Millennial Manual

Buyer’s Remorse?

I won’t lie to you.

We’re a damn tricky generation.  We’ve got Facebook, web-enabled cell phones, blogs, LiveJournals, Twitter accounts, and MySpace.  It’s hard to know what’s business friendly and what’s just goofing off.

In a 2009 report from PricewaterhouseCoopers, a consultancy, 61% of chief executives say they have trouble recruiting and integrating younger employees.

Worse than that, we have this sort of… superiority complex.  Or so we’ve been told.  And we’re sure you’ve heard it, too.  Bunk.  Pure drivel.  What we -do- have is access to almost unlimited amounts of experience and information at our fingertips.  Give us a week and we’ll be experts in anything.

Oh, right, and we’ve got doting parents, too… who carted us from one soccer match to the next while we graciously and gratefully grabbed up our trophies for participation and good sportsmanship.  We’re apparently very dumb, you know, what with having the highest SAT scores in decades.  We’re also drugged out on any number of legal or illegal prescriptions, to compensate for our rampant A.D.D.

Do you really believe all that crap?  Neither do I.

Getting To The Truth

Millennials are, and this is a very gross generalization, looking for respect.  The biggest sign that someone doesn’t respect you: broken promises.

Think about the things our generation has seen: 9/11, a war brought about by falsified evidence, Enron, Tyco, GlobalCrossing, genocide in Darfur largely ignored by the American public… and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  It’s not an excuse, but to put in perspective that we were raised in a world where it was necessary to check, double-check and vet every source of information we receive.

We’ve got amazing BS-filters.

That being said, barring anything else, if you make promises to a Millennial, you had better follow through.  We might care about your environmental policy, your flexible work hours, your commitment to being a good corporate citizen… but if you promise us exciting projects and a good work-life balance, that better be what we see.  If we’re working on our vacation days, past work hours, or otherwise into personal time which we haven’t openly volunteered, we’re going to be very critical of your schedule as well.

The Heart of the Matter

Getting down to it, I think it’s a fair thing to say that everyone hopes for meaningful, worthwhile work.  Millennials are no different – it’s just that we’re very, very loud about our expectations.

Particularly when they’re not being met.

There’s plenty of ageist bull out there that claims that this expectation of meaningful, worthwhile work comes at the cost of wanting to “pay our dues” or entitlement or some nonsense like that.  What’s wrong with thinking that we have meaningful ideas?  What’s wrong with wanting to get those ideas up the chain as fast as possible?  Particularly in the realm of technology, Millennials know what works.  They know how to interact with each other – they often trust one another and respect opinions, no matter how boisterous or inflammatory topics on the message boards, blogs, and other sources may seem.

I can’t begin to speak for all of my generation and their preferences, but I know how I have been treated.  I know how my friends (and, complete strangers, for that matter) have been treated.  The source of many problems is an employer breaking a promise, being hypocritical, or poor communications.  At that point, the employee loses faith and loses interest.  Sure, there are bad apples who just screw around, but… if a good employee suddenly goes bad, the relationship has gone awry.

Red Flags

When things go wrong, I record them, so I can remember later – generally I save e-mails in a folder called “Red Flags”.  I figure this only makes sense, since most employers hold my evaluations 6-months or 12-months apart.  It gives me leverage to fight back against unfair, discriminatory, or otherwise stupid practices. Remember that anything in the last 6 months I’ve done is fair game at an employee evaluation.  It’s only fair that it be the same for you, as my employer.

This is the biggest problem: you create an adversarial relationship by limiting this evaluation to once every 6-12 months.  Evaluation and critique should be continuous and on-demand.  Look at every single feedback tool we have: instant, online surveys, digg.com – which allows us to bury sites we don’t like, and comment flagging.  If we like or don’t like something, we can say so instantly and without barriers.

The ageist punks out there say that this is the Millennial trait of “seeking praise” and “constant feedback”.  We don’t want praise that we haven’t earned, but we sure as hell want to know what we’ve done right and what we’ve done wrong.  And we don’t want to wait six months to get it.

If I feel like I’m not being listened to, I don’t stick around very long.  I, as many of my 20-something compatriots would, let my managers know what’s wrong – but as someone who has been written up for “overly direct” communication, I can honestly say that it usually doesn’t work.

In my situation, I was called out by the CEO for something under my control.  I made a suggestion – without consulting my manager, but after consulting with the rest of the programming and IT teams.  I responded directly to the CEO and was written up for “overly direct communications”.  When I asked why, when the CEO called me out in a disrespectful manner, I was being punished for responding with a recommendation that was not only respectful, but well thought-out, the head of HR and my manager told me that “She’s the CEO, she can do whatever the hell she wants to.”

Can you see why maybe we don’t respect the corporate norms?  Or want to?  Many of my friends who have worked in the professional world have similar stories.  The ass-clowns of business are every bit as destructive to you as the ass-clown millennials who are every bit the stereotypes you read about.

Another problem at this company: the managers could work 4 10-hour work days.  Employees could not, no matter how far they had to travel, because it was a privilege reserved specifically for managers.

It’s a culture that’s ingrained from top to bottom.  We’ve paid our dues.  We’re more important than you.

It’s not fair, and saying “life’s not fair” is not the answer.  We won’t work for people who believe that’s true.  At least, not for long.  And believe me when I say, if we’re not contributing amazing ideas for you, we’re doing it for someone else – and we’ve forgotten all about you and your silly little corner office that you occupy only 4 days a week.

We can be amazingly loyal if given a chance and a reason.  Is it any wonder why, when promises are broken by an employer, we suddenly become the best career mercenaries you’ve ever seen?

Sure, you could out-and-out fire this person, but… isn’t it much more rewarding and cost-effective to try and resolve the problem?  As Chris Ferdinandi writes on his blog post “Why Your Employee Sucks At His Job”, “When an employee isn’t motivated, don’t just fire them and bring in someone else. If the cause is actually poor management, the problem is bound to happen again.”

Respect is a two-way street.  Cultivate it in your young employees by doling it out to them in healthy doses and by keeping your promises to them.