One of the more unifying traits of Generation Y is their desire to do important work that has meaning. For those that can afford it, this often manifests itself as volunteer, not-for-profit or NGO¹ work, or even kind-of-questionable things like voluntourism.

Studies continuously show that we’d rather feel like we’re contributing something or building our skills than we would just sit around, twiddling our thumbs, collecting a salary while waiting for those higher on the ladder to either retire or get high by a cement truck. Even if that salary is large, we’re often still not content: only about 20% of the interviewees stated that salary levels were “very important” to them.

Is this a bad trait? Not really. The same studies also show that Gen Y employees are completely willing to work their asses off if the right opportunity comes their way. It’s only if we feel stuck in some soulless, static position that we start to show off some of that now-infamous Generation Y laziness.

Where things DO become problematic, though, is that I think we often don’t give our employers a chance. We can be impatient, and we can be impulsive. If we don’t feel immediately like we’re being valued in a position, we’re liable to job hop, skipping from one employer to the next in the hopes of finding the position that does give us meaning right away.

The reality is that most employers are not going to thrust their new employees into important and meaningful work from day one. And their reasons for not doing so are actually pretty solid. First, because it can be business suicide to give something that could seriously impact your company’s bottom line to a untested newbie. Second, because they’ve likely been burned before by people leaving less than a year into the job.

You can see the Catch-22, can’t you? It’s that big, obvious thing heading straight at us. Young people don’t want to wait around for meaning, so they leave. Employers don’t want to give their new people big projects, because new people are notorious for leaving after a few months on the job.

It has all the qualities of a vicious cycle, and indeed, I’ve heard anecdotal reports of people bouncing around, from entry-level position to entry-level position. These are often talented, well-prepared, skilled individuals, but after eight months of doing nothing but shuffling paper around and watching older, more seasoned employees juggle all sorts of meaningful projects, they bail out.

I think this is one situation where the younger people need to adjust more than the employers do. Gen Y needs to remember that it can’t be so idealistic to think that they can just slide into a high-paying, high-responsibility position² and that, in this case especially, patience is a virtue.

However, employers need to understand that this attitude is commonplace, and adjust for it. Even just a little communication goes a long way here. Give constant feedback, let your young employees know where you see them going in the organization. The absolute worst thing you do is just leave them behind their desk, convinced that all they’re ever going to do is staple, copy and add formulas to your spreadsheets.

In sum: patience and communications. They just might be the fundamental building blocks of the effective intergenerational office.

Photo by gilberts. Licensed under Creative Commons

1. NGO is a really stupid, term, by the way. Here are a list of literal non-governmental organizations: Wal-Mart, McDonalds, The Pittsburgh Steelers, Sony, Ben & Jerry’s. But I digress. [↩]
2. Yes, this is true even if you went to Grad School. I know they might have tried to convince you otherwise. [↩]

I’m over five years removed from my last job interview, and I’m pretty happy about that. A big part of me hopes that I never have to go through the long and terrible process of applying and interviewing for a job again. Maybe some people get kind of a twisted thrill out of the process but, for me, it’s always been a painful slog filled with repetitive tasks and capped off by that ultimate show of awkwardness: the job interview.

Lying during the interview process it’s so common it’s almost not worth talking about. Some studies peg “the rate of lying on resumes or in job interviews at 20 to 44 percent. That includes lies about past degrees, jobs and responsibilities.” And that’s just outright lying — the kind that you really probably shouldn’t do, because it’s not entirely ethical. And it can get you fired.

Add to that, though, all the casual lying that occurs as part of the process. These are omissions, small mistruths and skillfully engineered negatives that become positives. Job education practically recommends applicants do this kind of lying: how many strategies for answering typical job interview questions recommend being straight-up? Almost none of them. Otherwise people would be answering that damned “What’s your biggest weakness?” question with honest answers like “punctuality”, “personal hygiene” or “a tendency toward white-hot rage.”

That never happens.

