The Boomer generation understood the value of a good education. In their eyes, a basic college education was requisite to a healthy and successful life climbing professional ladders and chasing various versions of the American dream. They told their children of the wonders a good education would provide: they could pursue any topic they were passionate about, become doctors, scientists, academics, writers, lawyers, or any of a range “good” jobs. All they had to do was go to school, work hard, get internships, volunteer, and gather work experience. Build a resume, and the jobs and security and fulfillment will come.

But they didn’t come. Instead, a fifth of American millennials are unable to find work, many fear Generation Y will become America’s new “lost generation.” The opportunities the job market is offering are not what they expected and, like history’s other lost generations, they are growing disillusioned with the generally accepted idea of a “good career.”

Over-Qualified

Research shows millennials are one of the most educated generations in history, yet face one of the worst job markets ever. Many college-educated millennials have resorted to moving back in with their parents, and are eagerly working hard to find a job, any job. Most jobs available, however, are woefully low-paid, especially for recent graduates staring down student loans. Twenty years ago, a college-level education would have overqualified graduates for minimum-wage service jobs and entry level office lackey positions. Today, young graduates wrangle for these opportunities to make at least some money, having to dramatically lower their expectations of the job market and their futures.

Opportunities After College

Graduates do have options aside from going out and working at coffee shops, of course. In major financial centers like New York and Los Angeles, graduates are still finding openings with big investment banks, consulting, and technology companies. Such good opportunities, though, are few and far between, satisfying a dismally small proportion of the total number of qualified applicants.

Many graduates are opting for more education or unpaid avenues of professional development. Some bide their time gaining specialized experience from internships, but not only are many of these unpaid, nowadays few lead to full-time positions.

Is College Really Worth it?

This is a natural question, especially with the influx of overqualified graduates working at jobs totally unrelated to their academic qualifications. Skipping college altogether, along with the attendant student loans and four years of lost job experience, seems like a good strategy for entering the job market. Unfortunately, it’s not so simple.

Today’s is a generation for which going to college is par for the course when finding a higher-than-minimum-wage job. Because the market for these jobs is now flooded with collegiate applicants, a college degree has become equivalent to a high school diploma, a minimum requirement to find any reasonable paid employment. Perhaps most importantly, this means when the economy does recover, businesses will only have access to pools of college graduates who’ve missed years of potential professional experience for lack of work, and this is a troubling prospect indeed.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Marina Salsbury planned on becoming a teacher since high school, but found her way instead into online writing after college. She writes around the Web about everything from education to exercise.

We already know that the majority of people are using social media to some degree, so let’s first look at the ways it is affecting how we do business. For those trying to build a new business, it’s the best and easiest way to reach a far-flung audience. Not to mention it is also relatively inexpensive. With little to no money, you can set up a blog for your business, a Facebook page and a Twitter account. For these reasons, the current generation (known as the Millennial Generation, Gen Y and a host of other names) have become aware that you can establish brand name recognition as well a fan base with relative ease. They will pursue business opportunities because of this and also be more savvy with SEO tactics and other internet marketing techniques.  It’s not just information that is available at our fingertips anymore, it is also opportunities.

Social media is also affecting the consumer mind-set because they have come to expect a way to be connected with others, including the businesses that they frequent. Through Facebook and Twitter, consumers and Internet users (which are almost synonymous these days) can hear about deals and promotions in real-time. They can also maintain a relationship with the owners via their mini messages. The distance between owner and customer has narrowed, making it easier than ever to make decisions and alter practices to keep them happy

The consumer also frequently looks no further than what a search engine tells them is relevant to their inquiry. For someone looking to build a new home in California, a quick internet search of ‘general contractors Fresno’ may provide a dozen or so options. From here they are likely to make contact with those on the list and then make their decision. If a good choice was not found on their Internet search, they may never find out about it.

The truth is social media is not just changing the mind set of this generation, it’s changing how  business is getting done. For those that don’t agree, they will find themselves lagging behind those who have figured out how to make social media work for them.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Lance Williams

Lance Williams is someone who may call himself an H.A.D.D. (Hobby Attention Deficit Disorder) I love to do everything from Snowboarding and rock climbing to building websites and reading books.

(This is the bio Lance sent. There is so much more to learn about him, so please do head to his blog to read what he’s really up to!)

You can also listen to my comments by podcast below.

