Tech-savvy youth can’t beat efficient elders…or can they?

We may be more tech-savvy than our elders, but we certainly can’t apply it as well.  At least that’s what Ranstad USA, a global workforce solutions company, has to say. 

“The 2007 World of Work review finds that younger workers are the least likely to use communication tools in the workplace, including computers, faxes, personal digital assistants (PDAs), mobile and landline phones.”¹ 

Ranstad’s survey, which focuses on employee productivity, retention and morale, finds that the “power players,” using technology to enhance productivity, are more mature workers.  More than business youth, they value a challenge and the ability to have a more flexible work schedule.  Conversely, young workers could have more flexibility if they just applied their know-how to their careers.  And I’m officially confused… 

Millennials are notoriously known for their ability to infuse technology into their day-to-day routine to make life easier.  If given the chance, why wouldn’t we do the same at work? 

I think the answer comes down to exactly that – we’re not given the chance in most entry-level positions.  Sure, there’s a handful of millennial-friendly companies out there that give their workers the opportunity and the technology to work remotely, but the majority don’t present that level of trust right off the bat.  They throw you in a cube and that’s that. 

I think it’s absolutely possible, and probably, this survey failed to recognize that young workers lack freedom that comes with age and experience in a company.  Not to mention, how many companies provide their entry-levels with a Blackberry on day one?   

How can a survey make such a claim unless everyone is given the same treatment and the same “goodies” regardless of age and experience?  You can’t!  Unless the survey itself is flawed. 

I would love to see how the shift in productivity changes if you put everyone on the same page.  My prediction is that it would prove twentysomethings to be just as productive, if not more.  But what does everyone else think? 

This survey is popping up all over the Internet and I’m wondering how anyone can be taking it seriously.  Millennials are supposed to be technology gurus.  Is it possible that we’re just not applying it in the right way?  Or maybe my millennial ADD is just leading me towards MySpace when I should be focusing on the workplace.  Maybe I’m wrong, but it all sounds a little fishy to me. 

Enjoy the weekend.

The New Recruiting Psychographic Persona

By Danielle Ouellette 

This was a piece I put together as part of a presentation to my company’s HR department as background for redesigning their recruiting materials. Although some of it seems pretty obvious to a twentysomething, some of the people that it was presented to were absolutely amazed. 

“I” statements that reflect what recent graduates are looking for: 

The most important things to me are my coworkers and the company’s culture. I want to work with people who are enthusiastic, stimulating, friendly, competent, and fun. I like to be able to form friendships with my coworkers and also want to have a good relationship with my boss. I think coworkers and management should be approachable, especially if I need help. 

A competitive salary is also important to me. With college loans looming, I’m very concerned about money. As it becomes the norm to have an undergrad degree I would like to maintain a competitive edge by pursuing a graduate degree. I am very interested in finding an employer who will help finance my MBA. 

I would like to be appreciated for my accomplishments. It’s important for me to receive actionable and detailed feedback, so that I can improve and exceed your expectations.  

I am aggressive and constantly seeking to improve myself. I want to be challenged. I am looking for a job that allows me to participate fully in the projects I am working on. I am comfortable working on teams, in a supportive or leadership role.  

I want the work I do to mean something. I would like to work with a product that correlates with my ideals and may be important to society.

Location is important as well. I’m thinking about: How far will I be from friends and family? How long will my commute be in the morning? What kind of activities in the area can I participate in?  

I think volunteering is important. I am concerned about politics, socio-economic impact, and the environment. I’m looking for opportunities to give back and the ways that your company will support me in these endeavors.  

I want to be able to make connections with those in and beyond my peer group. It’s in my nature to network. 

I may view this job as temporary, a stepping stone in my still-as-yet-undecided career path. Give me a reason to stay. Give me a reason to tell my friends why they should work here, too. 

I am constantly connected to the Internet , to my friends. My cellphone is on 24/7. I am on Facebook daily and might even have a Myspace, too, but don’t check it often.  

When I look for a job I check my college’s career search engine, the local paper’s classifieds online, craigslist.com, and maybe Monster.com. I will also try to find someone who worked for the company to get the inside scoop about the corporate culture.  

