Gen Y

There are several reasons why this BBC article is very, very funny. Among them:

For those of us old enough to have used Walkmen (Walkmans?), it's hilarious to read about someone from the iPod generation experimenting with his dad's antediluvian portable music device. ("It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape." "I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.")

And while I can't speak for this particular writer -- I can't accuse the writer or the BBC of anything -- I suspect that the person who wrote these words is not, in fact, 13 years old. ("Genre-specific"? Please.) Examples that set off my Dad-Wrote-This detector:

• "So it's not exactly the most aesthetically pleasing choice of music player."
• "From a practical point of view, the Walkman is rather cumbersome, and it is certainly not pocket-sized, unless you have large pockets."
• "But I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down 'rewind' and releasing it randomly - effective, if a little laboured."
• "Perhaps that kind of anticipation and excitement has been somewhat lost in the flood of new products which now hit our shelves on a regular basis."
• "Not long after the music warbled into life, it abruptly ended."
• "Did my dad, Alan, really ever think this was a credible piece of technology?"
• "But given the dreadful battery life, I guess this was an outright necessity rather than an extra function."

I don't have any trouble believing that these observations came from someone so young that he can't fathom a device that doesn't shuffle your music for you. But I do suspect strongly that dad had a hand here in a ghostwriting capacity. The examples I quoted above are not the vernacular that typically emerges from the mouths of 13-year-old boys, even in the U.K. (Americans seem to think that all kids over there sound like Harry Potter. They do not.)

Why do I dwell on this? It's a hilarious article, I'm glad they wrote it, and it made me laugh. Hats off to them. However... it reminds me to remind you (especially the parents out there) that when you meddle too much with your child's writing in the application process, admissions officers can smell that A MILE AWAY. They want to receive applications from your kids, not from you.

I have had a number of conversations with parents that go something like this:

Anna: Very nice essay.

Dad: Yes, we (!) really like it.

Anna: I'm hearing more [dad] in here than [daughter].

Dad: [Protracted silence.] Wow, you can tell?

Anna: Yep. Did you write the whole thing?

Dad: Well... uh. It's really her ideas.

Anna: She needs to write it, too.

Dad: So you're telling us to scrap this and start over?

Anna: Yes.

Many parents tell me that they are "best friends" with their kids, and they seem to think that means they have picked up the vernacular so well that they can mimic their children in their written work. But people who read essays from teenagers every day can tell the difference between the voice of a forty-something (or older) and the voice of a teenager.

So my advice, as always, is to keep a proper distance from your kids' writing. It's OK for you to help them generate and evaluate good essay ideas and topics, teach them how to improve their grammar and their spelling and their punctuation, encourage them to edit and edit and edit again, teach them how to proofread, and help them as they make editorial decisions about what to cut and what to keep.

Ghostwriting, though, is not OK, and parent-written essays uniformly end up being worse than the real thing. They are too safe, they are too boring, they sound phony, and they don't capture, in any way, the quirky and very fleeting way that teenagers observe their world or describe it. That quirkiness should be embraced, not stamped out.

And that's true for admissions consultants as well: your/our job is to draw out the best material and writing from applicants, in their own words and in their own voices. More than that crosses a line.

Every day in my work with applicants, I hear from people who tell me, "Oh, I'm a great writer! You don't have to worry about that part of things." And immediately I know we have a long road ahead of us, because what they usually put in front of me reads like a long stream of tweets.

I find it criminal that many college students who have worked hard and moved mountains to attend good schools have no idea what good writing is. And you shouldn't even have to attend a top school to learn the basics of good writing.

It's not your fault. You are not stupid. But you have been allowed to get away with sloppy work. You have been poorly served, and I'd like to take a crack at explaining why that matters.

The best thing that ever happened to me, truly, was when I got a paper back from one of my teachers at the University of Cambridge with the word "facile" scrawled across the bottom.

You should be so lucky. The days of getting back a paper covered in red ink -- correcting all your bad punctuation, fixing your verb tenses, changing "which" to "that," and explaining the fourteen different ways in which your syntax and grammar and argument are flawed -- seem, from my viewpoint, to be over. 

I'm amazed when I look at students' undergraduate writing samples -- ones they want to submit to graduate school admissions committees, particularly for PhD programs -- and the graded copies don't have a single correction in them. I'm not exaggerating; that's been true for most of the papers I've seen.

