What’s In A Name?

Job titles are one of the most subjective labels that we receive in our lifetime. They are bestowed upon us by others at a rate that we largely don’t control, and they allow other people to form opinions of us without ever having met us. “Oh wow! That guy’s signature in his email says he’s a VP, he must be really important.”

But the tricky thing about titles is that they mean different things to different people. A Supervisor at Company A might be the equivalent of a Director at Company B. Yet to an employee at Company B, a Supervisor might be several rungs below the Director level in their organizational structure. Titles build an internal hierarchy, but very often we superimpose our own corporate structures onto another company before we understand how that company operates internally. It’s something that we all innately do. A VP is a VP, right? Company A’s VP and Company B’s VP should have roughly the same amount of experience, responsibilities and compensation.   

But that’s not always the case. Not all titles are created equal, particularly in the Age of Start-Ups where titles can become pretty creative. (I have a friend whose actual job title is “Master of Whispers!” Man, I’m jealous!). This can get complicated, particularly for new-hires, millennials and for those of us in the sales industry. Who should I be trying to grab coffee with? Who is the best prospect? Who the heck do I report to and who do they report to? For some companies the corporate ladder is pretty straightforward, but for others, it can be quite horizontal or entangled, which leads to some interesting perceptions.

From the discrepancies I’ve heard from some of our younger clients and associates about job titles within their companies, I was curious to see if other millennials’ interpretations of titles matched my own. We surveyed a group of millennials age 22 to 30 across the country and asked them to interpret where each position fell on the organizational chart.

The majority of participants seemed to agree with our own vision of a corporate chart, with some noticeable discrepancies between the “Director” and “Head” levels. Simple enough. Once we had established that there was at least a traceable pattern of our groups’ assumptions of “simple” corporate hierarchies, we asked a second, more complicated question. Titles are rarely ever just “Director,” “Manager,” and “Supervisor.” Instead, our second question asked participants to imagine themselves as an employee at an unnamed and non-industry specified company. We provided the full titles of four “managers,” and asked participants which of these leaders ranked highest on this imaginary company’s corporate ladder.

This time around the results were not as clear. The majority of participants in the first round ranked the positions “Chief __ Officer, Director, Head, Manager, Supervisor,” from top to bottom. Yet in the second round the majority (36%) of participants thought the “Supervisor of Global Brand Management was the highest ranked manager.” “Associate Director of Gaming” was second with 29%, and “Head Analyst for Internal Communications” was third with 21%.

Now in fairness, we purposefully added words like “Global” and “Associate” to these titles as added variables, but the results are still interesting in that once the titles became more specialized, our participants interpretations of them shifted. When the supervisor was just a supervisor, nearly all participants rated that leader very low on the corporate ladder. However, when the supervisor became the “Supervisor of Global Brand Management,” people’s interpretation of that leader changed.

Titles matter because we form impressions based on them. These impressions may be uninformed, but they are one of the first things people pay attention to in email signatures and on office doors. This is particularly true when new employees enter the work force, especially if they had little previous corporate experience. I once saw a TV show where a paper delivery company’s boss promoted a delivery boy to “Executive Delivery Boy,” because it was “a meaningless title that made employees feel better about themselves.” It was a pretty tongue-in-cheek joke, but I bring it up to highlight that titles mean different things in different organizations.

So what’s in a name? Everybody knows that the head honcho is in charge, but beyond that the waters get a little murky. When new employees enter the workforce, it’s important for them to understand how a company functions. Companies deliver services and products based on individual and team structures that support the organization. But it’s not always easy to understand how different divisions relate to one another.

In the second round of our survey, participants had varying understandings of who belonged where on the corporate ladder. If one of our participants directly reported to the Supervisor of Global Brand Management, then he/she would probably have a pretty good understanding of how the marketing department of the company operated. Yet that also means that initially, this person would not have an understanding of how the Head Analyst for Internal Communications fits into the company structure or what he/she even does.

Millennials have their own understanding of what they think corporate structure looks like, which may not always be in-line with how companies actually function. “Okay the CTO makes the calls, the VP tells the directors, the directors tell the managers, and the managers tell the analysts.” Increasingly, companies’ services and functions are expanding, which means that diversified knowledge across a company’s divisions is a premium skill. But in order for companies to be to develop their millennials into cross-divisional employees, millennials need to have some understanding of how the chain of command works as it relates to a company’s deliverables.

What do you think about job titles? Got a unique one? Let us know!

Go West, Young Man!

On a recent trip to California, I was informed multiple times that as of last month, California edged out France to become the fifth largest economy in the world. Last year California’s GDP grew 4.1%, and the list of new company field offices and new start-ups who open their doors throughout the Golden State seems to grow every day.