The job interview — and the whole hiring process, really — has become a game of deception and often lies. And Generation Y is the first generation to really embrace that. Because, hell, we’ve been trained to approach it as such by our boomer parents and our Gen X siblings and friends. It’s become a simple formula: play the game, win the company over, get the job.

The problem, of course, is that it never ends there. You have to go on to work at the job, and it’s there that conflicts arise. Because your employer will inevitably find out that you’re not quite so proficient in HTML/CSS, that your biggest weakness is NOT that you’re ‘a perfectionist’, that you’re not really a “self-starter with excellent communication skills” and that your “three years of management experience” really amounts to two years of summer camp and a string of nights where you were the designated driver to a group of very, very drunk friends.

And that tie you were wearing during the interview? A clip-on. That you borrowed from your dad. Then spilled coffee on.

I ask the question in the title of the post: Should we present ourselves more honestly? Wouldn’t it be better if job interviews were more like conversations, rather than performances, and we just lay our true personalities and views on the table? If they’re compatible with the company’s aims and vision, then you’re a strong candidate. If you don’t quite ‘fit’, you shake hands and move on. No trained responses, no fancy buzzword-heavy language, no creative spinning of experience — just down-to-the-brass-tacks conversation about the things both parties are passionate about it.

I think this would help us a lot as a generation. Gen Ys get a bad rap because we surprise employers. We’ve been taught to interview in a tell-them-what-they-want-to-hear kind of way, which doesn’t often gel with our true attitudes and work styles. So the employer has no real idea what they’re getting into when they hire one of us.

I already know the answer to my question, though: No. We can’t present ourselves more honestly. Because the other candidates won’t. They’ll continue to lie. So while we’re saying that we don’t really like to work before 10 a.m., they’ll be claiming they love to start the day at 4 a.m. with a 10-mile run and a stint at the soup kitchen. There’s just no balance.

I wish I had more answers. Is it smarter hiring managers? Is something rotten in the world of HR? Are some companies taking alternative approaches to the old interview equation? Let me know if you have any thoughts.

Photo by ld. Licensed under Creative Commons

Generation Y Veneration has some predictions about working from home:

Despite the ability for many people in my industry (and other industries) to work from home everyday if they wanted to, they don’t.

Why?

Because nothing beats a face to face conversation.

I think it’s dangerous to conflate ‘working at home’ to ‘never leaving your house for work-related reasons’. The Generation Y-fueled change is not necessarily a shift towards impersonal business, but rather toward increased fluidity between work and life. Depending on the industry, your office can be a kitchen table, a coffee shop, a hotel lobby or a rented meeting space. Or, when it works, a virtualized online space.

It’s about being flexible and being open to new ways of work. Because, really, is there any real logic to the belief that work needs to be done collectively at a physical location with a water cooler and fluorescent lighting?

The aforementioned post by Ryan Healy sparked off a whole bunch of comments, as posts on Brazen Careerist tend to do. One, in particular, by a poster calling himself ‘jrandom42′ sparked some thinking.

The comment:

Bluntly put, nobody gets a free pass on anything, until they can prove to me that they can deliver results that positively affect my goals and bottom line.

In other words, show me you why deserve these exceptions from what everyone else has to adhere to, and then we’ll talk. And it’s still not guaranteed you’re going to get any of them.

I think this is a dangerous attitude that’s been cropping up a lot as this Generation Y hysteria works its way through businesses. It’s almost as if there are three stages of reaction to Generation Y in the workplace.

It tends to go:

1. Shock & Outrage - “When I was your age, I was damn lucky to get the job I had! I worked sixty hours a week breaking chunks of coal with nothing but my forehead. And at the end of the week, when my boss came by, I said THANK YOU.”
2. Dismissal - “Ha ha, whatever you say, kid. You just wait until you get a little older and see what’s out there in the REAL WORLD. Then you’ll be singing a different tune!”
3. Begrudging Acceptance - “Okay, sure, whatever. If you want to be a lazy jerk unlike EVERYONE ELSE IN THE HISTORY OF WORK than I GUESS you can have some slack. Provided you prove yourself to be a model employee under our current structure first. I’ll do you a FAVOUR.”

