Graduates of the Recession: New Workers Hitting the Fields en Masse in May

I am not the graduating class of 2012, but applying for internships and knowing I’ll be graduated by January 2013 has led me to keep my eye on stories and articles about entering the job force. An article from Ad Age posted yesterday about who these graduates are and predicted trends about how they’ll behave (see my earlier post about baby boomers vs millenials in the work force entitled Entry Level Employment Demands).

Since these graduates were born in the midst of the 90′s recession and completed college (“the poor years”) in an even poorer time with the most recent and harsher recession, they will walk across that stage and get notice a little differently this spring:

We’re seeing a progression in the quality of young professionals. This isn’t a group ready to stay in the background and learn the way things are done. This is a talent dynamic that I foresee shaping the way we work and interact, and they’ll present challenges.

The article also mentioned five themes found in these graduates. I’ve provided the same phrase they labelled them and then commented myself:

1. Loyalty is back

Knowing that the application pools are growing and growing, job applicants will be willing to show a long-term commitment in hopes of standing out from the hundreds of others. They want to show the employer they will be there to stay, as long as the job has enough incentives and benefits to keep their attention. I think this is a good point. Growing up in times of instability and decreasing sense of hyper-spending, keeping a job in the long term will benefit and provide a safety net (more in the 401k, sense of ease of knowing the paycheck is coming). Showing loyalty to an employer would make me hope that the employer would return that loyalty if cuts were needed to be made.

2. Engagement is essential

Engagement seems to be the biggest key word in the field of social media and PR these days. But young employees don’t just want to work on engaging a target audience, they want to be engaged themselves. Many studies and trends are commenting on Millenials’ ability, or need even, to multitask; employers may have to work harder to keep these newbies interested and interacted. I believe that the employees will reach out and seek engagement on their own too, however.

3. Watch for short circuits

Our generation has grown up with the custom of being able to find out information instantaneously (growing from the start of search engines, to google becoming a common verb, to smart phones in our pockets at all times). We will look for ways to get things done quickly in the office and find answers ourselves. I can see this being seen as a bad thing from traditional workplaces, as a short cut, but as long as the quality of said work is monitored, it will just require a little joint-adjustment from managers to young professionals.

4. Make time for face time

The author didn’t describe this idea as a trend seen in new job candidates, but as a lacking seen in the workplace. With current technology, it’s common, easier, and almost favored to simply send an email or text to get a job done, task requested, or question answered. We need to get back in the means of talking face-to-face even if that takes a bit longer. Communications among employees, especially in the field of communications is key.I think that email is good for follow up or long term projects, but I always appreciate someone stopping by at work or when I’m in the library to say hi rather than a text that I was “spotted.”

5. Harness the coffeehouse effect

The place one of my roommate’s is interning at this summer boasts about their cubicle-less office space. Each worker has a desk, but there are no barriers or walls between them, in order to harness creativity and collaboration. Especially in an agency setting, it is important to have the ease of getting together to bounce ideas off (much like a “coffee house,” originating from the trend of Kaffeehauer in Europe at the turn of the 1900′s where artists and thinkers got together to spread and share their knowledge). Face-to-face interaction and dialogue and help mend the gap between generations and work on completing the objectives that agency or organization.

Reading and analyzing this article has made me super excited to start looking for actual employment (hopefully after one more internship is completed this summer) and has raised awareness of good pointers to promote, frame, and brand myself and my application for potential employers in nine months (WOW NINE MONTHS!).