As early as the gold rushes and cattle drives of the 1840s there has always been either a monetary or cultural euphoria surrounding “The West.” That same excited buzz that drew miners and cowboys still exists today, but in the business world it has been largely distilled to focus on California and the technology boom of the Silicon Valley and the Greater Bay Area. Tech giants like Apple, Google, and Facebook have put small towns like Menlo Park and Mountain View on the global stage, and millennials are flocking to these campuses in droves. We may have done away with the covered wagons, but the famous trek out to California is still very much alive with freshly trained computer scientists, engineers, consultants (and more than a few aspiring actors) riding caravan style right after graduation. 

The pull out west is not simply a millennial phenomenon, decades-old companies open new offices every year, and more than a few have shifted their headquarters from the east coast to the west. But from the standpoint of the 18-35 generation (25% of California’s population!) the mass movement of top graduates to go out west is worth exploring. In our earlier post “Why Are We Where We Are,” we explored the reasons why millennials selected their first jobs. The most shocking find from our survey in that post was that zero percent of participants considered location as the main factor that led them to select their first job. So assuming that our survey has some merit, millennials are not moving to California solely just to be in California. So if that is the case, what is pulling so many top graduates west?

In order to examine that, let’s first look at some of the tech giants that many college students (and current working man/woman) wish they worked for: Apple, Google, and Facebook. Even without knowing anything about the corporate structure of these companies, you know from just hearing their names that they are a desirable place to work.  Why is that?

An initial thought that always springs to mind is that the big California companies must pay pretty well. Yet, while a cursory search on Glassdoor confirms that these companies offer very competitive salaries, the cost of living in the Bay Area is also remarkably high. Nearly all of the millennials I know who live in and around places like Palo Alto have several roommates and do not always have the same spending power as someone on the east coast. Our survey also revealed that only a quarter of participants were motivated by their salaries in excepting their first job. So if millennials are not being drawn to California simply for its beaches or their starting salaries, perhaps the answer lies more intrinsically within these companies. 

 I would argue that company culture is the most prevalent factor drawing millennials to California. That may seem obvious at first, but let’s stop to consider a few things as to why it should actually matter. In our survey (results below) we intentionally did not give participants the option to select company culture, because we initially considered the term itself to be overarching and something that would mean something different to every individual. Yet, it is also possible that a company’s culture is arguably a collection of each of the categories we offered to participants. Company A might operate at a faster pace because of the industry it’s in, Company B might have a great work-life balance because its salaries are higher, and Company C might be able to offer great benefits because of the state it’s located in.     

None of the categories we offered were overwhelmingly dominant, so what is the common linkage driving millennials to start their careers in the Bay Area? Returning to Apple, Google, and Facebook, even those of us who do not work for these companies know something about their company culture through social lore. “Google has nap pods!” “Netflix has unlimited paternal leave!” “Facebook has the dentist, the doctor, and the barber right downstairs!”

When you consider that the majority of us have heard something about the culture of the California tech giants without most of us setting foot on one of their campuses, that is very impressive. I know what the color of some of Google’s common rooms are, but I have no idea what it’s like to work for the other companies that reside in my own office building. That kind of company awareness is unique, and it makes a sizable impact. 

In college, I honestly didn’t really know what Google did apart from answering literally any question I thought of long enough to type into the search bar. Yet, I thought it would be cool to work there. That is a very powerful lure.  So if culture is really what is pulling so many millennials westward, what exactly does that mean for companies who aren’t out west? There are a multitude of companies on the east coast with great company culture, yet the first place new coders, engineers, and salespeople think/dream of working are almost all on the west coast in some form of capacity. If culture alone is indeed enough to pull the new workforce westward, is it possible that the uniqueness of the tech giant culture will become the norm? Tell us what you think!         

Gotta Connect ‘Em All!

There may be no greater commercial symbol of the 90’s generation than Pokemon. And thanks to the recent USA release of Pokemon GO, the little pocket monsters that so many of today’s millennials sought to befriend and train are now out and about in the real world! Through The Pokemon Company’s revolutionary technology, the GPS and camera functions of our smartphones have rekindled the fading spark that was once the main fervor that surrounded millions of childhoods. Pokemon are now in our parks, our supermarkets, and some even seem to be taking advantage of our services industries. SW&A discovered this morning that Pidgeys are especially interested in improving their spoken communications skills! 

But what value does all this excitement surrounding the new game really mean? Is it just a way for Nintendo and Game Freak to recapture the attention of their now aged audience, or is there a discernible lesson to be learned from Pokemon GO’s mammoth success? Not everyone loved Pokemon growing up and although there are people of every age group who did love the original games, the majority of The Pokemon Company’s original fans are in their early thirties and mid-twenties, a traditionally fickle seller’s market to say the least. Yet within its first week of launching, Pokemon GO made a staggering $8 billion and made headlines all over the world as people went to ridiculous links to invade their neighbor’s yards to catch a Scyther, or in more than a few towns the game rapidly became so popular that it forced police departments to issue “don’t catch Pokemon and drive” campaigns. 