I think getting to stage three is enough for a lot of Gen Ys. Even though it comes with some passive aggression, at least your boss or manager is giving you the freedom you need. And, sure, it kind of sucked to have to slog through energy- and morale-sapping months to “prove yourself” but, if you’re creative and talented, you got through it. And then you were able to develop a situation that gave you at least some of the work-life balance and structure you were looking for in the first place.

But this isn’t how it should be.

Generation Y is not asking for special treatment. We’re not asking that you give us freedoms that other employees don’t have. Absolutely, things need to be broken down based on the type of responsibility of each job — if you’ve been hired to answer phones or paint cars, you probably can’t work from home — but that doesn’t mean things can’t be flexible, equitable and universal. Everyone who works for you should be afforded the same arrangement, within reason.

Quite frankly, this is the only way it can work. If you start letting your 23-year-old employee go home early because that’s the way he works best, your 10-year-veteran sales person who likes to stay a half hour after work hours just to show the bosses how dedicated he is (this is absolutely GROSS behaviour, by the way) is probably going to get upset.

Which tends to be where it gets complicated.

Look, I’d never argue that management is simple. With multiple generations in the workplace, it’s only going to get more complicated. But going the easy route, where you set blanket policies and only give flexibility when your younger employees demand it, is not a viable solution. To truly make the intergenerational office work, Generation Y needs to accelerate change for EVERYONE in the office, not just themselves.

Photo ‘Office Hours’ by shawnblog. Licensed under Creative Commons

I’ve been seeing a lot of the Best Practices Guy lately. If you’ve been in the work world long enough, you’re probably familiar with this person: he or she is the one at any and every meeting whose only real contribution to the discussion is to harp on the need to look at “best practices.” Before we can do anything, Best Practices Guy argues, we need to determine what everyone else is doing.

And then, presumably, we’ll just copy them. Because that’s how profits are made.

There’s nothing wrong with keeping your eyes open and making sure you’re up on the latest trends, conventions and breakthroughs, but the problem with Best Practices People is that they’re usually the one who isn’t at all. If they knew what the “best practices” were, they’d probably mention it. Instead, they just continuously request that someone else do the research and report back.

I keep putting “best practices” in quotes because it’s really one of those empty-headed phrases that sounds like it means more than it actually does. If I were to tell you the best way to make scrambled eggs, I’d sound informal, casual and cool. If I were to say I had with me the “best practices for scrambled eggs” I’d come off sounding not unlike a corporate wannabe tool.

Best Practices Guy isn’t always a tool. Usually the intentions are good, but in a roundabout way. The problem with the type of person I’m describing is that he or she is often motivated almost entirely by fear. It’s not so much research they crave, but safety. If we just do what someone else has done (and succeeded with) we thus have no risk of failure.

That’s boring. Maybe it’s a good strategy in a fiscally conservative kind of way. But it’s BORING. And boredom is not a desirable trait for a company. Boring companies already have trouble attracting talent, and, in the information age and with Generation Y being kind of difficult to work with (I hear), they’re likely not going to have much time for boredom either.

Innovation can’t happen when you limit yourself to ‘best practices’. The companies who have recently seen success have been the ones who have been willing to brazenly eschew established practices. Look at Apple with the mp3 player, Nintendo with the Wii, Google with Internet Advertising and even smaller companies like Moleskine with notebooks or Threadless with T-shirts. While these companies undoubtedly understand the marketplace, I guarantee that the top brass don’t sit around worrying about ‘best practices’.

Innovation can’t happen if you’re always looking to adhere to ‘best practices’. Let’s shut that Best Practices Guy up.