Welcome, Wall Street Journal Readers

If you are checking in from today’s Wall Street Journal article or podcast, Welcome! 

Employee Evolution is a web site dedicated to helping our peers deal with the difficult transition from college to the real world.  We also hope to shed some light on what young workers really look for in an entry level job.  Much has been said, little is accurate.  Young people want what everyone wants; freedom, trust and excitement to name a few. Some popular posts you should check out: 

Background                 

The Paradox of Choice, Gen-Y Style

Raunchy Old Photos Will be Part of the Revolution 

Blogging Is the New Graduate School

Best Buy Gets it – Stop Watching the Clock 

Paychecks Are Boring 

Recruiting/Retaining Young Workers

It’s Always Job Hunting Season

Leaderless Organizations Make Sense, Read the Starfish and the Spider 

Change Is A Dirty Word

Millennial Praise:  Less Confetti More Counseling

A Unique Generation 

Entrepreneurship 

Learning to Run a Business: Get a Blog Not a Job

Problems With Working at a Big Company 

Guest Posts 

What Not to Wear to Work

Can I Get Part Time Benefits? 

A Survival Guide for Millennials 

Feel free to subscribe to the site, drop us an email, add a comment or submit a guest post.   

Thanks for stopping by. 

Ryan & Ryan

The Paradox of Choice, Gen-Y Style

By Ryan Healy
Go to college, graduate with a technical degree and become a professional, preferably a doctor, lawyer or accountant.  Join the workforce for a few years, then get married and have a kid or two.”

According to my father this was the typical advice given to young baby boomer boys growing up.  Their parents expected them to follow the same straight and narrow path as them.  They had a few choices; follow the advice or rebel and make it on their own.

“Be whatever you want to be.  Find something you love and pursue that passion.  With enough desire and enough hard work you can do anything you set your mind to.”

This was the advice I received growing up.  Flash forward to today and I’m still trying to figure out what it is that I love.  There are too many choices!  Should I join the Peace Corps and rebuild houses in Mongolia?  Should I work for a presidential campaign for a year?  Should I go to Wall Street and become a money making machine with no time for a social life? 

Not only can I choose any career, but I can choose any city, state or country.  My family lives all over the United States and my friends live all over the world.  I can communicate and keep relationships with them through the internet no matter where I move.  I feel no pressure to get married or start a family any time soon. I can do all of these things when I am ready.

The choices go way beyond career and family.  I can choose from hundreds of TV channels, and if I don’t like the graphics I can choose to watch them in HD. The Internet, where I spend too much time, is a big black hole of decisions about information. Even the cereal aisle at the grocery store can turn into a painful decision process.  Life in the 21^st century is a constant choice.

Read the rest at the Brazen Careerist.

Brazen Careerist: Raunchy old photos will be part of the revolution

During my senior year at Penn State, the Nittany Lions knocked off the highly (over) rated Ohio State Buckeyes.  It was one of the best football games of my college years. A mob of students rushed down the bleachers, the field became a flood of blue and white. 

But unfortunately, rushing the field is not a Big Ten-acceptable activity.  So the other guys in blue, the police, started an investigation using Facebook to identify suspects.

I guess if you’re going to perform illegal acts, Facebook, MySpace and other online networks that incorporate photographs are probably not for you.  But as we leave our crazy college years behind and enter the workforce, should we really have to worry what recruiters think of our social lives?

I have a MySpace page and a Facebook profile.  I have hundreds of pictures on each site that show me in both professional and not-so-professional settings.  Some people remove their embarrassing or “incriminating” pictures after college to save some face in the real world.  I have never considered removing pictures.

Read the rest at The Brazen Careerist…

Why Don’t You Cry About It? Seriously.

by Ryan Paugh 

Crying at work has long been seen as verboten. But there’s evidence that a growing number of workers, especially those in their 20s and 30s, see it differently. Some think it’s old-fashioned to hide your emotions. Others are quick to cry over negative feedback. And many find themselves at odds with managers who grew up with a more repressive definition of professional conduct.