Whether you grew up a fan or not, Pokemon GO’s success is something to marvel at. A game brand that was based on a capture, train, and battle formula that was becoming tired after seven release generations, suddenly revamped our old original 151 digital friends and gave them back to us in a way that reignited our old passion. Last night while I was walking my dog I passed fourteen people out walking with their phones open, scanning a local creek for water Pokemon, three people running around a construction site because a rare Eevee was supposedly in it, and just this morning there were five people standing outside of our office building playing the game because our office building is apparently a Pokemon gym. 

So what do Pikachu and the rest of the gang’s success have to teach us, particularly about millennials? It’s a fascinating topic and it goes far beyond merely the popularity of Pokemon. Connecting with either an individual, a small group, or a large audience is one of the hardest things to master in any industry. Connection goes beyond subject matter expertise and is an art form that allows good data points to align with the brain, and good stories to align with the heart. People who can engage both their audience’s head and heart have a much greater chance of getting results. 

In our previous posts I’ve talked a lot about how Gen-Y operates differently from previous generations and about the challenges involved in engaging an easily disinterested millennial audience. Pokemon GO however, offers a unique chance to examine a company hitting a grand slam in trying to connect with the millennial market. Millennials may be difficult to engage, but in the case of Pokemon GO all it took was someone to focus in on something that was important/nostalgic to millennials, add in their own innovation, and the company made over $8 billion in one week.

Now, in fairness, there are plenty of case-specific reasons why The Pokemon Company’s success can’t be replicated exactly. For example the gaming industry pretty consistently holds millennials’ attention more so than most industries, and the release of Pokemon GO was in part a re-release of a product that already possessed instant brand recognition and excitement. Yet there are still lessons that other companies can learn from this success.

The energy surrounding Pokemon GO is unprecedented even within its own branding. Pikachu on an original GameBoy was cool, but never before have stores had to post “Pokemon are for paying customers only” signs on their windows, and social media, news networks, and public recreation spots are being overrun by the enthusiasm surrounding the game. People who haven’t played Pokemon since grade school are now suddenly being pulled back into The Pokemon Company’s market long after they might have been considered “aged out” of the company’s product. I myself felt compelled to download the app just to see what all the noise was about. (For those of you curious, I chose Squirtle as my starter. He is hands down the best one. End of discussion.)

If nothing else, Pokemon GO shows us just how powerful the energy of Gen-Y can be once it’s focused. While I’ve watched several people play the game that I never would have expected, the heart of the game’s success is being driven by the millennial generation. A small population of Pokemon GO subscribers are loyal fans who’ve played every game since the beginning, but the real reason for the game’s all-encompassing appeal is its ability to bring back long-lost fans as well as attract people who have never played the game before. The gaming industry may capture more immediate customer attention because it’s interactive and entertaining, but these lessons can be applied far beyond gaming platforms. 

Connection is a powerful tool. And when you are able to connect with a generation that is quick-acting, mobile, and socially connected, results can spread like wildfire. Millennials are eager, driven, and more than a little self-focused. We are a large generation with far reaching potential, but if you want us to bring you success, take a lesson from PokemonGo and Connect (with) ‘Em All!    

Cuddled of Coddled?

If you had to boil down anti and pro-millennial sentiments into a single word each, you could get pretty close to understanding either camp’s perspective with the words “cuddled” and “coddled” respectively.

Cuddled is the easier of the two to generalize and it’s the argument that we’ve already addressed a few times in our earlier postings. Gen-Y is the generation that grew up with everyone getting a trophy and whose parents still haven’t kicked them out of the house yet. The belief is that millennials are spoiled because they haven’t had to work as hard as previous generations, and they are entitled from growing up in era of iPhones and Netflix.

Coddled is perhaps a little more challenging to understand. Age and experience have traditionally been synonymous with wisdom and success, and the very real argument against giving millennials greater responsibility in companies is that they are young and have not yet had the work experience necessary to be successful. That’s a fair argument to make. However, from the millennial perspective, it’s one that may be growing increasingly dated.

When I graduated college it was far more difficult to find a job than I had anticipated. I had a dual degree from a good university, but I found myself in the same position that so many millennials find themselves in as well: “well we’d like to hire you, but we really need someone with more experience.” For an entry-level position? Seriously? Each job search is unique and with its own professional goals and encounters, but it seems that more and more college graduates find themselves frustrated trying to even find their first job.

And that’s an interesting paradox. If Gen-Y is the most diverse and highest educated generation to-date, then why have so many of us heard our friends lament the difficulty of finding a job. We’re tech-savvy, worldly, (and very humble!), so wouldn’t you think employers would be jumping at the chance to hire us?

