You don’t deserve to be hired if you don’t have that “thing”

Disclaimer: The ideas expressed in this post are my own personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

I know it’s tough for students and recent grads. Thanks to my job, I know the difficulties my peers face while they make that transition from school to work.

Over the last two years, I never imagined myself being on the flip side of that situation or feeling compelled to comment on Gen Y entitlement. In general, I think it’s been discussed to death and usually consists of much Baby Boomer finger-wagging and head-shaking.

I am not a Baby Boomer. I’m Gen Y. I live and breathe everything Gen Y. I think we’re the most educated, skilled generation to date and, if we get our shit together, we could make the world an amazing place and make money while we’re at it.

But I’m starting to feel frustrated about Gen Y entitlement.

I’ve recently been interviewed by a few young journalists regarding my thoughts on unpaid internships because students are becoming frustrated by them.

To sum up, I don’t think they’re ideal, and in some cases they’re unethical, but they’re the reality of the current job market and to succeed in many industries you have to complete one or more unpaid internships.

I’m a realist. I’ve both completed unpaid internships and hired for unpaid internships as an employer. I try really hard to make TalentEgg’s internships, both paid and unpaid, as meaningful as possible. I don’t think unpaid volunteers should replace full-time paid workers on an ongoing basis, and I don’t think a company should live or die by its unpaid interns.

But this post isn’t about employers. It’s about interns.

Just because you complete a (paid or unpaid) internship with an organization does not mean it is obligated to hire you. This is why:

• If you don’t make yourself so valuable to the organization that it can’t live without you on a full-time, permanent basis, then I don’t think you deserve to be hired.
• If you haven’t demonstrated initiative, autonomy, innovation, vision, passion, and that you can be trusted with responsibilities that are core to the business (at the very least) during your internship, then I don’t think you deserve to be hired.
• If you can’t do your job as good as your manager can (or better!), then I don’t think you deserve to be hired.

Harsh? Maybe. But I would not hire someone who didn’t embody each of those qualities.

So far during my short career as a Gen Y manager and a manager of Gen Y, there has only been one intern who I would have begged my boss to hire; who I could trust with really important projects and tasks; who I knew was making the company bigger and better and stronger; who worked as hard as my colleagues and I, or harder.

We’ve had a lot of great interns. Amazing people. Good workers. I’m not putting them down by any means and I am so, so, SO grateful for all of their hard work.

But did they all have that THING I just couldn’t live without?  I don’t think so.

That THING doesn’t have a name, but I like to think of it as the perfect storm of skills and qualities. Each organization and each manager will have a different recipe for that THING (which is why different people and different kinds of people are successful at different organizations), but we know it when we see it because it is so rare that it hits us over the head and slaps us across the face with its awesomeness.

I did not demonstrate that THING at some of my past internships and I know this because no one asked me to stay. I didn’t demonstrate that THING because I didn’t really want to stay.

But I know I demonstrated it at TalentEgg because I went from intern to senior management very quickly, and I’ve maintained my position while I’ve watched many others come and go without making any significant contribution to the company’s culture, growth or bottom line.

A lot of students and recent grads ask my colleagues and I how to find an awesome job. We usually try to offer some actionable tips, but I think the truth is that you just have be remarkable.

Everyone has a degree or diploma, or two or three. Everyone has a resumé. Everyone has connections. Everyone has access to personal branding tools and social media. These things might help you find a job or internship, but they won’t help you keep it. Your behaviour and your work will.

Thoughts?

Funemployment ain’t all it’s cracked up to be, mainstream media

The hottest buzzword surrounding Gen Y in Canadian media this summer has to be “funemployed.” That is, choosing to be unemployed to do things they’ve always wanted to do, such as travel, pursue hobbies and, if the mainstream media would have you believe it, move back in with Mom and Dad to have a riotous time sitting on the couch and watching TV all day.

These articles paint twentysomething students and recent grads, and even unemployed workers in their mid-to-late 30s, as idealistic slackers without a care in the world who – for a time – surf couches, take odd jobs and, God forbid, actually feel optimistic about the future while they’re doing it.

Indeed, the trend is spurred on by changing attitudes towards work, says Karyn Gordon, a workplace and youth consultant. Young people today are less likely to see work as their raison d’être. They are happier to stay jobless because they don’t base their self worth on their job, Dr. Gordon says. [The Globe and Mail]

While this is generally true, many of us still long for a life-long career we are happy in. Unlike our parents’ and grandparents’ generations, who often stayed at one job or only a couple similar jobs their whole lives, perhaps it’s not the individual jobs that make up an important part of who we are. After all, we’re likely to change jobs at least a dozen or so times in our lifetime. But I think a meaningful career that progresses steadily from Point A to B to C, etc. is still important to Gen Y. We want to know our dedication and hard work is paying off in the long run.