Generational Cohorts

Many Millennials are the children of Baby Boomers; a generation named due to their large size — there were 76 million of them born in the U.S. from 1945 and 1964. Primarily, Baby Boomers are associated with a redefinition of traditional values. If their fathers were content to be company men in gray flannel suits and their mothers stayed home with the children, Baby Boomers explored ways to give their work lives more autonomy and freedom. The women among them fought to break through the glass ceiling, seeking economic parity with men. Likewise, technology gave members of this generation the birth control pill and put a man on the moon. Baby Boomers were also the first generation to be subjected to relentlessly targeted marketing.

According to the consumer insight marketing company ThirdAge, today Baby Boomers control over 80 percent of the nation’s personal wealth and exercise more than half of its discretionary spending power. As Baby Boomers begin retiring, they will have even more of an economic impact as it’s Generation Y that will be paying for their Social Security.

Another aspect that distinguishes Baby Boomers from their cohorts is that they did not achieve life milestones on the same timeline as the generations that came before them. So while some Baby Boomers became parents in their 20s, many put off starting families until they were in their 30s or even 40s. Therefore Baby Boomer offspring fall into both Generation X and Generation Y.

Generation Xers were born in the 1960s through the mid-1970s, and have about 51 million members. The end of the Cold War and the rise of globalization shaped much of Generation X’s cultural perspectives. Often children of divorce, Gen Xers are characterized by a certain degree of psychological dislocation, a post-modern worldview that often prizes parody over authentic experience and a marked disdain for authority and rigid work situations.

The New Psychology of Generation Y

Unlike Baby Boomers, members of Generation Y are not interested in putting their work lives above their family lives. They want flexible employment with an emphasis on telecommuting so they can spend more time at home. However, this doesn’t mean Millennials are not achievement-oriented. Having been raised by parents who didn’t want to see their own mistakes repeated, Generation Y defines “achievement” in a radically different way. According to Julie Coates, the author of the book Generational Learning Styles, Millennials tend to have closer relationships with their parents than previous generations and when asked to name their heroes, one-third chose one or both parents rather than a political or pop culture celebrity.

Besides being to close to their families, members of Generation Y grew up engaged in group activities, from “Mommy and Me” play activities as infants to soccer teams in school. As a result, members of this generation value teamwork and strive to include all members on their particular team. Generation Y also embraces diversity. This generation is the most multicultural group in the nation’s history. Oftentimes their parents are a mix of races and ages. Similarly, Generation Y grew up with positive gay pop culture role models and are extremely accepting of non-heterosexual gender choices. The philosophy of the Millennials has also caused them to have a more active interest in politics and social issues than Generation X. For example, Coates notes 70 percent of Colgate University’s 2006 entering class arrived on campus pre-registered to vote.

Finally, Generation Y came of age during two economic downturns: the dot-com bust of the turn of the century and the current recession fueled by the housing crisis. As a result, they have become much more financially savvy at an earlier age than the generations that preceded them. In fact, forty-six percent of the Gen Yers in the workforce have already begun saving for retirement.

Of course, no demographic cohort operates in a vacuum. Generation Y has fashioned its own worldview from the melting pot of experiences, ideas and values characterized by the two generations preceding them. However this fusion represents a new cultural and psychological awareness that is likely to bring big changes to social, political and business spheres in the years to come.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Allison Gamble has been a curious student of psychology since high school. Though her academic studies led her into writing and the weird world of internet marketing, she maintains an interest in understanding the mind. Herself a member of Generation Y, she believes knowing yourself is the first necessity for knowing what to do with yourself.

These are the thoughts I had growing up.  Yes…I took ballet…just like many of you did.  And …yes, there was a time when my closest friend was not only able to get her feet into pointe shoes but was actually able to lift herself up onto pointe and dance like I so wanted to.  I wanted to be a ballerina.  I was so jealous.  I would watch her and wanted to do what she did, but that meant moving up to a higher level of ballet and changing my body type.

What I did not know was this:  In order to be a world class ballerina, you had to be not just thin but gaunt…even ghost-like with shoulder and cheek bones exposed.  With long legs and almost no body fat.  I recall my ballerina teacher…tall, gaunt, tapping the floor with her 1, 2, 3 stick and gobs of mascara and long died hair…like she was trying to cover up her eyes.  But, after five years of going up against my friends in tap, ballet and jazz, I gave up my tap shoes and ballet slippers for a piano.

I did quite well with the piano for my stage in life.  I competed at the state level and won a few awards.  And, it did not matter that I was 5 feet, 4 inches tall and never overweight but built like an athlete.  (My athletic side served me well in piano…I could pound the keys hard and rough at times and had to work on the softer keys).

