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Am I Really a Millenial? To a T, Apparently.

Posted by Ellie Mirman on Wed, Jan 07, 2009 @ 11:44 PM
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I was really curious, considering that I fall into the category of "Millenials" (people born between 1980 and 2000), if this article (and this one and this too) about managing Millenials would be at all on target.

I was pretty shocked to find that I agreed overwhelmingly with most of the article. They described Millenials as:

  • Confident - being raised by parents they believed in the importance of self-esteem (and remember those middle school classes all about building up your self-esteem?).
  • Hopeful - all you have to do is look at the percentage of McGill students who majored (or minored) in International Development Studies - IDS is, I believe, the most popular program at McGill these days, drawing all us hopeful Millenials who want to save the world.
  • Optimistic and Practical - oh boy, that's me.
  • Goal Oriented - I sometimes forget how old I am, just by virtue of how much I think about the future.

Interestingly, Millenials are also compared to Baby Boomers, partly due to the size of the generation and the results stemming from that... in particular, the sheer size of the Baby Boomer generation led to such competition that Baby Boomers were expected to do what they had to do to get ahead - working extra hours and so on. Same with Millenials, except that Millenials will put in the extra time and effort, but, because we're in high demand (and know it), we expect something back.

Here were some of the tips outlined for managing Millenials:

  • Millenials are "techno-savvy" so ramp up your website and use technology to appeal to Millenials.
  • Set expectations from the start - if the job requires grunt work, be upfront about it. 
  • Keep in mind that Millenials like to work collaboratively (goodness, you can see some of these differences just within our small marketing team...).
  • Millenials like guidance. We've grown up with great leaders and not only appreciate input, but expect it.
  • R-E-S-P-E-C-T (OK, maybe not from the Millenial years, but I love it).
Well, fellow Millenials (or non-Millenials)? What do you think?
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Comments

For some reason I keep wanting to NOT be a Millenial and feel that this 20 year category/range is overreaching. You've touched on the positive things, which I wouldn't mind beind associated with for the most part but there's a ton of other stuff (inability to function without a Blackberry, dependency on hyper-connectedness) that I'd rather not be.  
 
I guess I was born in 1982, so I'm a little on the 'old' side of the millenials, and I definitely feel it.
Posted @ Thursday, January 08, 2009 8:54 AM by David Fisher
Have you seen this: http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/erickson/2008/05/ten_reasons_why_the_relationsh.html  
 
As a Gen Xer, it is sometimes hard to take the Y's.
Posted @ Thursday, January 08, 2009 9:01 AM by Matt
Dave - ya, I hear what you're saying. I normally get on my guard about getting lumped into a huge generational group and making generalizations about that group. A 20-year span is pretty huge, and I can't imagine that we can really make these generalizations about the huge number of people that fit into that span. 
 
It seems like most of the generalizations above, even though I wrote about them in a positive light, can easily be flipped to say something negative. 
- tech-savvy -> tech-dependent 
- collaborative -> inter-dependent or can't work on their own 
and so on.
Posted @ Thursday, January 08, 2009 9:02 AM by Ellie Mirman
Matt - really interesting article there. Touches on how fast Millenials (or Gen Yers) are accelerating so fast and how Xers are reacting. Thanks for sharing!
Posted @ Thursday, January 08, 2009 9:07 AM by Ellie Mirman
As a tail-end boomer (who is the father of two millennials!)I do see some similarities between the two groups...except for two items: collaboration and self-esteem. 
 
We baby boomers are traditionally not very good collaborators. We were taught to do it ourselves and we just don't tend to play nice together:-) Some of us have overcome this affliction, but it's not easy. 
 
The only way to teach self esteem is to demonstrate it. It must be cultivated from within. Self esteem is learned through adversity -- knowing how to pick oneself off the floor when knocked down -- then continuing on without psychological damage:-) There are winners and losers in life. You'll win some business deals and lose others. But by teaching our kids that there are no winners and losers by not keeping score in a baseball game, we are actually sabotaging their self-esteem -- when they grow up and find out that the world doesn't work that way. Without understanding how to deal with adversity, there is no self-esteem.
Posted @ Thursday, January 08, 2009 9:14 AM by Ron Ploof
Great post, Ellie! I like reading articles and blog entries that don't trash our generation as being lazy, entitled, and a host of other negative qualities. Of course, I agree with the positive traits of our generation (willingness to try new things, net-savviness, doing what we think is right, etc) and reject the rest. That's what we do, right? Keep it up!
Posted @ Thursday, January 08, 2009 9:16 AM by Leah
I don't think the idea of generation-typing is to say that every single person born in a large time window is the same. But cultural factors do create tendencies, so people born in a certain time frame will tend to have some similarities. The boundaries of the time window are necessarily fuzzy, and depend on major events and how they affected individual people.  
 
Given how fast things seem to be changing these days, I'm surprised the category includes 8-year-olds and 28-year-olds. I would've put the boundaries roughly at 1975-1990, so it would go from people that came out of college into the high-tech boom and those finishing college now. Seems like there's no point making predictions about today's 2nd-graders.
Posted @ Thursday, January 08, 2009 11:43 AM by Dan
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