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<div class="snap_preview">At Knowledge Infusion, we spend nearly everyday of our being working with organizations dealing with the issues of multiple generations working together in the workplace today and the changing demographic on a seemingly daily basis of talent supply. There is also a lot of talk about the Millennial generation and how they are responding to life in a corporate world.
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<div class="snap_preview">I personally spent today with a client "brainstorming" the future of talent and creating plans for the future as to how they will win their own WAR FOR TALENT. It got me thinking and believing that this truly will be a competitive issue like we have never seen into the future.
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<div class="snap_preview">Stanley Bing from Fortune published an entertaining, but very true, blog about the Millennials and what they might do for a career. Think about these points below, read the article, and ask yourself; "am I creating a workplace that will attract these types of people?"
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<div class="snap_preview">The workforce of the future is the Millennials. They are confused. Your employment brand and holistic talent management strategy WILL create your competitive advantage of the future.
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<div class="snap_preview">Would you advise them to go into?:
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<div class="snap_preview">Financial: Ha! One day, there may be jobs again. But now? Private equity has dried up. The banks are bleeding profusely from virtually every orifice. Would you advise an ambitious, thoughtful person to go
anywhere near a bank of any sort at this time?
Automotive: Nope.
Advertising: It's a dogs game to begin with. You're old at 35. Everybody's consolidated up the wazoo. Perhaps there are small, creative firms looking for a bright and inexperienced young face, but most people I know in this field are pressurized, desperate and very, very tired of the hamster wheel.
Public Relations: Would you tell a person on the brink of all the excitement life has to offer to go into public relations?
Business School: Would you tell a person on the brink of all the excitement life has to offer to go to business school?
Journalism: Possibly. The money is bad and it saps your spirit, writing incessantly about things that are assigned to you, rather than stuff you dream up yourself. Also, many newspapers are folding and news is being commodotized to the point where papers are 90% wire stories. Not to mention that something is rotten in the state of Journalism, as
it veers more closely every day to the brink of entertainment reporting and gossip.
Media: Yeah, but as what? An entry-level droid taking some guy his coffee? Actually, that job is now taken by a 32-year-old manager who's been around for six years and does 12 other functions. There is now not only NO free lunch, there may not be time for lunch at all.
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<div class="snap_preview">What advice would you give these people today?
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<div class="snap_preview">Another infusion of knowledge...
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The biggest challenge in graduating from college isn't that there are too few options and opportunities, it's that there may be too many! And sometimes I wonder if we don't do our millenial generation a disservice when we always ask the question, "So, what do you want to DO when you graduate?" Instead of focusing on "doing", I wonder if we should guide our millenials to think about relating, e.g., "What kinds of relationships do you want to have? Who do you want to have them with?". Or maybe we could guide them to think about sharing, e.g., "What talents do you want to share with others?". Or, maybe we could guide them to think about remembering, e.g., "What do you want to remember ten, twenty, fifty years from now?" Maybe the best answers we can give our Millenials are those that help them reframe the questions.