Update: This post was featured on Brazen Careerist, where it got a bunch of really interesting comments. Check it out.

There’s a recession all over the world. Which is nice, because I like it when we all have something in common. I’ve written about the recession a few times. I’ll write about it some more. Much like the Jonas Brothers or skinny jeans, it won’t last forever, but it’s definitely not going away for a while. So we’ve got to learn to cope.

Like any recession, there’s a lot of hype these days. Newspapers, maybe because they’re shedding jobs faster than everyone else, are banging a ceaseless drum about this presumed fiscal apocalypse. And yes, it sucks, and yes, it will suck for at least another couple of years, but it’s important for members of Generation Y not to take all this doom-and-gloom rhetoric and make bad choices in the short-term that could seriously screw with their long-term career goals.

It’s critical that young people, in the face of the specter of soup lines and cardboard houses, not give in to hype-driven impulsiveness and make mistakes. Don’t panic.

No one’s in greater danger of this than those who are looking at graduating college or university this spring. When I graduated in 2006, I was looking forward to it — there was something exciting about stepping out into the world. Now, it’s a little bit like walking The Green Mile.

Take this article from the Kansas City Star: The perils of graduating college in 2009:

With so many experienced people out of work, how is a new grad supposed to compete? Many companies prefer to hire someone who is tested and knowledgeable in their industry rather than taking a flyer on a new kid. And those laid off folks are desperate too, often willing to take significantly lower salaries to land a gig.

Columnist Michael Stahl is right, of course, in that you’d have to either be a supergenius or an incredible moron to expect lucrative employment right out of college these days. But, again, I have to emphasize how important the ‘not panicking’ part of this is. I’m hearing about a lot of grads who are making really dumb decisions in light of the economy.

Here are three big career mistakes you should avoid right now, no matter how safe and secure – and even sensible – they might sound:

1. Don’t go to grad school

Look, I’ve got nothing against graduate school in theory. And, by all means, if you’re the kind of person who legitimately loves learning and being in academia — if you could see yourself spending your life tangled up in it — than grad school could absolutely be the right path for you.

But don’t do grad school because you have some misguided notion that it’s going to magically help your employment prospects. Penelope Trunk already covered this pretty well::

Applications to the military increase in a bad economy in a disturbingly similar way that applications to graduate school do. For the most part, both alternatives are bad. They limit your future in ways you can’t even imagine, and they are not likely to open the kind of doors you really want. Military is the terrible escape hatch for poor kids, and grad school is the terrible escape hatch for rich kids.

Even short grad school programs (One or two years) tend to offer little more than lipstick on a pig. If you don’t have the drive toward academia – and especially if you’re considering paying for grad school through student loans that will bury you into your forties — all you’re doing is avoiding reality.

2. Don’t become a teacher

One of my big anger-triggers these days is the seemingly widespread belief that teaching is a universally-palatable career choice that pretty much ANYONE with a BA can get into, be good at, and secure sustained employment. It’s not, it shouldn’t be, and trying to push the teaching profession down that road will undoubtedly screw with the education of young people for years to come.

Ignoring the fact that teaching is an incredible important occupation that should be the domain of our best and brightest, teaching isn’t even really all that stable these days. It made all sorts of sense when birth rates were high all over, but demographics are changing. Teachers are facing layoffs all over because there are a glut of teachers and not that many students.

I have a BA in History. I know that a lot of BAs get fed crap about how teaching (or grad/law school) is the only career option out there for them. But that’s not true. Just because your pathway isn’t lit up for you with guide lights doesn’t mean it’s not there.

3. Don’t base everything on statistics

There is, and there has always been, a lot of merit to looking at statistics before launching yourself toward a certain career. Researching your employment sector, looking at employment trends and average salaries — these are smart things to do.

But the danger here is in putting too much weight on the stats. The stats will say, for example, that you’re far better off going into structural engineering than, say, journalism. Many orders of magnitude better off. The difference between those two career paths is literally hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But if you have no desire to be a structural engineer — and your whole life you’ve wanted to be in journalism — none of that will matter. Life is always easier when you have a ton of money in the bank and you’re not living off Ramen noodles, but it’s not necessarily always better.