From the millennial perspective, older hiring and promotion systems that don’t immediately recognize the energy and time that went towards graduating college amidst a swirl of academic, social, and personal growth can feel unfairly restrictive. As we mentioned in our previous post “Ready, Set…Done,” millennials are the most energetic and ready to perform right at the onset of their new careers. But when those new careers don’t immediately offer gratification or growth, it can begin to feel as though we are being held back, even coddled.

“I know I can do that! Just give me a chance to show you.”

And that’s the juxtaposition we’re trying to examine. For employers, they want their employees to be trained and experienced before being given greater responsibility. It’s in their best interest to ensure that their best people are calling the shots. Yet, internal systems that promote slowly and offer little feedback, or involve large teams that offer only minimal individual contribution, are not going to be appealing to Gen-Yers who’ve studied International Business abroad in Hong Kong, and went to college on a bull-riding scholarship (real guy! very nice). The workforce is now more worldly and specialized than it ever has been, and a by-product of this is that these new employees who’ve already had a plethora of learning experiences, want to hit the ground running and be given more responsibility and exposure than previous generations.

It might sound a little silly to think that just because you have a piece of paper that says you’ve graduated from college that that makes you an expert in a certain field. And of course, you’re not an expert after only four years of school. But a friend of mine who is an engineer three years out of college offered an interesting perspective on this matter that I think is worth considering:

“It’s the inconsistency that’s the most frustrating. Sometimes it seems like I’m a vital player, helping design a lifting system that can raise pipelines thousands of feet in torrential weather, but other times I feel like I’m just twiddling my thumbs at my desk, waiting until enough time has passed that I’m deemed experienced enough to take on a certain project.”

So therein lies the issue. In the case of this particular engineer he feels that he is being coddled at times by his management, but it’s very likely that that kind of attitude will cause him to be viewed by his management as being a cuddled millennial. Everyone wants to feel like they are valued in their employment, and I’d argue that the majority of millennials don’t believe that they really know everything about how to do a particular job. Their rub instead comes from being able to do more than they were expected to be able to do early on, which leads to an awkward period (weeks, months, or years), where they can feel unchallenged and unappreciated.

“I have a degree in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics. Why am I filling out spreadsheets all day?”

Cuddled or coddled is a question that doesn’t get asked often, but it’s one that clearly defines another gap between the established workforce and millennials. The “most-driven generation” wants a chance to prove themselves because they believe they have the skills necessary to make an earnest attempt, but it’s not inherently in a manager’s best interest to “gamble” on a new employee not making costly mistakes. Gen-Y may have a larger knowledge base than previous generations, but the question remains just how much of that knowledge base is relevant and can be trusted as untested professional experience.

It’s a difficult question. What do you think, cuddled or coddled?

Meetings…Why Did It Have To Be Meetings?

 For Indiana Jones it was snakes; for me it has always been meetings. They’re long, they’re uncomfortable, and nothing ever seems to actually get done. Yet, from the Fortune 500 company to the newest start-up in someone’s garage, every company has them. They’re necessary and they’re a part of a company’s daily life. Yet among millennials, and probably many managers as well, I would challenge you to find another aspect of corporate culture generally viewed as negatively as meetings are. Why is that?

Well, let’s back up a few years. Why did you participate in your seminar courses in college? Most likely for two interwoven reasons: first, presumably because you were interested in what your professor was saying. We all had to take distribution classes in areas we hated, but those were usually large lecture hall classrooms where you may or may not have been playing Galaga on your computer. If you were enrolled in a seminar course however, it is much likely that you found the subject matter interesting and, as a result, listened respectfully to your professor and fellow classmates. Secondly, even if you were not interested in the subject matter, you understood the importance of your investment in the course. Professor X was actively monitoring your contributions to the discussion because your participation mattered for your grade.

But in the corporate world, while there may be the implied investment that you know you should be paying attention the presenter, you’re a lot less invested as a low-rung observer in a room of 10, 20 or 30 people. You know you should be listening to gain an understanding of the marketing team’s new proposal, but you work in Finance and it’s just after lunch and no one was going to ask your opinion anyway. Sound familiar? Take it from me (I actually fell asleep in a three-hour meeting once). Millennials and meetings don’t naturally mix.

Now that probably sounds like a privileged, ignorant, or even snobbish statement, doesn’t it? Well it very well might be. But what I’ve observed across nearly every industry is the same, glazed look in younger employees’ eyes when a meeting crosses into its second hour and it’s clear that it isn’t wrapping up anytime soon. That’s a real issue and whether it’s easy to address or not, it is one that has long-lasting consequences for all parties involved.

Let’s be honest. Meetings matter for those who lead them. There’s either a direct ask or a direct report, which should keep a meeting straightforward, if not short. But has anyone ever left a meeting that they weren’t leading or involved in and thought, “Man that was a great use of my time?” Not likely. And that’s at any level, not just for millennials.