I’ve talked about Results Oriented Work Environment (ROWE) before. It still continues to be something I’m fascinated by, especially as it evolves as a practice at Best Buy, a Fortune 100 company. Tim Ferriss at Four Hour Work Week has an interview with Cali Ressler, one of the architects of ROWE, that sheds some light on how it’s working:

ROWE stands for Results-Only Work Environment. In a ROWE, each person is free to do whatever they want, whenever they want, as long as the work gets done. Currently, there are two authentic ROWEs—Fortune 100 retailer Best Buy Co, Inc. and J. A. Counter & Associates, a small brokerage firm in New Richmond, WI. At both organizations, the old rules that govern a traditional work environment—core hours, “face time,” pointless meetings, etc.—have been replaced by one rule: focus only on results.

Read both part one and part two. I really think this ROWE has a lot to do with the future of work, especially as more Gen Ys take up careers.

Presumed Australian Valerie Khoo has a great blog post over at My Small Business. The title itself — “Harness Gen Y talent — even if you hate them” — amuses me to no end. And there’s some really smart stuff in here:

Many Gen-Ys have very different habits, interests and skills. Instead of ignoring them - or doing things like banning Facebook in the workplace - think about how you might be able to draw on them. I have a Gen-Y staff member in one of my businesses who watches Youtube in her lunch hour, loves her ipod and is interested in technology. About a year ago, she said she wanted to learn about creating audio and video. These tools had nothing to do with my business, which offers courses in writing. And I was concerned that she needed to be challenged with new ideas that piqued her interest at work.

So I asked her to come up with ways she could incorporate her interests into the business. After many brainstorming sessions, we created online courses (incorporating online audio and video) which now generate a whole new revenue stream for the business. When other businesses realised we were doing online audio (which are essentially podcasts) they came to us to create custom podcasts for them. So now we have yet another revenue stream for the business.

That’s a terrific example of where Generation Y has a huge amount of potential that is often overlooked. Gen Y employees are considered frustrating because they tend to ignore — or blatantly flaunt their disregard for — a lot of the ‘rules’ of the workplace, which in some cases have been around unchanged for more than fifty years. It’s a me-first attitude that can drive you up the wall.

But there’s a lot of potential in it, because — in contrast to the stereotypically bored, uninterested and unmotivated ’slackers’ of Gen X — Generation Y is noted for their huge interest in all sorts of things, particularly technology. Their interests — which are decidedly non-work-related in old-school thinking — can actually prove incredibly useful at work, especially when it comes to left-field thinking in advertising and community outreach.

The trick, of course, is finding that place where Generation Y’s interests turn into revenue tools and become of value to your business. The outcomes are not always easy to see — and I guess that makes some hate us — but the potential is hard to deny.

So you’re Gen Y and you want to advance in your job quickly. That’s fairly typical. We’re known for our bullheadedness, after all. But one of the drawbacks of ‘moving up’ the corporate latter is that you inevitably end up spending more of your time managing the people underneath you and less of your time writing, designing, and doing other creative tasks.

There’s a twisted kind of logic at play here. As you accumulate more responsibility within an organization, other people get hired underneath you to take on some of the work you were previously doing. Often this is the creative stuff: the report you were writing, the new branding you were working on, the idea you had for a blog on the web site. Get that stuff off my plate, the rationale says, and then I’ll have more time for… managing the people doing that stuff.

This can be bad for you professionally — especially if what made you stand out in the first place was your ability to handle creative tasks — but, more importantly, it’s often bad for you personally. Nothing is more satisfying for a creative person in the workplace than actually sitting down and creating something. Developing ideas and making them real. Seeing that whole process all the way through. It all has tremendous value when it comes to making you feel like what you do actually matters.

So as you move up the ladder, don’t give away all your creative tasks. Often, you’re forced by a time crunch to step away from that sort of work for a while, but do not make that a permanent thing. Whenever you get a chance, step back into the creative realm and remind yourself what it feels like. Your own professional morale just might depend on it.

Photo by laffy4k. Licensed Under Creative Commons

BusinessWeek ran an article by Tammy Erickson last month about Generation Y and stress, showing that despite our tendency toward thinking rather highly of our own abilities and demanding a lot from the workplace, we’re still not very good at relaxing at work:

Many Gen Ys are also feeling overwhelmed by high expectations and multiple choices. In one survey, over 60 percent of recent high school graduates surveyed said that they had experienced some of the symptoms doctors use to diagnose clinical depression.