Even worse, those educators who hand back unmarked papers haven't just failed to teach you how to write; they have also lied to you. Whether indirectly through unmarked papers and easy As, or directly to your face, they have led you to believe that you're great writers. And that particular fiction sets you up for a lot of disappointment when you've left behind the world of lazy As and have to write something that actually counts and will be read with a critical eye.

It's not your fault that some of these teachers have neglected to teach you how to write, but it's also now your responsibility to learn. (Professors themselves are often terrible writers, so perhaps you're actually better off if they haven't tried to teach you how to write. At least you can start with a clean slate.)

Your whole ability to think critically is at stake. In Politics and the English Language -- which anyone who wants to write anything of consequence should read before graduating from college -- Orwell reminds us that sloppy thoughts lead to sloppy writing, and that sloppy writing leads to sloppy thoughts. So bad writing actually makes us stupider: the language "becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts." The good news? "[T]he process is reversible."

So before you start writing, think about what it is you want to communicate -- not just with this word or that sentence, but also in this paragraph, and the next one, and in this essay as a whole. You'll have to turn off the tweeting part of your brain and ask yourself how every single word, sentence, and paragraph ties together. Because admissions officers, BigLaw partners, managing directors, and all sorts of people who hold your fate in their hands will be absolutely merciless about your writing.

Good writing does NOT have to be about blind adherence to conventions. Learn the rules, and then break them to great rhetorical effect. Here's a slice from my ever-morphing reading list for good writing (some are how-to books, others are examples of good expository writing, because you'll also have to read to become good writers). 

• Sin and Syntax: How to Craft Wickedly Effective Prose by Constance Hale
• E.B. White's The Ring of Time (I'm not crazy about his Elements of Style, however -- there are some weird and clunky examples in that one.)
• The Best American Essays 2007, edited by David Foster Wallace
• The Best American Essays of the Century, edited by Joyce Carol Oates
• What is an Academic Paper, from the Dartmouth Writing Series
• Introduction from Jane Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities
• Gilles v. Blanchard, Judge Richard A. Posner, US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit

I'll likely add more as I think of them, but please contribute your own in the comments!

Edited to add: On reflection, and after receiving some pointed feedback, I have edited some of my less nuanced statements to make clear that I do not think all teachers neglect their duties to teach good writing, and that I do not think they are all lazy. Throwing around such categorical descriptions is itself, of course, a form of bad writing, so I've made a few changes.

Social networking at work: Gen Y thinks it's a birthright, Boomers frown on it, and Gen Xers are stuck in the middle. NPR has a great story about this clash of generations over appropriate use of technology in the workplace.

I'm curious to hear what you think. How much of your time at work is yours to spend however you like? Is that time your employer's or yours? Do you buy the argument that social networking is appropriate "business development," or is it mostly goofing off with your friends? Please share your thoughts!

It’s a tough job market out there – probably one you never thought you would encounter in your lifetime. Recruiting is down, job offers are down -- this is the new reality and you have to deal with it.  

Multiple job offers are probably a thing of the past, at least for the meantime.  Even internships are becoming fewer and fewer. If you currently have a job, you may have started to wonder for how long. Not what you expected, right?

So do you feel as if you can’t move forward? Are you trapped between your college life and your potential work life? We have some ideas about what you can do now. Much of this is just common sense, but it also demands that you bring the strengths and skills that you do have (even if that is not a wealth of job experience) to the table.

Some of what you can do may come naturally for you as a Gen Yer, and some of the ideas may be harder for you to apply. Stay focused and try a couple of the ideas outlined here. Let us know what works and what doesn’t – that way we can pass on your experiences to others.

If you already have a job…Remember that anyone in this climate could be the next person to go. I was laid off of my job in my 20’s and it really took me by surprise. Even if you are a star, have great training, and have formed alliances at work – you could be one step away from a job search. I made a one critical mistake that I will discuss first…

1. Make your commitment to the organization well known.  This includes your boss and, if possible, other individuals who make the decisions. If you are viewed as someone who is just hanging around until your real life begins (my boss thought that I wanted to write my dissertation more than I wanted to work – which wasn’t true), you may be considered a possibility for a job cut, even if you are a high potential employee. The awful thing about it is they’ll make the decision with no guilt, because they think it is what you want.

Gen Y has the reputation for enjoying and embracing job hopping – make sure everyone knows that you are loyal and are there to stay, and not just until the next better thing comes along. Communicate this clearly and whenever it seems appropriate. This may seem counterintuitive compared to what you have heard from your parents and friends over the years, but you have show your trust in the organization if you want to be perceived as a keeper.

