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

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

An article in IT World about Five ways to make your company Gen Y friendly struck a bit of a chord with me this morning. This point especially:

Narrow the rungs of the corporate ladder. Millennials are willing to work hard, but when it comes to moving up the ranks, they want to do so quickly. According to the study, 51% of Millennials surveyed believe professionals entering the workforce should have to spend only one to two years proving themselves in entry-level positions. That means you aren’t likely to attract or keep talented Gen Y employees by requiring them to spend years “paying their dues.”

First, I was glad to see that most Gen Y employees still believe in spending one or two years working at entry level. While I’m sure there are some that would be content staying at that level longer, I find that there’s a large group who also feel like they shouldn’t have to work entry-level at all. This is a ridiculously dangerous attitude.

Second, I think IT World makes a good point about “climbing the ladder.” I’d add that I don’t think it’s so much about the speed at which one climbs the ladder, but rather that opportunity is given equally, and that any decisions made are based on performance and not how long someone has been with the company.

When someone gets a bonus or a promotion for being with a company for five or ten years, they often call it a “loyalty” thing. But I don’t really agree. I think it’s only a longevity thing. There’s nothing truly loyal about staying in the same place for a long time. And, in fact, true loyalty — the kind that actually can impact a company’s bottom line — doesn’t have a lot to do with accumulated time.

True loyalty is sticking with a project even when things get bad. It’s going the extra mile to fix a mistake that could make the company look bad. It’s using so-called “personal time” to learn, create and promote — to better yourself in ways that better the organization.

Ultimately, it’s the small acts wherein you put your employer before yourself that make one loyal.

Employers: reward that. And if that happens to line up with someone who has been with your company for five, ten or twenty years, even better. But be careful about simply rewarding longevity — there’s nothing really difficult or impressive about sticking with a mid-level position, working in auto-pilot, for decades. And if Gen Y sees that that’s all you really value, you’re not giving them much of an incentive to show you any real loyalty.

I keep seeing articles like this one (featuring quotes from the talented Penelope Trunk) saying that Generation Y isn’t all about the money. The conclusion, often, is this:

•Work is not about the money. Young people watched their baby boomer parents work hard and get laid off, Trunk said. “Consequently, they really do believe life is about relationships,” she said. “It’s insulting if you offer to pay them to work the weekend.”

I tend to agree with this, as it’s certainly true in my case. I seriously wonder about my friends going to lawschool - I know they’re after the high-paying salary, but do they really want to end up working so much?

I worry, though, that the stigma that Gen Y is after more than a salary will translate into some employers think they can pay us nothing as long as they let everyone leave the office early on Friday. It is not, as some might think, that we’re willing to sacrifice a high salary for increased flexibility — rather it’s that we’re not willing to let a high salary dupe us into devoting our whole lives to work.

And then there’s the fact that we tend to be savvier when it comes to money, and how it works. Since we get married later, have fewer kids later in life and tend not to have the same kind of giant-house-in-the-suburbs dream as our forebears, we’re not as likely to end up in the same need-a-giant-steady-paycheck-above-all-else situation. (That’s not to say Gen Ys don’t have their own issues with debt — it’s just a different kind, what with credit cards and all.)

And, finally, there’s charts like this — from this article — , showing that the relationship between your job, the hours you work, and the money you make isn’t as clear cut as you might think:

Interesting stuff, isn’t it?

I don’t know a whole lot about being a police officer, likely because I am badly out of shape and kind of a wuss when it comes to the idea of tackling criminals or what have you, but officer.com has an article on Gen Y and the Millennials coming on to the police force that’s very interesting. There are parts I agree with and parts I strenuously disagree with.

Let’s take this point-by-point.

On demographics

Generation Y and the new Millenials that will be crossing your doorway looking for a job. Yes I said job, not necessarily a career, but a job. They may not stay; in fact it is likely they won’t. In the 1980s when I graduated from high school there was one job for every four students. Going to some post secondary school was a better option to wait and see if more jobs opened up. Today, there are four jobs for every student and the new graduates of high school and post secondary institutions have their pick. You may or may not be one of them.

I see these “4 for 1″ stats a lot, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the source. It seems pretty accurate, though, at least in the sense of all that it implies: this is a generation of employees that isn’t going to bend over backwards for you just because they want to keep their job.

On stereotyping

In comes Generation Y (1978-1994). These are our junior constables or new recruits. They have a casual attitude towards superiors and are opinionated and challenge the rules. Their parents were older when they had them and were more babied by their parents. They lived at home late in life - and may still live at home while working for you. They belonged to schools where you were never failed, there was no winner or loser and everyone got a “participant ribbon” just for showing up.