So what’s the added Gen-Y factor? Well, assuming the idea that millennials are more tech-savvy and fast-paced than any of our predecessors, a two-hour meeting on the possibility of a returned .2% interest rate on a low-income, medium risk housing project in Wilmington, Delaware during the third quarter of a less than volatile fiscal year, borders on physically unbearable for us. That’s obviously an exaggeration, but think about it for a moment. Coming from a four-year culture of fast-paced studying and project management where we worked at our own pace and chose what subjects we cared about, being roped into budget, design, and editorial meetings that consist of seemingly unimportant go-rounds can feel painfully unnecessary.

When topics were “boring” in college you still had to care. If participation is worth 20% of my grade, I am suddenly going to care a lot more about the rise of Serbian nationalism in the 14th century than I actually did. (Just kidding, Dr. Kessing. Great course, highly recommend it). Again, I am not insinuating that meetings are not important, but I think it’s important to highlight this new cultural mindset that the bulk of the new workforce has.

Think about it this way. Remember our study on what the typical millennial looked like? (New subscribers check out “I’m Chill Man…You Know, For The Most Part” for a quick summary!) We found that while millennials exhibit a lot of behavioral diversity, the majority of them did possess a high amount of drive. So, by that logic, we’ve got a large new highly driven workforce coming from an environment where they could work when they wanted on what they wanted. Doesn’t sound like they’re going to like the annual budget meeting, does it?

So why do I mention all of this? Is it okay to fall asleep in a meeting? Of course not. But there’s a reason why many millennials tend to disengage in traditional corporate settings and that’s what I’m trying to highlight. I’ve been told quite often that there’s nothing different about millennials at all.

“I’m so sick and tired of hearing about millennials. They’re all just lazy or spoiled.”

Simply put, there has been an evolution in the new employee mold that companies need to be willing to address. College education today is producing individuals who have flourished in unprecedentedly malleable environments. Instead of majoring in Economics, you can now double major in Geology and International Business with a minor in Environmental Biology. And in fact, you are encouraged to do so. That new kind of college graduate is bringing new perspectives and expectations into the workplace and it’s highly unlikely that they are all “lazy or spoiled.” 

Are meetings going away? No, and they shouldn’t. However, as the workforce changes, our understanding of how individuals within that workforce operate has to change too. There’s a larger argument about whether a company should change along with its new workforce or whether the new workforce needs to change to fit companies’ proven models. That’s a hard call, and one I’m relieved I don’t have to make. But nevertheless, it’s important to at least recognize that what made sense to one generation of businessmen and women may not make sense to the next.

As for the meetings themselves, the one guideline I would posit is this: you can’t expect the millennial generation to just “go with the flow.”  Because as our earlier research has shown, they won’t. Understanding that most Gen Y-ers are ambitious,  simply “roping” them into meetings where they have no context or background information is not going to be very effective. Remember the glassy eyed looks I mentioned earlier, that millennial is most likely sitting their thinking, “Why in the world am I here. I could actually be doing work and learning the business.”

Simply put, my recommendation is this: engage the resources you hired! Millennials want to succeed and the new college-grad mold of working fast-paced and independently means that the new workforce is less inclined to want to hold large division-sized meetings unless they have a clear tie-in with their current projects. The smaller and more focused meetings are, the more likely it is that the presenter will achieve some measurable takeaways. Furthermore, the smaller the setting the more likely it is that the new workforce will actively contribute and connect with material outside of their expertise.

I’m Chill Man…You Know, For the Most Part

We’ve all seen millennial co-workers pouring over study prep for the GRE/GMAT/LSAT/WNNPs [relax overachievers, I made that last one up] within the first few months of starting their first job. And sure, on the surface that employee probably looks quite confident.

“She’s here two weeks and already she’s thinking about Law School.”

In fact, I’ve been amazed at how many times friends have told me that their bosses just kind of expected them to be confident without any real workplace experience or coaching from their managers. And I think that is where that perceived confidence begins to work against millennials. Confidence is something that everyone strives for at some point in their life, and for a lot of C-Suite executives it’s a defining characteristic for those who are tapped to move up the rank-and-file. It’s a check-mark on the list of being a “Good Executive,” because it has become synonymous with being a driven, hard-working professional who can get the job done.

But when an experienced manager sees a millennial studying for the GMAT on day one, how is that interpreted? In the case of the young woman mentioned above, her studying for Law School was actually viewed negatively in this specific case, because the manager thought it signaled that she was uninterested in her current job and already thinking about moving on. So, in this instance, was a millennial appearing confident actually a bad thing?