Sue Shellenbarger – The Wall Street Journal 

All girls cry during their first real job.  At least that’s what my female friends tell me.  Whether true or simply a stereotype, who doesn’t get a little emotional over something they’ve invested so much time in? 

Sue Shellenbarger’s article, Read This and Weep: Crying at Work Gains Acceptance, explains the perks of showing emotion at work.  “Some say crying gets issues out in the open…this sparks healthy dialogue…it’s old-fashioned to hide your emotions.” 

Personally, I’ve caught several employees in the act – restraining an avalanche of emotion.  If these frustrations were conveyed openly, petty concerns could be resolved with ease.  We just need to develop an ability to cope with what has become taboo – actually dealing with human nature. 

Professor Jean Twenge suggests that the millennial generation is too damn fragile.  Give us a little criticism and we “burst into tears.”  First and foremost, I say screw her!  Secondly, learning to cope with our emotions and the emotions of others is way overdue. 

Think of all the time you spend pissed off at a colleague, silently cursing their very name because you didn’t see eye-to-eye on a proposal.  Now imagine not suppressing how you really felt…I smell progress. 

Managers!  When an employee cries, don’t make assumptions.  Take some advice from Shellenbarger’s article.  Confront issues the right way: 

DON’T

1        Jump to conclusions about the reason

2        Assume they want a hug

3        Write them off as weak 

DO

1        Ask if they’d like to postpone the conversation

2        Allow time for emotions to cool

3        Try a different approach to the topic 

At the risk of sounding sexist, I’ve never seen a guy cry at work.  Maybe slamming our fists on the desk is just an equivalent.  Then again, I’m sure it happens, but nobody will admit it.  Of course there’s a difference between a few shed tears or fist pounds and the landslide of emotion that plagues some individuals.  Draw the line where emotions impede productivity.  Just don’t bottle it all up.  Emotion is bound to ensue when you put your soul into your career.  Why hide it? 

Brazen Careerist: In praise of the helicopter parent

Recently, I have seen a slew of articles about helicopter parents.  Parents of millennials are becoming very involved in the job search process.  These parents feel they have the right to call their child’s company to discuss benefits and relocation packages and even negotiate salary.  I think this is great.When Brady Quinn, the star quarterback from Notre Dame, was finally drafted by the Browns in last weeks NFL draft, I can guarantee his agent was on the phone with the team negotiating Brady’s salary, benefits and any other perks an NFL quarterback might receive. 

An NFL quarterback, or any athlete for that matter, would never dream of negotiating for themselves.  Agents have the experience and maturity to know what their client deserves and they have the practiced skills to negotiate the best deal.  Why are newly minted college grads expected to do the wheeling and dealing involved in a job search, with little to no guidance?

Read the rest at The Brazen Careerist

“A Collegial, Team Oriented Atmosphere”

by Ryan Healy 

A couple of days ago I took a trip up to my University’s career fair to do some recruiting for my company.  First off, let me say that being on the other side of the table for one of those things is probably just as unnatural as being in the students shoes.  A whole bunch of college students on their best behavior and corporate newbies pretending they really love their companies is just not my cup of tea.  And before you start calling me a hypocrite for trying to sell my company (as my brother so kindly did) take two things into consideration; 

1.)    I don’t hate my job.  In fact, its not bad at all, I typically get to work from home on Friday’s and it leaves me with plenty of time to write on this site.   

 2.)    How can I turn down an all expenses paid trip to my old school?  Do you think I’m crazy?  

Anyways, back to the point.  I received an email from a student whom I had a rather lengthy discussion with about my job.  We talked about everything from my roles and responsibilities to my weekly hours and everything else involved in the typical career speech.  After I finished laughing hysterically when he referred to me as Mr. Healy, I noticed something very interesting.  The note said, “You’re group sounded excellent as it consisted of a collegial, team oriented atmosphere.”  I thought this was very interesting.  Of all the things we discussed, he was most sold on the job because of its TEAM ORIENTED atmosphere. 