Giving up on your passions is absolutely the biggest mistake you can make in this economic climate. Not only because it’ll probably make you miserable, but also because that which you’re passionate about tends to be what you’re good at. It sounds a bit cliché and kind of like something the Care Bears would chant, but I believe it: your talent follows your passion.

Accentuating the Negative

I know, I know — I’ve only told you what NOT to do, and not given you any kind of advice on what TO do. But that’s kind of the point. The current job market demands patience. The only proactive advice I can really give at this point is to be vigilant. And to get a job — any job you can — that will provide you experience and the money you need to get by.

The best thing you can do for yourself right now is NOT screw up. You don’t have kids, a mortgage, imminent retirement plans or other major liabilities. You’ve got patience that others won’t have. And time will reward Generation Y for that.

Photo by Jim Linwood. Licensed under Creative Commons

Hey, have you heard? There might be a recession! Maybe even a depression!. And as much fun as that kind of thing might be for those who miss the convenience of the bindle and loved old silent films where men in ratty suits cut up old boots for supper, for the 3.6 million people who have lost their jobs in the last few months, things kind of suck right now.

I’ve written one or two things about the recession on this site already, but for those of you just tuning in, here’s the short version of my feelings on the economy, Generation Y, and the perilous future we face: It will be bad for a while. Maybe a long while. Gen Y is in the best position long-term, because we’re not exactly too concerned about losing our retirement savings. The best strategy is to think long-term, and be patient. (Failing that, just go hide for a couple of years in grad school. You’ll be fine!)

So that’s the recession. And hopefully you’re nodding along at this point. But those sorts of macro-level thoughts and long-term generalizations are only one side of the coin. The other side is simpler, and more personal. It’s got to do with young people who are facing an imminent graduation date and, while maybe they’re not thinking about dashed retirement dreams of foreclosed yachts, would still really like to have a job in the next few months. Because they really don’t want to have to go back to living with their parents.

But how do you get a job when the economy sucks? You make yourself exceptional. Now, more than ever, you’re only going to get your foot in the door if you can offer something that very few others can. There are literally thousands of skills you could develop and highlight towards this end, but there’s one giant ability that I think stands out above the rest: writing.

It seems simple — almost trivial — but there are very few occupations that don’t benefit from strong writing abilities these days. Think of how many emails are sent a day. Think of how much time is wasted by people who can’t string a coherent sentence together within those emails and thus cause titanic communication headaches. Think of how things are moving online — to blogs, to wikis, to twitter — to an internet that is still (and, I think, will always be) predominantly comprised of text. Of written communication.

And the great thing — from this perspective, anyway — about the job market right now is that very few people can write. There are lots of people who think they can write just fine. They probably put “Strong Verbal and Written Communication Skills” on their “résumé” and everything. But odds are they’re either abbreviation-abusing hunt-and-peck typists who respond to emails with single sentences that make no sense but are in a stupid font like neon green Comic Sans or they’re academia-clinging malcontents who write run-on sentences that use buzz words incorrectly due to the value-added paradigm that existing vertical touches base with vis a vis existing synergy or whatever.

You can be different. You can be better. Being among the effective written communicators in your office isn’t likely to win you a ton of overt recognition or anything, but it is something that will inevitably be noticed. It’s the kind of skill that has obvious application outside of whatever you were hired to do, and that is actually notoriously hard to find in applicants.

So how do you learn to write? You just do it. You write. The internet has given you an incredible platform filled with people who will read and respond and help you get better. It’s a wonderful tool that will help you get better every time your keys hit the keyboard. Embrace that.

And don’t be embarrassed. We’re all still learning.

Photo by soartsithurts. Licensed under Creative Commons

A post over on BrazenCareerist by Milena Thomas got me thinking about education again, a topic I’ve been known to rant about. In an article titled “Think Twice About All That Education You Think You Need” hammers home something I’ve been thinking for a while now: Gen Y is obsessed with education, particularly graduate programs, to the point where their piles of degrees can hurt more than they help.