So why this story?  I will tell you why.  I sat and watched an interview yesterday with New York City Ballet principal dancer Jenifer Ringer who was called fat by a “New York Times” critic. I believe he said something to the effect that “the sugar plum fairy ate too many sugar plums” or some such nonsense.

As a blogger, this is a tough one.  This critic has his freedom of speech and press.  But, did he go to the Nutcracker to critique the bodies of the dancers?  I don’t think so.  It is this type of bad press that is fueling the eating disorders of young women not just in the USA but around the world, including anorexia, bulemia and exercise anorexia.  I know that as a dancer, you have to expect jabs about your body, but this has gone a bit too far.  This woman is far from overweight.  She looks like she could gain a pound or two, but she is called “fat”?  What the hell is going on in our country?

I am debating about going to see the new film Black Swan.  It looks fabulous, and I am sure it will be up for a nod on the Oscar nomination side of things, but the two co-stars, Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis have admitted that they had to drop about 20 pounds to play the role…eating 1000-1200 calories per day and dancing 7 hours a day to get the “gaunt, bony, “acceptable” body to play the role of one of the best of the best in the New York City ballet.   They were both thin to begin with, so looking at the trailers makes me just wonder how sick they really looked in making the film and how exhausted they really were.

Eating disorders are not new.  I watched White Christmas two nights ago, and Vera Allen, who played Judy Haynes, was apparently suffering from the disorder before the medical word coined the term anorexia.  If you watch this classic, you will notice about a 16 inch waist (and I am not exaggerating).

I also want to take the time to mention the “fat” comments about Bristol Palin.  I think Kathy Griffin is actually very funny, but I don’t really see what is so funny about talking about Bristol gaining weight during Dancing with the Stars.  I did not watch the show, so I cannot really comment on it, but I did not laugh at all when I heard the joke…it was just thrown into her show as a jab.

I encourage our nation to start talking about health rather than weight.  I beg people to stop judging women and especially young women on their body size or if they’ve gained a pound or two.  It is those women who “gain the freshman 15″ who start purging, eating laxatives by the box and doing everything to get bone thin only to die at an early age…think of Karen Carpenter…a great woman gone too soon because somewhere along the way (my guess) is that someone said she was fat and needed to lose weight to stay appreciated by our ridiculous media who has been over-focused on the celebrity bone-thin look.

Related articles

• City Ballet Dancer Responds to Times Critic (artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Ballet dancer defends critic’s right to make sugar ‘plump’ fairy jibe (guardian.co.uk)
• Ballerina Responds To NY Times Critic’s Body Comments (newyork.cbslocal.com)

Zuckerberg is probably one of the most admired and controversial leaders of Generation Y.  People have criticized him for allowing the public to open up their lives to each other, but as I have been saying for three years…Gen Y is GOING to change this world.  They have no other choice!  They have been handed a plethora of problems, and education is at the top of the list.

I did watch Zuckerberg on Oprah this past Friday, and I found this young man to be quite humble…almost embarrassed about the amount of money he has accumulated and what he is donating.  But he admitted that he had the good fortune to attend great schools throughout his life which led him to Harvard and he believes that every child should have a great education…not one that is simply “getting by”…and that was just the beginning of the rest of his life.  And for those of you who continue to criticize Facebook, maybe this was meant to be to help get us out of this mess!

This media frenzy is coming off the heels of the new movie Waiting for Superman, which debuted this past Friday, and with the release of the Movie, The Social Network, this week, timing could not be any more perfect.  Although Zuckerberg has commented that the movie is purely ficticious (and I have heard he had nothing to do with the movie), I think this is a wake up call for us as a nation to peek behind the building of the social network empire and to see what this generation is doing to HELP.  Most of us just sit and complain.  It is predicted that close to 7,000 students drop out of high school every day and that while the USA was once #1 in the number of men and women who graduate from college, studies show that we have dropped to number 9 on that list.

There is a huge debate over this issue…that charter shcools have the funding and the freedom to design educational systems that work…so if they can do it by scraping together money, we can certainly do something in our public school system.  In the Waiting for Superman film, it is heartbreaking…to watch children chosen by lottery to attend a charter school or to be put back into a public school that is broken (and I want to say that my children attended private school K-5 and then public school 6-12, so I have seen both sides of the coil).

Our education system is broken.  We have some wonderful teachers, and we have some teachers who use the classroom as a time to sleep and let their students text and sit on Facebook.  We are teaching from the blackboard, lecture and out of textbooks, and we are in a digital age.  Our education system has not changed since the Industrial Revolution, and we need an overhaul, and we need it now!