Although I usually favour the Globe over other Canadian publications, its article on this topic doesn’t hold up to the paper’s normally high standards. It focuses on Gen Y’s stereotypical Peter Pan-ishness (however, most of the sources in this article are in their 30s for some reason) and doesn’t acknowledge the fact that young people currently have a lot of competition for jobs due to the recession, and there is also currently more reliance on short-term contract work which might leave people unemployed, then employed and then un/underemployed again.

Now, aside from the fact that I know more people who are working hard (or at least working hard at trying to get a job so they can work hard) than not, in previous generations the “funemployed” were simply free spirits who needed a little extra time to “find themselves.” Weren’t they? I don’t think this is something new nor do I think the funemployed should define our entire generation.

In the more recent Maclean’s article on the same topic, I think the reality of Gen Y not being able to find meaningful work and pursuing other valid options is more accurately represented. For example:

• realizing it’s a tough time to look for a career-advancing job and working a service job to finance a vacation before taking international internships abroad;
• getting laid off and living on the severance package while keeping an ear to the ground until another meaningful opportunity presents itself;
• working on hobbies and projects that make you happy, such as art, music or blogging, which can also help with networking and preventing the isolation that typically occurs when someone is unemployed.

Although the article is still peppered with a few Gen Y stereotypes, it’s much more kind than the other. And as for our generation being more accepted of unemployment than previous generations, let’s just say we realize there are different paths we can take along the journey toward a fulfilling career. Sometimes it includes travel (for business or for pleasure), or exploring different interests, or just being unemployed for a while because it can be tough to find a job.

And it’s OK!

(However, I have to mention that I think time off should include something that is potentially relevant to your career path, such as volunteering/unpaid internships or creating work for yourself through some sort of project or even just a blog.)

What if my helicopter parent is no longer hovering?

As a young woman, a university student and a member of Generation Y, it’s impossible to get away from conversations about parents and, in particular, mothers.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my dad. And I’m sure most people love their dads too. But there’s something different and special about mothers.

My friends and colleagues complain about their nosy, bossy mom in one breath and then list everything she’s doing for them in the next. They receive texts, emails and phone calls, and, if they live away from home, the occasional visit once a month or so.

They call their mom when they have a problem and are more like sisters or old friends than mother and daughter. They receive care packages, thoughtful and practical gifts, and clothes that actually fit.

If you don’t know me, or you haven’t visited the about me page yet, my mom died of cancer almost five years ago when I was 18.

…

Phew. OK. The bomb has dropped. Can we move on now?

It would be too simple to say I’m jealous, or that it stings when I witness and hear about the relationships between them and their mothers, whether good or bad or somewhere in between.

I’ve accepted my place as a quasi-orphan and I’ve learned to deal with people’s sympathy.

As a seemingly unrelated aside, I’ve totally accepted my Gen Y identity – except I don’t have a helicopter parent.

It would have been my mom. She wouldn’t have been one of those crazy helicopter parents who does your homework for you or won’t let you do your own laundry or calls your profs if you don’t get an A in their class. But she would have been involved in my life.

The thought occurred to me today after I went back to Cambridge to visit my dad and my brother. I can’t help but think of her whenever I go home. My mom never lived there, but some of her furniture, photographs and knick-knacks are there. We have to drive past the house we lived in with her when she died on the way to my dad’s house, only a few blocks away.

But I got a direct reminder thanks to some paperwork my dad’s been holding onto for the past four, almost five, years. I guess my mom put some money away for my brother and I when she really knew she wasn’t going to make it and my dad wants me to check it out.

Just seeing her handwriting, our old address and phone number, and her email address (which no longer exists – I checked) flooded my mind with memories and the reality that, after all this time, she’s still not around.

She filed the paperwork April 2, 2004; less than two months before she died. It’s not much money and I’m not even sure how to go about getting it, but I’ll figure it out.

It just got me wondering what she would think of me now, five years later, as I’m about to graduate from university. I’ve survived this long believing she’s proud of me and somehow knows what I’ve accomplished since she’s been gone.

What kind of relationship would we have? How often would we talk, email, text and visit? What would I ask her for advice about? Would I be annoyed by how involved she is in my life? Would I take her for granted?

They’re questions which can never be answered, but also questions I think about to figure out where I fit among my peers – especially as I continue to discuss and write about Gen Y, who seem to have such deep relationships with their parents.

What kind of relationships do you have with your parents?