Some good and some bad here. Yeah, Gen Y tends to live at home longer. Often because their parents suggest they do until they can buy a house — there’s a pervasive “renting is throwing your money away” myth at work here. But I think this “participant ribbon” article falls fully into the realm of fantasy myth: I do recall there being things like that at various events, but even as an 11-year-old I knew not to take them very seriously. And there were still ribbons for first/second/third place, too.

I think you’d find it really difficult to find a member of Generation Y who doesn’t, when you get right down to it, have a good sense of what competition means. I think the difference is that we’ve been conditioned to see ‘winning’ as something else entirely than what the Boomers/Gen X are used to.

Here’s a hint: it’s not all about money.

On Gen Y’s future in policing

So now what? Flexible Management Leadership. Demographics don’t lie. Birth rates are down, retirement is up. There is more demand for people in management roles and a dwindling pool of talent for policing. 3% of young people think of policing as a career. 63% never would consider policing as a career. That leaves 34% undecided. It’s time to wake up and reposition ourselves as the employer of choice. Change is not a sign of failure and the failure to change in this case is not an option.

I think by and large policing is going to see the same problem that the skilled trades do now: teachers don’t tell their students about it, so students don’t consider it. There’s also the pop culture stigma: chart the evolution of the cop TV show from the 70s to now. It’s a lot grittier, and I can’t really think of a television police officer who is actually, you know, happy with their jobs.

But the change part is so critical. If I’ve hammered home anything on this blog since I started writing it is that change is at the foundation of real intergenerational progress in the workplace. It’s a bit of give & take, sure, but fundamentally I think most of the change has to come at the management and organizational level.

Photo by nyc arthur. Licensed under Creative Commons

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.

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

I spent a day this past week attending sessions on Generation Y in the workplace presented by Max Valiquette and Giselle Kovary. I’ve seen both speakers before, but they’re both entertaining and continue to evolve their presentations to include interesting points, so I was glad to spend the time to hear their messages again. Plus, all-day workshop are a very welcome respite from the day-to-day work sometimes.

Listening this time, though, I was struck with something that’s actually been rolling around in my head for a while. Whenever anybody talks about Generation Y these days, they mention technology.¹ According to conventional wisdom, Generation Y loves technology. We love video games and cell phones and the internet and every gizmo, gadget or doowhacky under the sun. It is undoubtedly a very very ironclad part of our overall generational identity.

It’s not hard to find evidence. The Financial Post ran an article about the Ryerson Facebook incident (which I touched upon here) this week, and included a standard technology-is-everything piece in their explanation of Generation Y:

Confident, global -thinking and impatient, this generation of workers — approximately everyone born between 1982 and 1990 –does not know life without computers. It takes technology for granted, turning to e-mail, blogs and social-networking sites 24/7 to gather information and interact with colleagues and friends.

I’m not meaning to appear as contrary to this, because it totally does describe me. I’ve been a lifelong nerd, accessing the internet well before my teens and living a life largely based in three-letter acronyms for over a decade now (ICQ, IRC, AIM, WWW, FTP, HTML, CSS, JPG, BRB, LOL, ETC.) And the connectivity and virtual communication piece seems obvious: look at the explosion of popularity in any kind of online service that connects people with their friends.

But the paradox part of is that, for the last few years, I’ve spent a significant amount of time interviewing, hiring and working with other, younger members of Generation Y and throughout that time my questions to them about computers have yielded a fairly consistent statement:

“I’m not very good with computers”

This kills me, because it just seems so unbelievably wrong. We’re the COMPUTER GENERATION! How can you not be good with them? That’d be like a Gen Xer not being good at wearing flannel! Or a baby boomer not being great at complaining about everything! Or a traditionalist not being great at making babies!²

Plus, generally the same people making the claim that they’re not good with computers are the same people who spend their evening with seventeen instant messenger windows open while downloading tracks from Limewire and working on a term paper: “I’m not very good with computers, but often I use them for ten hours straight to do any number of tasks simultaneously.”

Trying to make sense of all of this

I’ve been trying to figure out why this disconnect exists, and I’ve come up with some potential explanations:

• Pure Semantics: Refer to the idea of a Digital Native and think about cars for a second. I would never describe myself as “good with cars” but that has absolutely nothing to do with my ability actually operate a vehicle. I’ve got no real idea where the fuel lines are or even how to change a tire but I still do pretty good at driving to work a few times a week.
  

  Similarly, I think a lot of Gen Yers see themselves as “not good with computers” because they don’t know how to install RAM or put in a hard drive, but that doesn’t mean they’re not adept at using software and performing creative/administrative/organizational tasks on a computer.

  As so-called “digital natives”, we tend to speak and think differently about computers — more compartmentalized, specific to software, hardware and even individual programs — but Gen Y needs to be aware that, by and large, this isn’t how the older generations (read: the ones hiring you) think.

