No 45 January 2005 Those Generations! Continuing from NEWORKer No 44.
How the different generations think about a career GIs and Silents They set out to build a career that saw them spending a lifetime with one employer or, at the very least, remaining in one field. Their attitude is that doing a job is something you do all your life. Your job IS your life. They feel a real responsibility towards their employers and their employees. This is loyalty and dedication at the highest level. Boomers When this generation set out on a career path they, consciously or not, often selected one that would show their parents and their communities they amounted to something. They seek challenges. Once they’ve achieved something they like this to be noticed, either within the company, in terms of grand offices or titles, or in the outside world, in business magazines or newspapers, and even on the social pages. But Boomers are now heading towards that time in life when every generation begins to contemplate the future. This doesn’t necessarily mean that they will slow down or stop being workaholics, but they’re starting to question what they’ve made all the money for. Microsoft’s Bill Gates, for instance, is working in the field of Aids and malaria prevention. His partner, Paul Allen, has given $100 million to fund a project that is mapping the human brain. If Boomers are setting out on a new career path at this stage of their lives, they will want to know that they are doing something meaningful and not working only for financial reward. Many of them though, are resigned to seeing out the remaining years to retirement, often feeling trapped in their careers, which they selected decades earlier in another lifetime, in another world. Gen Xers This generation is not prepared to stick to one particular company or industry. It saw its parents give their life and soul to companies which then spat them out when the economy nose-dived and the company didn’t need them any more. So, from the time they start working, Xers set out to build a portable career, one they can take anywhere with them. Bruce Tulgan, author of, Managing Generation X, interviewed thousands of Xers for a research project which showed that nearly 80 percent of qualified Xers are today no longer working in the area in which they qualified. Tulgan, an American, was the first person to really get to grips with Xers as a working generation and ascertain what motivates them. Graeme, a 30-something Xer, has heard the same story during his many presentations when he asks audience Xers if they have changed careers. The average thirty year old nearly always responds in the affirmative. In a portable career, in a rapidly changing world, Xers should expect to be between jobs at least five times in their lives and to change industries three times. They will need to re-skill themselves, almost completely, at least twice during their working lives. This doesn’t mean, contrary to Silent and Boomer generation boss expectations, that Xers are unreliable, disloyal and flaky and will up and leave you at the drop of another offer. Not at all. It is just that they are building their CVs in anticipation of yet another economic downturn, company downsizing or rightsizing or whatever. They’re creating options in a world that offers no guarantees. Xers know from their parent’s bitter experience that they could be made redundant overnight, and they would prefer to leave before they are told to do so. They also like to leave when a company’s on the up and not on the skids. Employers need to get to grips with this constantly job hopping generation by providing job portability from within so that staff won’t leave them. Identify new areas of expertise in your company where Xers could be re-trained and in so doing, you will soothe their career jitters. You may retort that if you do so, they will leave you anyway with their newly acquired skills. So, yes, it’s a dangerous strategy, but one that could pay you better than constantly training new Xers who don’t know the corporate culture and haven’t even the shred of loyalty that often accompanies familiarity. A word of advice for Xers: don’t shake that company dust off your shoes purely for the sake of doing so. You often need to stay in an industry longer than you feel is necessary and you need to take the time, and have the patience, to be fully competent, before you move on. You might, otherwise, never fully attain your potential. Gen Yers/Millennials They view work as one big, one life-long, CV building exercise. They were born at a time when they heard their Boomer and Xer parents talking about a cut back in jobs and feeling the pinch of the shrinking economy. They grew up listening to parental conversations about needing to move on and to add to their CVs. So, not surprisingly, that’s what Millennials will do – move jobs, not for more money but to add more skills to that CV. In the ‘old days’ when youngsters applied for a job in a pub or a restaurant, they didn’t have to present a neatly typed CV, yet that’s what they are increasingly being asked for today, even if they are just doing a gap year before university or college. Down the track, Millennials will, like the Xers, develop a portfolio of careers. In fact, futurists predict that Millennials will have ten different career changes in a lifetime and will completely change their careers at least once a decade. Some of that changing will not necessarily be from corporation to corporation because both Xers and Millennials believe that career changes are not just up the career ladder. They can also be down and even out for a while. In other words, they could leave their influential company post and opt to learn a new skill in another area of the corporation. They will be surprised if this has a negative impact on their salaries as they expect to be paid for their talent and output and not for a position or title. They might opt out of the working world altogether and do some work for the Peace Corps or Voluntary Service Overseas or an HIV/Aids organisation, which would adds to their life skills but not their bank account. Millennials will have several jobs simultaneously. For instance, a lawyer will work three days at her firm and then two days in her technology company. We know of a vet who’s also a chef at weekends because he loves food so much. In countries like New Zealand, job sharing and multiple jobs have become fairly usual. This culture will spread rapidly. The difference between a Boomer employer and a (future) Millennial one will be that the Boomer, when recruiting, will look for someone who’s a world expert with 30 years experience in his field. A Millennial will be more impressed by adaptability and flexibility, all things being equal, than high flown expertise.
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