Before I get too far ahead of myself, let’s back up and dissect how many of us actually view ourselves as being confident to begin with. I’ve seen over a hundred millennials studying for grad school or working on that first big project through lunch at dozens of companies across the country. But I can’t remember ever seeing anyone who looked remarkably sure of themselves with their head in a study book, cursing themselves for not remembering how to multiply fractions. In one hilariously unfortunate case, I saw a new employee mistakenly adding hot sauce to their 2pm coffee while they were frantically trying to remember PEMDAS.

If we look at the assumed confidence stereotypes of millennials and this observed, frantic behavior simultaneously, then each millennial is floating somewhere between thinking that they invented PowerPoint and their fourteenth nervous lap around the supply room. So, for the last question from our small survey, I wanted to know how each of the participants honestly felt about starting to build their career.

 

 What surprised me most about these results was not that they were somewhat curved, but the direction in which they curved. Just over half of the participants admitted to “a polite sense of nervousness,” but within the other half, participants skewed much more towards feeling confident than feeling nervous. Although, as I mentioned, managers often view millennials as being hyper-confident, I personally would have expected more of the non-median respondents to feel more nervous than confident. Paying rent, establishing credit, climbing ladders, realizing you can’t only eat ramen noodles, it’s scary stuff! Yet only 13% said that they were highly nervous about their career. Taking that first step up the path is undeniably scary. Yet approximately one-third of millennials surveyed felt confident enough to give me an iconic “Nah man, I got this.”

So let’s go back and put this into perspective with the case of the young millennial woman studying for the LSAT in her first two weeks. We so often hear the phrase that “confidence is key,” and according to our survey results, more millennials have it (or think they have it), than don’t. Yet in this woman’s case, having the drive and self-assertive discipline to begin prepping for an arduous testing process for law school actually hurt her in her manager’s eye. Is that entirely fair? No, it isn’t. And I’m in no way arguing for anyone to set their ambitions aside. But perhaps if nothing else, this last survey question serves to underscore the divide of how managers and millennials interpret things differently. The millennial is just doing what she’s been doing through high school and college, planning ahead and trying to succeed. But the manager sees a strong indication that it’s not worth investing time in the millennial, because the latter is indicating that she will leave soon anyway.

But how do we put this whole survey together? What does our initial portrait of “the real” millennial look like? The most popular answers to each question would suggest that a millennial chooses their first job based on the industry (34%), intends to be named the CEO (36%), will stay in their first job tentatively, but will always be keeping an eye out for new opportunities (46%), and are moderately nervous about their careers (54%). Yet the second most popular choices paint a very different image. They suggest a millennial chooses their first job based on salary or work-life balance (25%), intend to be upper-level management but not the CEO (29%), don’t see any future at their current company (27%), and are confident in the direction of their career (33%).

Both of those sketches are not terribly far apart, but they suggest two significantly different employees. So it would appear that we didn’t discover a set “millennial mold.” But for the generation that is allegedly the most diverse, that shouldn’t be too surprising. If there is one set takeaway from our first survey it’s that even though we all approach our careers differently and our paths are diverse, we all start from base camp, looking up.

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Stop. Drop. Next Payroll

In my last year of college the most common thing I heard from my peers when they would describe their career plans to either a parent or a professor was something like, “Yeah, I’m going to do this for a year or two and then [go to grad school, get a better job, be promoted, etc].”  Granted, many of today’s graduates flock to consulting firms immediately after college where the industry norm is skewed towards a higher turn-over rate, but even in traditionally less-fluid fields, managers have typically come to expect that millennials only intend to stay with a company for a few years. I know many business owners who hesitate to hire recent college grads for this very reason.

“Millennials are constantly chasing upward mobility and they’ll just quit in six months anyway when they don’t get promoted.”

Let’s try and dissect that stigma from a different angle. If Company A would make you a supervisor tomorrow, why should you stay at Company B for five years in the hopes you might be made a supervisor? That sounds like a no-brainer, right? According to common perceptions, if a millennial was faced with that situation they’d basically act out fire-safety protocol. Stop (Thinking about a future at Company B). Drop (What they were doing and make for the exit). Next Payroll (Pause at HR to ensure their last check goes to their new address before posting their new employment title on LinkedIn).

But as awesome as Company A’s offer might be, that kind of offer is, despite our expectations, quite rare. It doesn’t matter that you got straight A’s and wrote an amazing thesis on medieval Slavic kingdoms and chances are, your boss is not just “ignorant.” (Except yours of course. Totally wrong all the time, right? Gosh!) Corporate development, and thus promotions, take time, even though we often think we’d excel at being a manager if we’d only just get the chance.  So for the majority of us that work for Company B-type places, what are we supposed to do?

What I wanted to know in the third question of my survey was do millennials really have this “ebb and flow” attitude initially when it comes to our careers? Do we actually want, like the woman in our tag photo, to leap from precipice to precipice every year or two in the hopes of leap-frogging into upper management, or do we simply do it because we think that that is the only way we’ll ever succeed?