2. Be ready to justify why you are needed.  You may have to sing for your supper -- just a little -- to keep your job. Everyone has to at one time or another in his career, and for you as a Gen Yer it may be just a little sooner. Take a really hard look at your contribution compared to your colleagues. Don’t throw anyone else under the bus, but be ready to defend your work and improve the bottom line. If you are not positively affecting the bottom line, or aren’t sure if you are, strategize about ways to do so.

3. Volunteer for tough, unpopular, or boring  (yes, we said it!) assignments, even if this means logging in some long hours. Showing that you don’t mind putting forth extra effort may help you stand out in a decision-maker’s mind if staffing cuts do occur. If it is an assignment that elicits groans and eye rolling at a staff meeting, you’ve hit pay dirt. Think of some out-of-the-box ideas and move forward -- something Gen Yers are great at.

4. Offer to teach a valuable skill to other employees. This is your chance to show off. Volunteer to teach other employees how to use their computers more efficiently. Show them how you get through 100 e-mails a day without breaking a sweat. Give them some tips on how you multi-task (because there’s nobody better at multi-tasking than Gen Y). Use the trend of “reverse mentoring” to your advantage. If you are in a marketing or sales environment, teach more established employees how to use social networking sites to boost their productivity and contact lists.

If you have not found a job… you will be competing for jobs against people with far more years of experience, even at the entry level. All the rules have changed. Don’t give the HR department or a recruiter a reason to eliminate you. Here are some strategies to try:

1. Focus your job search on organizations that understand and value Gen Y employees. Experience.com recently published their picks for the Top 20 best places for recent graduates to work, based on their recruiting and retention practices.  Their top picks focus on companies ranging from Hospitality to Consulting to Energy – while you are there, check out the job postings and tips on resumes.

2. Brand yourself.  Know who you are as a future employee and stick with that message. Think of an “elevator pitch” – a few sentences that define you as a potential contributor. In a nutshell, if you don’t know what you have to offer, we guarantee that organizations won’t know where you fit in either. Don’t give them a chance to wonder, and make sure your resume reflects your “brand.”

3. Get some real life experience. Why not use what you already know now, while gaining an entry on your resume. Try donating your skills to a small business. Help them out at no charge and you may help yourself as well. You never know, the owner may recommend you to another business, and so on.

If you can handle it financially, search for an unpaid internship. Internship services (at little or no charge) are a real plus for organizations that are already to struggling to keep up with fewer employees. There are companies who can help you secure an internship by packaging resumes and cover letters. A recent Wall Street Journal article discussed the pros and cons. Treat your internship as an extended job interview, because if you stand out, you’ll be an insider they’ll want to consider when a spot opens up.

4. Use your social networking skills to your advantage. If there is one skill that could really pay off now, it’s your social networking skills, both electronic and otherwise. Recruiting research shows many jobs are filled with people who were recommended internally. Organizations, like people, like to limit their risk. The trick is getting those contacts in the first place.

Join and attend meetings of professional groups that are applicable to your field. Many may offer a discount for students. Be sure to dress appropriately and have your “elevator pitch” ready – you never know who will show up.

Use websites such as LinkedIn to meet professionals in the industry of your choice. Ask for introductions – and later on, ask to “job shadow” or have an informational interview once you have made a contact.  The worst they can say is no. Arrive armed with a new perspective for solving problems in their industry – one of Gen Y’s best skills.

5. Be an entrepreneur.  If you think you have a marketable skill (for example, you are a wiz at setting up home work stations for telecommuting employees, etc.) group together with other students and consult. Gen Yers are brave with technology. If you can think of a service or product that is useful to organizations, and they don’t have to make a long-term commitment or pay you benefits, you may have a key opportunity that will help you weather the current economic storm. Do some basic online research to help you get a feel for this type of work.

6. Keep educating yourself. Take courses in areas that will make you more marketable. If you want to get some quick facts about hot career areas in the coming years, visit the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook. You’ll find information about jobs, training, and pay.

In the meantime, keep your part-time employment and talk to a career coach to help you identify courses that will round out your skill set. Cut costs where you can, and buy yourself some time to stay afloat until the job market improves.

Above all, please comment and let us know how you are doing, what’s working for you, and what isn’t.

Do you find yourself mentoring older colleagues at work in the art of social media, like Facebook and Twitter and wikis? If so, the Wall Street Journal would like to hear from you. Please email me asap if you'd be willing to be interviewed.

