WHY DINOSAUR EMPLOYERS JUST DON’T ‘GET’ YOUR SKILLS
** This is a guest post by Clare Whitmell, who blogs about CV writing and job search strategies at JobMarketSuccess.com **
It really bugs me that older people — including employers — are making sweeping generalisations and judgments about an entire generation. According to them, Generation Y (that’s you, if you were born after 1980) are:
ENTITLED
Bosses say: You want the great job, great career without wanting to put in the work and effort to get that reward. You’re slated for thinking your degree will take the place of experience, and that you deserve special treatment because of it.
I say: If I was in debt to the tune of £30,000, I’d feel entitled to a job too. I’d feel that I’d invested in my future, and deserved to a good start in the career of my choice. I definitely expected to get a good job when I graduated (in 1987 — I’m 45 now). Why is this sense of expectation now labelled ‘entitlement’? It’s criminal that young people are being urged to get a degree in the expectation that they will get a better job – only for this not to materialise. There should be much clearer direction at school. And it’s simply not true to say that ‘Gen Y’ is work-shy. Yes, some have inflated ideas about salary but far more grads take unpaid internships just for the chance at a job. This was virtually unheard of for ‘Gen X’. We walked into paid roles straight after graduation.
IMPATIENT
Bosses say: You have the attention span of a flea. All this multi-tasking (simultaneous texting, tweeting and blogging) means you’re unable to dedicate time to properly completing one task before moving on to another. Incapable of rigorous thought, your ‘cut and paste’ generation snips bits of information from one source and cobbles it together with another to create a mish-mash of uninformed, unresearched opinion, offered up in place of reasoned and structured analysis and assessment.
I say: OK, maybe you do flit from one thing to another, but this is symptomatic of the digital communication style you have grown up with — it’s not a character flaw. I could argue that it’s an asset in the modern office. How many work environments today allow the luxury of sitting down and working at a problem without interruption? In understaffed offices where employees are overworked, phones ring, email alerts ping and bosses sneak up on you from behind to assign you new tasks. So, flexibility is no bad thing.
IMMATURE
Bosses say: You aren’t ready for world of work. You aren’t independent enough of your parents, you’re not ready to take on responsibility at work and — crucially — you don’t have the sophisticated communication, critical thinking and problem-solving skills that employers look for today.
I say: When were 21-year-olds ever good at this stuff, without a bit of coaching from their employer? There’s now some evidence to suggest that development of these skills is not something you typically see in young adults — it comes much later in life. If they want to speed up the development of these skills, employers should give young people problem-solving tasks to work on and assign an older mentor to help guide the process. They shouldn’t just throw you in at the deep end without supervision — and complain when it doesn’t go right.
ILLITERATE
Bosses say: You lack basic written and numeracy skills, using text speak rather than spelling words out in their entirety, not appearing “business-like” in your written communication to clients.
I say: This complaint is an old chestnut. Every year, the CBI (Confederation of British Industry) trots out a report saying literacy and numeracy are dropping, that grads can’t spell, add up or write a decent letter. You rely too heavily on spell check, our editing skills are undeveloped, you rush your work… But this is nothing new. My mum (of a generation so ancient it has no label) sends me emails with absolutely no paragraphing — and commas where there should be full stops or semi colons. Meanwhile, my brother (a fellow Gen Xer) writes entire emails with no punctuation at all — they’re just a string of words. Good writing skills come about through practice and feedback. Gen Y, the digital generation, communicates in a variety of styles, and far more frequently than previous generations. You can write concisely in tweets and texts and synthesise information from websites, blogs and forums far better than older people. Oh, and this nonsense that text speak makes us worse spellers – not borne out by any of the evidence. It takes understanding of spelling rules to be able to abbreviate meaningfully.
Generalising across an entire generation is just lazy thinking. It’s so much easier to stereotype everyone rather than to take the time to get to know and appreciate someone’s strengths and weaknesses.
How much more convenient to say: “Today’s grads are useless — they can’t even write proper business English,” than to say “Let’s invest in some training,” or “Let me take the time to show this person how I want her to reply to this sort of letter or deal with this sort of complaint in a professional way.”
So why do older people seem to dislike you so much? Perhaps every generation is guilty of slating the one below and vastly under-estimating their capabilities. I think some might be scared of you “stealing” their jobs (because you’re willing to work for less?). They might feel threatened by a younger, more vigorous, more curious generation. But the truth is that we must all stay up-to-date, and we should feed our brains regardless of our age. Nothing stands still, and nobody can afford to stay in a rut. It’s far more healthy is to think we can all learn from each other — regardless of which “generation” we fall into.