 

It would appear initially to be the latter. When asked, “What is the Best Way to the Top?” not a single participant said that they thought staying with the same company was the best way to get there. However nearly half of everyone surveyed said they would stay where there are provisionally, but would always be seeking new opportunities. Admittedly, the old-school model of staying with Company B for 45 years and then retiring isn’t nearly as prevalent as it once was. Yet for not a single participant to say that they envisioned their own success at a single company is interesting. The other half of participants, in various forms, agreed that they couldn’t see their career routed to one company, and, even from base camp, took their responses one-step further and consciously expected themselves to make moves.

 So what can we take away from this? We know already from this survey that millennials are fairly diverse in why we chose our first job and that a majority of us are seeking to be somewhere around upper management. Adding these newest results to the mix, do diverse backgrounds and elevated drive make us extra sensitive to company’s more rigid cultures? Nearly a quarter of millennials surveyed said they saw no future at all at their current job. Is that just because we are so focused on where we want to be that we become impatient with where we currently are when we don’t advance as quickly as we’d like to? Or do we as millennials have greater expectations initially than previous generations and a greater willingness to forge our own paths to the top, even if it mean going through a dozen companies instead of just one?

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Too Hot or Too Cold…Never Just Right!

 We all know the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears (bears live on mountains…the climbing metaphor totally still works…shut up!). Goldilocks never preferred things too hot or too cold, or too hard or too soft; she always wanted something in the middle. Which is an endearing segway into where I left off last post about my survey of millennials. The first question I asked participants was, “What main factor drew you to your current job?” And the results were not wildly unexpected. Yet when I asked participants the second question, “What is Your End Goal for Your Career?” their responses were almost the polar (a bear joke…get it?) opposite of what I expected, essentially a  “Goldilocks” model.

                As a refresher, I asked a group of millennials aged 22 to 30 from four different cities across the US a series of four questions. Today I want to discuss their responses to the second question, “What is the End Goal for Your Career?” In the last post I talked about the factors that pull us towards our initial career paths, but I was also curious about the frame of mind that millennials have when they first arrive at a new job. A professor of mine once told me that the biggest disappointment 20 year-olds will face in the coming decade is the realization that we aren’t all future CEOs and Board Members; “just by plain math, today’s coddled graduates are in for a rude awakening!”

                I’ll address the perception of millennials as “coddled” in future posts, but for now I want to dissect my professor’s comment that we cannot all be CEOs. Mathematically that obviously makes sense. There are only so many top dogs in the pound. But do all of us even want to be “Numero Uno” or are our definitions of success maybe a little more spread out? Before I even designed this survey I assumed most people (yes, even extremely driven millennials), would be like Goldilocks and ultimately content themselves with a comfortable life somewhere in the corporate middle. I expected some of the participants to be extra summit-driven, just by nature of knowing them outside of this questionnaire. But I did not expect for my professor’s opinion that all millennials are summit-driven to be correct.  

                As it turns out, his stereotype proved true…and…it didn’t. Over a third of the participants said that their end goal for their career was to become the CEO. And at first glance that number seems stunningly high and seems to confirm my professor’s thoughts on the matter. But when you stop to think about it, the data also reads that only a little over a third of the participants stood at base camp and said to themselves, “I’m going all the way up!” For a generation that is supposedly so defined by immediate and prolonged success, only 36% of millennials striving to be the CEO challenges the mold a bit in my eyes. True, that number might be higher than previous generations, but I think maybe it would be fair to hit the brakes a tad before we say “All millennials expect to be the CEO.”

                So if the majority of us don’t envisioning climbing all the way up to the Presidential Suite, where do most of us want to go? Therein lies another interesting find. Half of the millennials surveyed seemed to fall somewhere between my professor and me. Combined, half of the participants said that they would want to either be upper level management or somewhere near the top, but not be the sole person in charge. Yet contrarily, 14% said they would be happy precisely where they were, at an entry level or lower-rung position; the exact opposite of the driven millennial stereotype!

                So, wait a minute. If some of us want to be at or near the top, but not an insignificant number of us are fine being near the bottom, is there an aversion for millennials of getting “stuck” in the middle?What’s most interesting to me about those two findings is that, just like the first question, there was a category in which zero participants said that it described them. Zero percent of the millennials wanted to be “middle management.” Too hot or too cold…never just right! Are some of us not climbing to the top because we’re afraid of getting bogged down in the middle? So far it seems that if nothing else, we know more about what we don’t want than about what we do want!

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Ready, Set…Done!

If a group of coworkers in June were each asked to pack a supply bag for a perilous journey, the veteran employee would most likely pack all the essential tools. He/she will have measured food and water rations, compacted their load to be at a known, reasonable weight, and present their packs to the CEO after about a week. We millennials however, would show up the next day with five different packs, each with corresponding Tupperware, iPod speakers, detailed topography maps, shark repellent (you never know!), and three separate “ice breaker” card games, all with matching color schemes and waterproof seals, and deposit all five packs on the CEO’s desk with a sticky note saying, “I know, right?”