• Confidence: Gen Y lacks a lot of confidence when it comes to some of their skills, particularly their computer skills. Again, if you think about it in terms of being a digital native, it’s easier to understand why this is.
  

  If you asked a native English speaker if they were “good at English” they’d likely reply that they weren’t, especially if they struggled with Shakespeare and hated James Joyce. On the flip side, though, if you asked a native English speaker if they were “good at Spanish”, they might answer in the affirmative even if all they know is how to ask where the bathroom is or how to get back to the cruise ship.

  One of the more difficult things you need to do when selling yourself to a potential employer is frame your skills in relation to their expectations, not yours. This goes beyond computers, but it is perhaps most important within the technology sphere. Just because you don’t feel like an expert at Photoshop, for example, because you don’t know how to work with Lab colours and multi-layer documents, doesn’t mean your potential employer won’t see you as “Photoshop expert” because you know how to do rudimentary tasks. It’s all context.

• Education: This is a big one — almost too big to go into here — but to sum it up: everything they currently teach about computers and the internet in high schools is terrible and does more harm than good. The track in high schools has been, until very recently, to separate “computers” into its own once (or maybe twice) a week ghetto, where you learn how to type and not much else.
  

  As a result, I think a lot of people come to understand “computer skills” as separate from math skills, writing skills, artistic skills, communication skills, business skills, etc. When, in reality, a computer should be thought of has nothing more than a tool through which you exercise and develop these primary skills.

  As a first step toward providing real, valuable and much-needed education that fits into the ‘digital native’ sphere, schools NEED to start blending computer-use into every class, in a way that makes sense and isn’t just window dressing. (Letting the kids who finish their math problems first play on the computer is not, for example, a good way to handle this.)

But, then, I don’t know

I think there’s even more to this that I fully understand at this point, so I pose the questions back to the readers: have you ever claimed that you’re “not good with computers.” Why? How do you justify that to yourself? And is Generation Y’s much ballyhooed technological expertise a myth?

Photo by practicalowl. Licensed under Creative Commons

1. In fact, I recently attended a session where a presenter summed Generation Y up thusly: Love technology, difficult to manage. Which, you know, I won’t dispute, but there’s a little more to it than that. [↩]
2. I’m kidding. Don’t get mad. [↩]

I spent the last few days at a work conference (and hence not updating this site like I should!). These conferences — for anyone who’s never been — are ostensibly about sharing so-called ‘best practices’ (empty buzzword alert!) and learning about new products, procedures, and programs. They take place (generally) in stuffy, windowless hotels where you can’t get so much as a bottle of water for less than $4 and you have to wear a name tag CONSTANTLY.

Does that sound boring? I can see why it might. I can see why Gen Y might, given our increased desire to put Task Before Time, gravitate away from old-fashioned concepts like work conferences. On the surface, giving up three or four days of your week (and sometimes your weekend) to ‘work’ doesn’t seem overly appealing.

But skipping events like these is a big mistake, particularly for the young worker just getting started.

Sure, most of the workshops and keynotes are forgettable and sometimes painful. A lot of concepts are better introduced online than through a slapdash presentation, especially if that presentation includes a painful Power Point. There’s not a lot of real, marked advantages to learning about something this way. It’s rather dynamically old-fashioned.¹

But, despite surface appearances, these presentations aren’t where anyone finds real value in business conferences. The real value, in fact, comes long after the workshops and keynotes are done, and everyone gets off the stage. That’s when the networking begins.

‘Networking’ is a tricky word, because I used to think it meant making painful small-talk in a crowded room with someone whose name you keep forgetting (thank god for those name tags) and who you’re only vaguely interested in (mostly because you feel like you should be). That’s not real networking, mostly because it’s unlikely to have any kind of lasting impact.

No, real networking is loose and casual. It can involve jokes and stories and drinking and dancing. Sometimes work doesn’t come up at all, but that doesn’t matter. What’s important is finding people — who are involved in the same industry as you and thus (hopefully — if you’re doing this right) have the same passions as you. Do this, and you don’t just build a network, but instead make connections to people who matter and can prove incredibly valuable down the road.

Not convinced? Think of it this way. You’re Gen Y — you’re likely going to change jobs more than a few times in your life. And only 15-20% of jobs are advertised. Where do you think the rest of those 80% of jobs (and these are mostly the GOOD jobs) are found?

I think, often, they can be found at conferences.

So suck it up and go, Gen Y. In the end, you’ll be glad you did. You’ll get used to the buffet and, honestly, probably end up having a lot of fun. Make those connections as early as you can — it’s one of the best things you can do. 

Photo by Wonderlane. Licensed under Creative Commons

1. That’s not to say there aren’t great presenters out there, though — I’m speaking in generalizations here. [↩]