My background is in teaching — and one thing I’ve learned from teaching young people is this: the minute you start to underestimate someone’s capabilities is the minute you start decreasing their potential. Give someone the tools to do a job, believe in them, and you’ll be amazed by what they can achieve.
A fabulous post, it’s about time folks started to speak out in favour of young people. This generation has been tested within an inch of its life from the monenbt they entered the education system, people have been on their case telling them to ‘do better’ since they could speak and now employers expect them to have the experience and maturity of a seasoned professional before they will employ them. Come on, get real – how good were you at 21 – BE HONEST NOW!
Great post Claire! The whole ‘Gen Y’ debate annoys / bores me a lot – it’s amazing how people born 20 years apart can all be assigned the same character traits! There are lazy grads with dreadful spelling – but there are some hard working and talented ones too. The same can be said for any generation. Having been on both sides of the fence, I know this is true. Employers must focus on finding the good grads out there, seeing a spark of potential and giving them the opportunity to develop that – not just tarring everyone with the same brush after a bad experience. With University fees and house prices through the roof and the economy coming out of a recession, it’s pretty tough out there – many grads just need a chance to prove themselves and a bit of guidance.
@Jane Crofts
I totally agree – my bosses at my first job at uni had to really kick me into shape. I had such a bad attitude – i threw a big strop whenever I was given any kind of task I didn’t want to do!
I know, i know, it’s hard to believe now ; )
But all that how-to-behave in an office stuff is easily learned and quickly picked up – it’s not a reason to write off an entire generation!
@SamWoodward
I agree 100% – there’s a LOT more employers could be doing to make this situation work better on both sides. At the moment, I’m hearing about a lot of whinging and very little investment… But hey, is it news that today’s employers all want something for nothing?
(oops, i think i just did a bit of my own stereotyping there!)
I love this post, as I recently scrolled through loads of job ideas for when I graduate in September, the skills and responsiblities scare you off of even wanting to apply! Just one skill missing and you dont reckon you could pull it off. The best one that pops up is ‘Strong experience needed’ I thought that was what a graduate job was for!?!? £30,000 and you want more experience!
This argument comes up every time, it even came up 20 years ago when my mother was talking about employing young people. She told me that when someone says ‘the youth of today’ she quotes Socrates:
“Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.”
Regardless of how old and familiar this all is the fact remains – employers shouldn’t hold such negative views about graduates as a whole. If someone is bad at the job, only they are bad at it, not their entire generation.
From the way employers moan about today’s 21 year olds you’d think that there was once a golden age where new graduates would morph from 21 year old students into fully mature office experts upon graduation. I’ve also read so many job specifications that cover 2 pages worth of “must have experience in this” and yet pay about 12K that I think its rich for employers to accuse anyone of a sense of entitlement.
There may be issues regarding literacy and numeracy amongst today’s graduates compared with the graduates 20 years ago but I cant believe we are all as bad as they say we are. I think a lot of companies want something for nothing and want to avoid having to do any training.
Of all the criticism directed at graduates, the “sense of entitlement” line is especially annoying. Yes, some do have unrealistic or misguided expectations, particularly re professions like the media, but these days, most of the grads who feel “entitled” feel it for perfectly good reasons: They’ve got a good degree, and/or done lots of work experience (paid or unpaid) during their studies, and they’ve developed useful skills through being involved with student clubs and societies. The ones who haven’t got those things generally went to uni to party and play Grand Theft Auto, not to build a good career path, and they’re happy with any job that pays for them to get hammered at the weekend (Either that or there were mitigating circumstances in their way, or they chose the wrong course, and have worked hard since to negate that….). The only lazy graduates with a massive sense of entitlement are the ones who needn’t fear for their futures, because a plumb job with their rich uncle’s firm has been lined up for them since they were four years old.
Yes Maxine totally agree with that. It’s this fuss about entitlement that really winds me up too. Granted I managed to graduate before the fees escalated, so I’m only in line to pay back £15k, but nevertheless I do feel entitled to a decent paying job as a graduate and I don’t see why I should feel any different, especially as a 44-year old mature graduate with lots of previous life and work experience. Whats going on at the moment seems to be a ‘war’ on graduates, I think essentially its just an attempt to make graduates the latest category of cheap available labour here merely to make massed profits for the minority while scrabbling around for peanuts.
People who were drugging it up at Woodstock are running the country for crap’s sake. The very generation pointing a finger & criticizing younger generations.
This is really true. Yeah, sure, some of what they say might be true, but they only need a bit of coaching in order to get it right someday. Nobody is perfect anyway.
PS://greatpaper.co.uk
This is really true. Yeah, sure, some of what they say might be true, but they only need a bit of coaching in order to get it right someday. Nobody is perfect anyway.