This should have come as no surprise to me, because all of the research indicates we are the most team oriented generation in history, but the fact that this kid cared so much about this trait that he mentioned it in a thank you letter really did catch me off guard.  However, I thought back to one other talk I had with a student, who for one reason or another tried to interview me. (This is another surprise companies may be in for as they continue to recruit college students.  Students know you need them, and they aren’t afraid to turn an interview back onto you)   

This guy asked me what I like best about my job.  Guess What I told him.  I said, “I like the team oriented atmosphere in my office.”  Without even realizing it, I helped to confirm this undeniable fact.  Generation Y does not just like working as a team, we need to work like this to feel comfortable.  Like it or not that’s just the way it is. 

Chalk one up to the “experts” on this one. We really are team oriented and just might care about this more than any other factor when looking for a job.   

My advice to companies based on these observations is, send your new hires to recruit for you!  We will not only relate more to the students, but we will subconsciously highlight the aspects of our job that are important to our generation.  If this isn’t possible and you must send older employees, have a quick meeting with your newest hires and pick their brains.  Not only will you gain valuable insight into areas you should focus on when talking to candidates, but you will make your employees feel important and yes they will probably feel “special” as well. 

Now retaining the students that you do hire is a whole different conversation……

Reflections From The Road Less Traveled

We had hoped to get as many comments, posts and feedback from friends, acquaintances and other peers as possible.  To our surprise, we received even more interest then originally planned.  Because of this, tomorrow we will introduce the first post in a series titled Reflections from the Road Less Traveled. 

The series will consist of posts from members of Generation-Y who have decided to pass on the typical “9 to 5″ and are doing their own thing.  Some are running their own successful businesses, some are just trying to get established and others have taken off to foreign countries to find themselves. 

Hopefully these posts will shed some light on the wide-range of talents Gen-Y has to offer the world.  Maybe even inspire yourself (and us) to take a plunge into the “great unknown.” I’m sure we’re not the only two guys who have friends who decided to take a risk.  If you know somebody who stepped off the beaten path and enjoys to write, or wants us to write about them, drop us an e-mail and help us share the stories of the generation that is poised to change the way we think of work.

Some “Special” Solutions

by Ryan Healy 

I realize our last post was about the narcissism study and the apparent problem of the all too common “you’re special” message, but this whole issue has bothered me so much that I need to make a few more points about it. 

Are Baby Boomers beginning to regret how they raised us?  I think they are.  The same people who raised us to always believe we are special and can achieve anything we want, now have to deal with us in the business world.  We are expected to conform to a cubicle and a meaningless job for the good of the company because this is how the current system is set up.   

Well guess what? It’s not going to happen!  We are not going to conform and throw away our ingrained belief that we can make a difference and can be special.  I guess the whole plan to raise us differently has backfired.  Rather than whining and complaining about how difficult my generation is or how we expect to much, why not start adapting to and accepting these selfish little “monsters” that you created.  Look at it this way — if you’re a Baby Boomer or Gen-Xer and have children, you think they are the most special thing in the world, right?  Well, so do my parents and so do my co workers parents, and for that matter so do I!

So were a little narcissistic, to me this simply means we expect a little more out of ourselves and want to show it.  If we had the opportunity to show it, we could begin to prove that a lot of us really are special.   

I have a fairly obvious solution to this whole problem.  Baby Boomer managers should start treating their young talent much the same way they treat their own kids.  It makes perfect sense doesn’t it?  We have grown up with your peers as parents and you have lived your adult lives with our peers as kids. 

How exactly can you do this?  First off, I know that in my family, I have always had at least a voice in most major decisions.  Whether it was where to go on vacation, where to move or what restaurant we should go to on a given night.  Let us help make some decisions in the business world too.  Obviously, experienced senior managers have the background, knowledge and expertise necessary to make these important decisions on their own, but what’s wrong with a different perspective, it can’t hurt.  Simply letting us say our two cents in any important decision will greatly improve our morale and help us to feel like we are actually contributing. 

Another possibility is to have some sort of partner program.  A young “up and comer” can partner with a senior level manager.  This will establish a personal connection allowing my peers to see the business from a higher level and maybe start to feel a  loyalty that is no longer present in Gen-Y workers.   

These are just a couple suggestions to deal with the current corporate generational clash.  I know there are many more that could make everyone happy.  Anyone else have any ideas?  Feel free to comment, we love feedback.