and unless something changes, the latest generation can’t really expect to be high maintenance and hold out for something better.
If you look at voting blocks, I don’t think you can expect Boomers to pay more for products, which tariffs would eventually compel them to do, as they move into retirement. It’s going to take a lot to convince them that they should vote for people who will effect the changes that you seem to think are inevitable. I suppose you might be imagining a time after they are all dead, but I think the damage will have been done by then in terms of relaxed immigrations policies.
Normal feedback is reasonable; wanting feedback beyond what any previous employees needed is a problem. And that seems to be what employers are saying.
No one can expect to be handed a living wage and basic benefits just because they’d like them. Even socialist economies have to stay afloat.
Phonix,
The poor in the U.S. are more likely to be obese. The poor in India starve.
If a job can be done efficiently in India, then send it to India and let Americans do jobs that can’t be done efficiently over there. Like carpentry, plumbing, etc.
Oh, and enforce the borders.