Recently I got an earful (or, more accurately, an inbox full) from some employers about the fine art of cover letters - mostly about what not to do. I'll paste in a sample below.

This is a good opportunity to remind my twenty-something crowd that there are often generational dynamics at work when you submit cover letters, to Gen Xers in particular. Overwhelmingly, my Gen X contacts recoil from what they perceive as extreme self-congratulation in Gen Y cover letters -- something to keep in mind when you're writing for a particular audience. Things that might fly with your own age group, or your boomer parents, or admissions officers don't necessarily go over well with everybody.

The other common theme is that long cover letters go straight into the trash, so keep your cover letters short and sweet.

Reactions? Advice? Anecdotes? Please share!

• So I am trying to staff my new office and am reviewing a few hundred resumes. Painful on many levels. Who the *hell* taught people to write cover letters that include phrases like "My analytic ability is keen" or "my written and oral skills are exceptional" or "I am confident you will find my communication skills outstanding" or, my favorite, "I am tomorrow's strategic executive."???? Literally every other letter includes this crap. Anna, save these people.
• I've been doing interviews for internship positions for the past few weeks. I've noticed how little I pay attention to the cover letters (I skim...I'm talking 30 seconds, tops). If the cover letter takes up the entire page, I almost never read it (I just look at the length and say, "too long").
• I've now read or skimmed a few hundred cover letters in the last 48 hrs and have learned nothing positive from a single one. Cleverness comes off as defensiveness and confidence as boastfulness. I don't even think the negative impressions I'm left with are necessarily deserved, and I've decided to give some interviews in spite of the letters. People need to shut up.
• They need to use extremely conventional resume formatting because I refuse to look at "Skill Profile" sections and resumes divided into quadrants and school listings that fail to show me grad dates. I shudder to think that the cover letters for my own 20 year old internship applications could even conceivably still exist somewhere. I committed all these sins in spades.
• I think cover letters should be extremely straightforward, repeat little that is in the resume, and never try to be boastful or cute. I know this is tougher for recent college grads - they presumably need to show why they want a particular job. But then just say that. Shut up about supposed attributes. If they want to be clever (and they shouldn't) then save it for the resume in the extracurriculars.
• I can think of a lot of scenarios when a cover letter is essential -- esp. when you are explaining a non-traditional path or a not-obvious transition. I just haven't seen many done well.
• First rule of cover letters is: do no harm. They can help, but rarely do, and the assumption in some professions is that the decision makers never see/look at the cover letter anyway, just the resume. So the goal is to write something that doesn't end up in your file with a highlighted part and a note that says "what a dolt!"
• I got 180 applications for the last position I had - for a job that includes lots of writing and even more editing. More than half the apps got thrown out based on the cover letter alone. Not just bad writing, but misspellings, grammar problems, proofreading errors, and one reference to "The Lord led me to you [sic] job decsripton [sic]." You've got to wonder what they thought they were going to accomplish.

I had an interesting discussion with a friend of mine who works (as I do) with lots of twenty-somethings. When we got around to the gratuitous praise to which Gen Y/the "Praise Generation" has become accustomed (phony praise that inflates their sense of achievement and rewards them for process rather than outcomes), he had this observation to share:

On all of this, I'll point out that, having worked with a literally never-ending stream of recent college graduates--half of everyone is 22 in my world--I notice that the people who consistently are the best to work with are ex-elite athletes. If you spent a substantial chunk of your life in sports, how could you:

• Think fairness is relevant? Losers talk about fairness.
• Fail to put stock in hard work, hoping to hide in the pack instead?
• Think hard work guarantees success?
• Fail to appreciate the importance of natural talent?
• Fail to focus on outcomes?
• Over-focus on process to the detriment of outcomes?
• Get confused by multiple goals and so fail to achieve any of them?

I say this as someone who frankly is more committed to the arts than to sports, but it has become clear to me that those who live a life in the arts and/or academics are prone to *ALL* of the fatal mistakes outlined above, and these are failures of outlook that wouldn't last past your first varsity season in high school, let alone college.

The difference is simple--top athletes are trained to focus on outcomes, period. Everything else is whining. Business is about outcomes, period. Non-athletes are shocked by that.

As an addendum, I was amazed when I got to [college] how many kids arrived there believing they had genuine artistic talent. They were going to be performers, or artists, for a living. They thought themselves that good.

