The current hiring climate is not a friendly one for Generation Y. We are the group of young people, born between 1980 and 2000, that no one wants to take seriously. We were raised by Baby Boomer and Gen X parents in a time of economic prosperity, and were blessed with opportunities to travel, pick up hobbies and pursue higher education. Many of us are now graduating from college, some at the top of our classes, or are still working hard toward our degrees. We keep our heads barely above a sea of debt that the recent economy has cursed us with, yet we’re still eager to begin fulfilling careers that contribute something of value to the world.
But our spirits are dampened every time we get doors slammed in our faces or hear the word “no.” Our resumes are often tossed as soon as employers see that our college graduation dates are after 2000, not because we’re simply green and lack experience, but because they have this notion that we belong to a generation of self-entitled freeloaders who expect everything to happen quickly and easily. Naturally, businesses just don’t want to deal with that sort of riffraff.
A 2013 careerbuilder.com survey found that more than 85 percent of hiring managers and human resource executives believe that Generation Y has “a stronger sense of entitlement than older workers”. A survey by beyond.com found that only 1 percent of HR executives believe that millenials are loyal to their employers, and only 11 percent regard us as hardworking. Here’s evidence that these same HR people are shunning us from the workplace: the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics stated that 37 percent of all millennials are either unemployed or out of the work force.
I certainly wouldn’t want to bring one of the self-absorbed phone-addicts from the reality television world into my company. But, if given a chance, the young people that exist in reality would make much better employees than the rest of the world makes us out to be.
It’s unfair that popular culture robs young people of professional opportunities and forces us to put in more effort to prove to employers that we are indeed reliable and intelligent people. Popular music and movies paint such a ghastly picture of millennials; if beings from another planet tried to gain an understanding of Generation Y with MTV as their sole resource, they would think we’re just a mass of teenage mothers and spoiled white boys with pants around our knees. But in reality, most of us are nothing like the crazed drunks in music videos and the loud drama queens on reality television shows.
We do happen to overindulge in these mindless aspects of entertainment, but that doesn’t mean we aspire to be like Miley Cyrus in all her tongue-wagging glory; we follow people like her so we can make fun of them and secretly hate them for publically symbolizing our generation’s maturation with shamelessness. We feel that we’re nothing like the crazy young people portrayed on television. We’re struggling just as much as our elders to pay bills and find jobs, if not more, because there is such a negative stigma associated with our age.
Maybe we are guilty of always seeking instant gratification, and maybe our technology dependency has made us a little lazy, but I don’t see any reason for employers to regard us as an evil in the workplace. Businesses that want to appeal to a younger crowd would be lucky to have us behind their desks, answering their phones and greeting their customers. We’ve got this fresh energy that has been dried out of the older generation, because they’ve already been working hard for decades.
We may not know where to insert a floppy disk, but our brains are full of innovative ways to draw new clients via social media, build jazzy websites, redesign logos and a host of tasks that older generations might not prioritize. We’re eager, ready to learn, and most importantly, ready to make the world our own. Our often strange fashion sense, hippie diets or newfangled robot music won’t affect our work performance.
We live in a weird and tumultuous time of change; trends from all different ages are mixed with an overwhelming amount of technological advancements. I challenge older generations to say that they never succumbed to whatever was popular when they were young. The millennial generation doesn’t deserve to be discriminated against just because we keep up with trends. It hurts us deeply when we apply for jobs that our degrees qualify us for but are denied because of our age and all of the things that supposedly come with modern youth.