I spent much of the first few months at my current job feeling stressed out. It’s an unfortunate side-effect of wanting to make an immediate impression and move up quick. Since we’re not usually content to just sit at a desk and wait for a few years until someone rewards us for longevity, we tend to go all-out, putting all sorts of pressure on ourselves to perform at an unprecedented standard.

This is both a good and a bad thing. Good because it tends to work: Generation Y employees do get noticed in the workplace for their talents. Bad because it tends to result in an incredible amount of stress when you’re starting at a new job. Because, of course, it’s hard to stand out as an expert at the work you do when you’re just learning where the bathroom is and what the company you work for actually does.

Depending on the type of person you are, time may be the only thing that really relieves the stress. But for me what really helped was coming to the understanding that great employees aren’t the ones who never ask dumb questions or don’t make mistakes — great employees are the ones who strive to learn everything they can and confront their own mistakes with solutions and recommendations. And, more importantly, great employees aren’t automatons basking in perfection. Great employees are human, and humans make mistakes. The trick is to let yourself.

Learning that was like a revelation. I stopped worrying about my mistakes. Before, I’d try to hide or minimize them. Once or twice I even made the cardinal workplace sin of looking for someone else to blame. And, in the event where it became clear to coworkers that I had made a mistake, I’d strive to come up with long-winded explanations and apologies.

“Matt, did you do that research we need?” “No, sorry, I forgot and I had to take my car in for service and I haven’t been feeling well and…” On and on.

It was stressing me out and it was making me look bad. The best answer in a case like that? A simple “No, I forgot, but I’ll get right on it.” And then you deliver. Admit your mistakes, but don’t apologize for them. In the end, no one’s likely to remember the tiny slip-up, but everyone’s likely to remember the way you sulked about it or apologized profusely.

The workplace is a busy place, and everyone drops the ball every now and again. Striving for perfection is only going to result in stress for you and will ultimately hurt your standing in the office environment. By letting go of that urge, and admitting to the occasions where you do screw up, you’ll be happier and likely more productive at work.

Photo by BrittneyBush. Licensed under Creative Commons

It’s getting warmer outside, slowly but surely, which means summer is finally here. And while summer tends to be a pretty great time for students — no assignments! sleeping in! lots of beer and then hangovers but it doesn’t matter because you can sleep in ’til the afternoon! — it also brings with it the unfortunate need for a summer job.

I’ve been working for a couple of years now, but I still remember dreading the job hunt process. The worst part was always the résumé building: I’d spend days tweaking and proofreading (and proofreading and proofreading) it, thinking that I was a prime candidate for whatever job, only to submit and then hear… nothing. For days and weeks. It’s enough to make you crazy. You end up convinced you’ve overlooked something — some typo or omission or unclear qualification — to the point where you just want to skip out of the whole process and go do some voluntourism or whatever.

I’m on the other side now. I’ve been hiring students for the summer. I get to review résumés that I bet inspire the very same worries in their authors as mine did. And, as part of this, I’ve learned something that would have helped ease my mind so much back in my student job-hunting days; I’ve learned that the candidate selection process is mostly random. It’s all based on biases and connections and how the person sifting through the résumés is feeling that morning. There’s no science to it.

As a result, I thought I’d share some résumé tips based on my own experiences. Bear in mind that the selection process tends to come down to biases, as each person will have their own individual red flags that cause them to dismiss an applicant. These are just mine.

Don’t Include an ‘Objective’

This was probably more sensible at one point, when people had lofty career expectations that included staying with a company for anywhere between ten years and the rest of their lives, but I don’t think anyone buys that as a realistic (or likely) scenario these days, which makes the ‘objective’ part of the résumé an exercise in almost pure BS.