No similar problem with sports. But in the arts, it's subjective. If you are the best in your high school, well, as far as you can tell, you're Kristin Chenoweth. There's no mechanism -- or incentive -- to level-set. In individual sports, there's no chance of this at all. In team sports, there's a little self-delusion, but not too much. [Anna asks: But what about teams where everyone gets a trophy? Helicopter parents invented that rank stupidity. Makes sense though that *elite* athletes don't suffer from this syndrome.]

Can I speculate that this problem is more an issue in law school, where kids majored in subjective disciplines like Poli Sci, Religon, and other stuff, and that math and physics grad programs don't have these problems? Even med schools probably don't have the problem as much?

Fascinating. Thoughts? Please comment.

I'm going to be moderating a panel of architects who specialize in designing the next generation of spaces for university students. Please weigh in with your wishlist, as well as any complaints or thoughts about the current state of your school spaces. Some topics to consider:

• Technology
• Dorms/Housing
• Safety
• Food
• Fun
• Fitness
• Athletics
• Performing Arts
• Religion/Spirituality
• Classrooms
• Study spaces

I realize it doesn't even make sense to break these out into separate categories, because Gen Y likes its spaces to be blended, so thoughts on blending are also welcome, and feel free to make up your own categories. Also, no details are too small or trivial. Be as picky as you like.

Please pass this around -- the more input, the merrier.

More info about the panel here.

A lot of Gen Y experts out there are telling companies to suck up to Gen Y's parents. Here's an excerpt from a blog posting, for example, by Tammy Erickson in connection with her book ("Plugged In: The Generation Y Guide to Thriving At Work") put out by Harvard Business Publishing (meaning, she's obviously no slouch):

• Distribute packs of information for parents to students at universities and job fairs
• Hold a career fair in your community designed specifically for parents
• Create special FAQ material directed at parents' likely questions and concerns (retirement, health benefits, 401(k) plans, educational opportunities and so on
• Hold parent orientation sessions or conference calls
• Invite parents of interns and new hires to visit the Y's place of work and meet the boss and colleagues
• Provide the staffing necessary to follow through with parent requests
• Run ads communicating your positive attributes as an employer aimed at parents
• Provide incentives for parents to refer their children (beginning with your current employees - if your current employees won't refer their own children, consider whether you really are a good employer)
• Include parents in employee benefits

Do you have a parent-approved brand?

I can see the short-term benefit of this kind of recruiting strategy. Very short-term. However, I wonder what kind of people you end up with when you use that kind of selection mechanism. Maybe the same subset of Gen Yers employers complain about all the time: the ones who don't show up on time, can't follow directions, can't make even simple decisions on their own, can't behave like grown-ups. I would posit that there's a connection between that kind of recruiting and that kind of employee.

So maybe you get entry-level bodies in the door that way. But what's that going to look like longer term? When you're trying to groom young employees to rise up through the management funnel? How do you make grown-ups, let alone leaders, out of people whom you selected for their dependent, child-like qualities?

I give Gen Y's parents a really hard time about infantilizing their grown children, and now companies are being encouraged to do the same thing. I have to think that's not a good outcome for those companies as a business matter, and it's downright toxic for Gen Y.

And for those whose immediate response is, "That's what Gen Y is like, there's no way around it," I say: You're not looking hard enough. You have to recruit more wisely than this, because with some of these recruiting strategies, you are inviting longer-term headaches.

Please weigh in. Am I wrong? And Gen Yers: do you want to be treated this way? Do you think that's a good thing?

(Here's my memo to employers; my memo to helicopter parents; and my memo to Gen Y. And here's a sample HR Director's lament.)

So I was catching up on my Tivo'ed Project Runway episodes the other night when I couldn't sleep. (I won't call it a guilty pleasure -- I will defend Project Runway 'til the end!)  Thought I could escape Gen Y issues for a brief spell? No sir. In this particular episode, the lovely Frau Klum challenged the designers to "design a look for recent college graduates who are starting their lives as independent professional women."

Independent? Really? Then why did all these young women BRING THEIR MOTHERS ALONG? Naturally, the moms started dominating the working relationship with the designers, and the designers started pitching to the moms rather than to the daughters/clients. In defending their designs to the judges, the designers would say things like, "Holly and her mother seemed really happy with it" -- a reminder that with Gen Y, parents are (almost) always part of the package. How old does Gen Y have to get before their parents back off? I'm intensely curious.

In any event, with the exception of the winning design by Jerell, these were some of the worst clothes you could ever see in the workplace. Or anywhere. Yikes. (Read the blow-by-blow here.)