                In the above scenario, both employees completed the task, but their approaches and delivery were very different. And so too, would the CEO’s response be. The veteran employee, who presumably has been around the company long enough to understand how things are done, developed exactly what the CEO wanted and delivered it in a reasonable timetable. Case closed, satisfactorily. However the millennial, who has just joined the company after graduating from [insert university here], wanted so badly to knock their first assignment out of the park that they put in seven hours of overtime to put flashy variety and personal touch on the project. However, they kind of missed the point of the CEO’s project. The millennial did good work, that’s true, but the CEO needed a survival pack, not a party pack. The millennial has essentially expended a lot of wasted effort that didn’t really do anything extra for the business. I know—I’ve done it; it doesn’t feel good.

                More than likely, the CEO is going to use the veteran employee’s model and won’t have time to circle back to their newest employee as to why their project model wasn’t chosen. Were I the millennial in that particular situation, I would certainly be frustrated. I just spent so much time on this stupid assignment, where’s my gold star?

                Alright, maybe I wouldn’t be that dramatic, but I would be disappointed. And true, millennials won’t often be pitted against a more seasoned employee in their first month of work. But the key takeaways from this scenario remain the same. Be it running our first audit, reviewing our first case files, or making our first sales call, millennials have a driven desire to win, and win big, right out of the starting gate. In my experience this often leads us adding superfluous research to a project or trying to tackle too much too quickly on a sales call. Mistakes are made, managers get frustrated, and we don’t get the immediate, positive response we were hoping for. We may even get a shockingly negative response. And therein lies an interesting paradox: millennials are at their most creative and energetic when they first start at base camp, but base camp is where the most monotonous and technical work has to be done before we are given any of the extravagant assignments.

                I was once told in a job interview, “You won’t really hit any home-runs here. We’re mostly looking for a few singles.” While perhaps a rarity, that interviewer immediately put me off before I’d been there more than three minutes. We are an innovative and talented generation, and to be rather blunt, we’re less willing to “be bored” than previous generations. Everyone wants to be a rock star and I’ve seen twenty-two year-olds burn through an accounting file and be ready to deliver their findings before their supervisor even makes it back to his desk.

Ready, Set…Done!

But the question for us as a collective group isn’t always, “can I put my own interpretive spin on this and get immediate recognition?” The question is, “have I done this correctly and does my work represent my own professional standard?” A task that’s quite often easier said than done. Even harder, how do I channel all this energy!?

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Why Are We Where We Are?

Whenever people talk about millennials it’s always in terms of our generation, or of us as a group. I’m doing it right now. But if anything, we are the generation that most celebrates individuality and being just plain different. So if that’s the case, how divergent (*cough *Hunger Games ripoff *cough) are we really from one another?

I was interested in exploring these differences, so I collected a small sample of anonymous responses to four questions from millennials aged 22 to 30 in Washington D.C., Atlanta, Houston, and San Francisco. I asked millennials “What Made you Choose Your Current Job?” “What is the End Goal for Your Career?” “What is the Best Way to get to the Top?” and “Are You Nervous About Your Career?”

Today I want to dive into the first question to try and understand what pulls us to our particular starting points. Everyone starts at base camp, but I would imagine that everyone chooses their own trail head for different reasons.

 

Not surprisingly, the number one pull for millennials in the study was the industry itself. Ergo, I went to work for this oil and gas company because I’m interested in the energy sector. Salary was another expected popular category, and together industry and salary were the number one drawing factor for over half of the people surveyed.  Work-Life balance was another big-hitter as well. The phrase has become expected in interviews and an interviewer today isn’t doing a good job in recruiting you if they don’t laud the practices of their company in providing employees with a good work-life balance. So from the stereotypes surrounding millennials, that we want to be paid a lot, to do what we want, when we want to do it, our first 75% is not that shocking.

The remaining sliver of participants requires slightly more thought. Zero participants said that a company’s location or its benefits made them choose their current job. On some level that makes sense. The average twenty-something employee probably isn’t overly concerned with retirement packages and we are probably much more likely to travel or to move when we’re young and single. Yet that still leaves nearly a fifth of participants who felt that none of the options provided were what drew them to their job.

Of course this small survey isn’t indicative of why every millennial chose to set up camp where they do. Yet it is interesting to see that while not everyone’s reasoning played into some of the perceived stereotypes about millennials, a large percentage of the participants’ did. So what does that mean exactly? Do we have too high or even unreasonable expectations for our first job? Now that we have an idea of what’s bringing us to our base camps, we need to dive a little deeper into our participant pool. In order to understand fully what we expect out of career, we need to see where millennials envision ourselves at the end of our careers.    

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