Here’s the thing. If you have an ‘objective’ on your résumé right now, I bet it says something like “To obtain employment in a fast-paced dynamic environment and gain further skills in the area of customer service.” Strip that of all the dressed-up language, and you’ve got this: to get a job. Your objective is, in 99% of cases, to get a job.

And that’s fine. Let’s not pretend we live in some sort of altruistic money-isn’t-everything society where people take work purely for the experience of it and not because they need to make money and pay the rent. You want to get a job. That’s a good thing. But it’s also kind of implied by the very fact that you are applying for work. No ‘objective’ needed.

What you should do instead: I’m a big fan of ‘profile statements’ which is like an even shorter version of your résumé. Pretend you’re on twitter and make it short and snappy: “Toronto-based freelance writer and program developer with five years experience in coordinating and overseeing the development of online communities.” Something like that.

Don’t shroud your work experience in jargon

We’ve all done this before, particularly when we’re not feeling confident in our past work experience. Suddenly you weren’t a cashier at a grocery store, you were a “customer service technician.” You weren’t a “line cook” at McDonalds, you were a “culinary coordinator.” And so on.

Don’t do this. All but the most stupid of recruiters will see right through you, and it’s a sure sign of desperation. While résumés are, by default, a formal mode of communication, there’s nothing formal about referring to the paper route you had when you were 10 as a ‘roving media dispatcher’.

What you should do instead: First, ask yourself if you even need to list that job you had in the tenth grade. Unless you REALLY haven’t worked since, then you’re probably safe to just leave it off entirely. If you’re hard up for any work experience, then just list what you did honestly and plainly, but be sure to include a few bullet points outlining the tasks you performed and your job performance — at the very least, that McJob experience shows that you’re reliable and responsible enough to maintain work.

Don’t tell me you’re proficient in ‘Internet’

This is another one that may have made sense in the halcyon days of yore, when browsing the internet meant finding your Netscape Navigator diskette and dialing in at 9800 bauds. But if you’re still listing “Internet” under the “Computer Skills” section of your résumé you are sorely behind the times.

The internet is not something you’re proficient in. You open a browser. You type in an address. You hit ‘back’ and ‘forward’ as necessary. Given today’s technology, listing that you’re proficient with the internet is roughly akin to bragging about your ability to operate a light switch.

What you should do instead: Be more specific. One of the more in-demand skills right now is the ability to be an effective internet researcher. Are you good at using google to find obscure information? That might be a skill worth listing.

Avoid the Microsoft Word template

This one is especially important for anyone who wants to get hired in any kind of creative industry. Handing someone a résumé that extolls your creativity and inventiveness in the basic stock template comes off a bit like Steven Hawking bragging about his dancing ability.

And regardless of the template you use, for the love of all that is good in this world, don’t use Times New Roman.

What you should do instead: If you’re in a crunch, at least pick one of the templates you have to download from Microsoft’s Web Site — at least those won’t be that familiar. But, really, you should probably spend some time giving your résumé its own design. Don’t go so garish that it’s pink and scented (you’re not Elle Woods) but a subtle, professional design can go a long way toward differentiating you from the other résumés in the pile.

Don’t downplay your own abilities

This is the hardest part of résumé writing. There is no way to write an effective résumé without putting yourself into a box of arrogance. You have to be willing to embrace every egotistical bone in your body and sell yourself.

There’s no way around this, and yet frequently I read résumés where the writing just comes off as insecure. You can’t do this. It will, more than anything else (except for maybe spelling errors, but that’s so obvious I’m not even going to go into it) hurt your chances of getting an interview.

What you should do instead: Be bold. Be brazen. Write in the active voice EVERYWHERE. Don’t write “was responsible for ordering office supplies when required.” Write “ordered office supplies when necessary.” The little difference in those two sentences is, in fact, roughly the size of the Grand Canyon.

Don’t Give Up

The last piece of advice is simple and, in some cases, infuriating. Finding jobs can take a look time, even in a time like now, where demographics are honestly stacked in your favour. The best thing you can is just keep at it — eventually you’ll find the right fit.

Photo by bruceley. Licensed under Creative Commons