April 1st, 2008
Is Youth the New Glass Ceiling?
By Anna Ivey
I love The Office Newb blog, a "twenty-something's guide to the corporate life." In a post called "Age Is the New Glass Ceiling," the Office Newb pondered "why are we all so quick to judge people based on age? Why do we favor the potential of 'experienced' employees over the proven track record of younger ones?"
It's a great question to ask, and I would reply that younger employees don't really have that much of a track record yet. I know it doesn't seem that way from their perspective, which is why Office Newb is frustrated.
In her great follow-up posting, she writes:
I feel that there are lots of mid-level or managerial positions I qualify for based on my skill set, interests and previous experience, however, they usually require 2 – 3 more years of professional experience than I currently have. What exactly can I do about this? Nothing but wait. And I think that is at the root of the frustration for many young people.
Is it a millennial thing? Is it just the folly of youth? Most likely it’s a combination of both. And for a generation that was taught “if you can believe, you can achieve” being told to wait can be a hard lump to swallow.
From the manager side of the table, I often get an earful about Gen Y'ers who show up in the workforce right out of school and expect management experience right off the bat. That was, in fact, the biggest complaint I heard from a group of managers I gave a presentation to at conference a few weeks ago. So Office Newb has tapped into a more widespread, two-way frustration.
It's a conflict I see over and over again. Gen Y doesn't value or respect experience the way older generations do. That outlook is of course inherent to twenty-somethings of any generation, but it seems to be more pronounced with this one. And that causes a certain amount of friction for everyone involved.
There are a lot of fabulous twenty-somethings out there -- and thank goodness for that. At the same time, it's true that many of them have been raised to think they are more capable than they are at their level of experience, and that they deserve the benefits of experience right away. But life doesn't work like that. Those benefits have to be earned, and earning them often takes time. Not always, but often.
That doesn't mean that every person who is older is necessarily the best at what he does -- competition is a beautiful thing, and it's great when talented people of any age rise to new levels of responsibility. Talent is age-blind, but talent is not the same as experience. They are two totally different metrics. Age isn't just a number. Age means experience, and the working world still values experience.
Good luck Office NewB. I'm rooting for you. And you are right: patience is hard. At any age.
re: Is Youth the New Glass Ceiling?
As a grandmother I have a different opinion regarding the twenty-something. I have seven grandchildren aged 5 to 27 and we are all close. However, I see with my 19 and 20 year old granddaughters serious impatience. Unfortunately, I also see it with many of their friends. We, parents and grandparents have made life very easy for them. I take responsibility for some of it as my daughter does. We never wanted them to wait for anything, like we did. The result is they tend to feel as though they are owed more in life sooner then later. In my profession commercial real estate the salesmen comes in and think they are going to make $200,000 dollars the first year. It took me almost five years before I established credibility and clients. Once again I stress to my granddaughters and their friends it will take time and patience to make a good living. And you do not start at the top. You want to begin on the bottom so no one will know more then you. You start low to establish a strong base. My granddaughters are listening however, it's not an easy task when you given them an easier life. Sometimes struggle and not having it all establish stronger values and make kids think out of the box to survive...
Dorothy from grammology
remember to call gram
www.grammology.com
Thanks for stopping by my site....
re: Is Youth the New Glass Ceiling?
As a grandmother I have a different opinion regarding the twenty-something. I have seven grandchildren aged 5 to 27 and we are all close. However, I see with my 19 and 20 year old granddaughters serious impatience. Unfortunately, I also see it with many of their friends. We, parents and grandparents have made life very easy for them. I take responsibility for some of it as my daughter does. We never wanted them to wait for anything, like we did. The result is they tend to feel as though they are owed more in life sooner then later. In my profession commercial real estate the salesmen comes in and think they are going to make $200,000 dollars the first year. It took me almost five years before I established credibility and clients. Once again I stress to my granddaughters and their friends it will take time and patience to make a good living. And you do not start at the top. You want to begin on the bottom so no one will know more then you. You start low to establish a strong base. My granddaughters are listening however, it's not an easy task when you given them an easier life. Sometimes struggle and not having it all establish stronger values and make kids think out of the box to survive...
Dorothy from grammology
remember to call gram
www.grammology.com
Thanks for stopping by my site....
re: Is Youth the New Glass Ceiling?
One word to the newbies complaining about not being promoted fast enough: contacts.
No, not your family or classmates. That's not anywhere near enough.
You'll get promoted as you acquire more contacts within your industry that allow you to work more efficiently.
You'll become an assistant editor when a feature is killed just before deadline and you know precisely which freelancer can write 2,000 words on Thai resort development in two days.
You'll make partner if all of the lawyers at the Big Client's general counsel's office call you directly with their emergency requests.
You'll be promoted from the assistant's desk when you notice your calls are being put through immediately because all the other assistants in the industry recognize your name.
Whatever your claimed experience and "skill set," you don't have a critical mass of professional contacts when you start your first real job. It will take several years.
Then you'll be promoted. Congrats!
re: Is Youth the New Glass Ceiling?
First of all, I just found your blog a few minutes ago (googling around for Foreign Service Exam info), and I have to say that reading this, I really wish that blogs (particularly this one) were around when I was a high school junior/senior.
I mostly disagree with your opinion here, however. Obviously, the more experience you have, the better you will be at whatever you're doing, in general. But fresh out of college, I think that our generation (I am a millennial - I think) already has more experience than previous generations of recent graduates. College has changed. My father, born in 1938, would rail against what he saw as my horrific (Colby) college education, because it was so different from his. His expcetation, however, reminded me more of my college prep high school than what college today is like -- tons of general-knowledge required courses, mandatory PE, uninteractive lectures, lots of tests, etc. College students today are going abroad, doing internships, creating their own majors, and working on independent study assignments that translate into real-world projects. From high school to college, and even from my freshman to senior year of college, the number of teachers/professors assigning group projects skyrocketed, with students taking on essentially managerial positions: delegating work, prioritizing tasks, dealing with difficult personalities. And I don't think that this is just at schools like Colby. The skillset of the average recent grad is not the same as it once was.
Second, I think that the people hiring are handling the situation really stupidly. I am seeing more and more articles in trade publications where companies and organizations are freaking out over the impending retirement of all the Baby Boomers. And yet they still are refusing to hire administrative assistants who don't have four years' experience doing EXACTLY the type of work that they would be doing in the advertised position. Wouldn't it make sense to hire some of these younger, less experienced people while the Baby Boomers are still around to train and mentor them? I just think that in their fear of "crazy inexperienced kids," they are shooting themselves in the foot unnecessarily.
In case you couldn't tell, I am a frustrated fairly-recent college graduate trying unsuccessfully to break into my field.