Bear in mind:  $100 million is not that much money.  It is going to take elbow grease and getting involved at a grassroots level to turn around our education system.   Also…I don’t think that this responsibility falls fully on our teachers and the education system.  Parents HAVE to turn around their family values and start focusing on homework, studies and getting involved.  I encourage you to get started today by connecting up!  You can meet up with concerned citizens in your community to move this initiative forward.  I am concerned that if we don’t act swiftly, in about ten years, we will not be the strong democracy that we are today.

Watch the trailer for Waiting for Superman and see the film in a city near you.

“They’re more apt to ride mass transit to work and use car sharing services — pioneered by Zipcar — for longer trips. And car sharing choices are expanding, with car rental firms moving into the market, making it convenient for young folks to rent with hourly rates and easy insurance. Connect by Hertz, for example, is rolling out its car sharing services in the New York metropolitan area, with plans to eventually expand them to around 40 college campuses nationwide.”

Given the state of the economy and the cost of auto insurance, this makes sense. As my husband, Mike, always says “The minute you drive a car off a car lot, the value depreciates.”

Read the full article here

If you are a Gen Y making a decision to buy a car or not, we would love to hear your comments.

“Sir Ken Robinson is a visionary leader who led the British government’s 1998 advisory committee on creative and cultural education, a massive inquiry into the significance of creativity in the educational system and the economy, and was knighted in 2003 for his achievements. His latest book, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, a deep look at human creativity and education, was published in January 2009.”

From TED.com

Video from 2006:

Video from May 2010:

Gen Y: Generational Challenges In The Workplace

This is an unprecedented time in the history of the workforce as four generations find themselves working side by side: Veterans, Baby Boomers, Gen X’ers and Gen Y. Bridging the generational chasms between, say, Veterans and Gen Y’ers presents some challenges that you may need to overcome if we’re all going to get along. Here are some of the generational challenges that Gen Y faces in the workplace.

The Human Factor

The majority of Gen Y’ers were born with cell phones in their hands and there are positive and negative ramifications of this. On the positive side, Gen Y embraces the technological marvels we take for granted today and they do not shy away from advancements in this area. The downside is that most of Gen Y is likely to be less adept at face-to-face communications, having experienced so much social interaction via texts, emails, IMs or Facebook. This lack of personal social skills and can be a hindrance at work as Gen Y may miss vocal cues or facial expressions the other generations picked up through observing. In the real world people laugh, they don’t LOL.

Everything! All The Time!

Patience is another key skill Gen Y needs to master and it’s a tough one. Gen Y takes for granted the pervasive connectivity, which means that they have grown accustomed to having the world at their fingertips. Gen Y tends to exhibit a lack of research skills. Hunting up facts and stringing them together has been replaced with Googling what you need to know and reading information that has been gathered by others. And this applies to every aspect of the job. Answers to work-related questions, work rewards, personal recognition from bosses and so on all have to be instantaneous.

Standing On Your Own Twenty Feet

Perhaps the biggest challenge facing Gen Y in the workplace is the ability to act on one’s own initiative. Gen Y has grown up with not only the world in the palm of their hands, but also lifelines to parents and friends who are only a call or text away. Gen Y perceives themselves as having a support group with them 24/7, people who will answer their questions, guide them and offer advice. The plus side of this is that working as part of a physical team comes relatively easy to Gen Y. The negative is that Gen Y display a lack of independence. Without that safety net to fall back on, Gen Y is behind the other generations when it comes to taking the initiative

Veterans Are From Mars, Gen Y Is From Venus

The workplace is an ever-changing landscape. Gone are the grey flannel suits and fedoras of the Veterans. And if Gen Y has its way, the office itself will soon be a thing of the past, cast aside in favor of telecommuting. However this hasn’t happened yet and Gen Y has to get along at work just like the other generations. Being thought/concept focused due to social interaction mostly through written communication, Gen Y’s powers of observation are in question. Throwing thoughts around while in your pyjamas in front of a computer in the basement can hamper Gen Y’s ability to observe and adapt to the formal restrictions of the workplace with regards to attire and demeanour. Also, being long used to sharing every personal thought they have with friends via social web pages and texts, knowing when/if to express themselves at the office is a skill they will have to pick up in a hurry.

These are just some of the challenges facing Gen Y in the workforce. As for the forthcoming Gen Z, the possibilities are boundless.

This article was written by Andrew Salmon from the life insurance website LifeCover.ca.

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