Writes Thomas:

My most valuable education came after I graduated. I experienced the painstaking trial and error of proper vocal study, bargained with my dreams of stardom versus the realities of needing a steady corporate paycheck, moving in with my parents and wondering how I was going to make a satisfying life for myself.

A lot of what I want to say can be summed up simply: education, no matter in what quantity, is no substitute for experience. And, while there’s obviously no direct causation, the correlation tends to be that more school equals less real, work experience. And so Generation Y is in the unique position of being a generation that’s got tons of expertise in social linguistics or Leninist Russia but doesn’t know how to operate a photocopier or take notes at a business meeting.

Let’s disqualify certain graduate programs right off the bat — specialized programs like engineering are logically excluded from this. There are some university programs that are so geared toward a certain job-type that one can leave them already possessing all the tools they need to find work, and excel.

But this is not true for the vast majority of university programs, particularly in the arts, nor should it be. Universities were originally conceived as houses of higher learning, geared toward the best and brightest. You went to university because you enjoyed thinking and debating and immersing yourself in all things academic. You did not go simply because you wanted to get a good job afterwards.¹

What I think we’re seeing from Generation Y is the result of the perception that everyone is getting an undergraduate degree. To separate yourself from the pack, then, the natural course of action is to pursue beyond undergraduate, and land yourself a graduate or Master’s degree.

You don’t need to do this. In fact, unless you have a particular passion for your area of study that makes a graduate program a natural fit, pursuing graduate studies in the hopes of standing out from the pack of applicants is probably a bad idea. Graduate programs tend to be about delving further into the academic, and don’t really bestow the same level of transferrable workplace skills as undergraduate.

The overeducated but inexperienced applicant is not a more desirable choice than the educated and experienced applicant. Remember that as you make your educational choices, and consider where you want your career to go.

Photo by Kiara Kim. Licensed under Creative Commons

1. There were, of course, schools that were geared toward getting a good job. They called these vocational schools or trade schools. The unfortunate stereotype now is that this is where the dumb kids go. [↩]

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. [↩]

The above (taken from the absolutely awesome web comic xkcd — visit or you’re a fool) pretty well sums up my feelings toward wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. It’s both an amazing resource and a fabulous time waster, and has become my quick go-to source for quick information about any subject, from actors and actresses to vacation destinations.

Yes, there’s the very real possibility of information being incorrect or (much more commonly) badly written, but the mountains of information more than make up for it.

Education has struggled with wikipedia since it hit the scene. Almost immediately after hearing wikipedia described to them, educators decided it was a menace — the academic equivalent of speculative hearsay. The rules fell into place very quickly: never cite wikipedia in a formal essay. You might as well source the National Enquirer.

Hearing their teachers continuously hammer home the message that wikpedia is unreliable has apparently had an effect on students, as evidenced by this report from a Generation Y workshop.

Interesting discussion during Dave Brown’s Generation Y workshop at LIFT08. It seems asking a few teenagers how they use the Internet is always going to produce a few findings like these:

Wikipedia is not seen as a very good/valuable source in school when it comes to usage in school work.

(emphasis mine)

And, sure, wikipedia probably shouldn’t become an automatically accepted authoritative source for academic essays. But you know what? Neither should anything else. The underlying message to all this “wikipedia is so unreliable!” chest-besting (which isn’t even really true) is that sources should be judged based on the medium in which they appear, and not on the quality of the source itself. For the most part, kids aren’t being told to look at their sources carefully before they quote them in an academic paper — they’re being told that the internet is bad, and print is good.

There is a way to make wikipedia a part of education, and it starts with teaching students the difference between a well-researched article on wikipedia versus a poorly-researched one. It could include instruction on examining footnotes, looking at the history and discussion pages and the way the article is presented. In short, teaching kids how to research instead of just blindly hunting for sources that their teacher has deemed as ‘acceptable’.

Wikipedia does have a place in academia. To argue otherwise is to ignore the massive growth and mindshare the site as claimed over the last few years. And there’s a way to make wikipedia fit with good, qualified research — it just requires a different approach to teaching.