10
MAY 2012
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Career search not getting any easier University degree no longer the promised one-way ticket to a career BY KATHRYN BLAZE CARLSON, POSTMEDIA NEWS
good comes along?” she explained. To many baby boomers, though, that logic sounds just indulgent. And expensive. It is emblematic, they say, of today’s Sarah Sayed dreads small talk, particularly the line of questioning that includes, “What do you culture of entitlement, proving that generation Y wants to skip the whole “working for The do for a living?” Despite her two university degrees and a Man thing” and leap straight into a meaningful, feverish months-long job search, the 25-year- lucrative career. There is even a book that caters to the old graduate does not yet do anything for a living. Instead, she works odd jobs and lives latter bunch called Grindhopping: Build a Rewarding Career Without Paying Your at home with her baffled parents. It was not supposed to be this way. The Dues. “The funniest thing is that if generation chemical engineering graduate, who has a second degree in bio-chemistry, was supposed Y is entitled, it’s because their parents raised to graduate from the University of Ottawa and them to be that way,” said Lauren Friese, a begin a fulfilling career straight out of the 27-year-old London School of Economics academic gate – or so she hoped, expected, graduate and entrepreneur who three years ago launched TalentEgg, Canada’s leading even. But her first professional job search has online resource for university graduates instead marked the first major false start of making the career transition. “Their baby boomer parents were telling her adult life, delivering a painful reality check them that they could do anything, that it’s and a severe blow to her self-esteem. For Sayed, a guilty sense of comfort lies OK that they didn’t do well in class and ‘You only in the fact that hundreds of thousands of struck out in your baseball game but, hey, people around her age dread small talk, too: nice swing.’ “When those same youth unemployment generation Yers come in Canada is twice the into their workplace, national rate, these baby boomers are the days hovering around ones wondering why a woeful 14%. [the recent graduates] The situation has arrive on Monday as been so bleak for so long an intern and expect that some observers to be given the call Sayed’s cohort responsibilities of a the “lost generation.” – Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, CEO by Friday.” Others call her and her psychology professor, J e a n Tw e n g e , ilk NINJAS, meaning Clark University author of Generation “No Income, No Job, M e: Why To d ay ’s and No Assets.” Some analysts are ready to concede that Young Americans are More Confident, the Sarah Sayeds of this country are heralding Assertive, Entitled – and More Miserable than a cultural shift: graduates and their parents Ever Before, echoed that today’s youth expect should no longer expect a seamless school-to- more than the workplace will typically offer. work transition because a university degree She said the most significant consequence is is no longer the promised one-way ticket to widespread disappointment. “A lot of [young graduates] feel like they a career. The on-ramp to adulthood is longer and were sold a bill of goods – that they were told if they go to university and get a degree, that twistier. Thirty is the new 25. Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, a psychology they’ll get a job,” said Twenge, who teaches professor at Massachusetts’ Clark University, psychology at San Diego State University makes the unconventional suggestion that and heads Igen Consulting to help companies this psychic change could actually be good navigate generational differences. “Young people feel like nobody ever told for society. “We need to stop expecting [graduates] them how hard it was going to be, and I think to follow the path that people followed 50 they have a point.” To Arnett, people in Sayed’s position years ago,” said Arnett, who is leading the movement to classify the 20s as a distinct life are not stuck, they’re free. Free to ditch the job search and pursue their passions. Free stage, which he dubs “emerging adulthood.” “We should all just relax and realize that to forgo the confidence-depleting rejection life is long. People can expect to live until emails for a year of travels, much like Arnett’s niece, who quit her stable job to live in a hut they’re 80 years old, so there’s no hurry.” Perhaps smartly, then, many of Sayed’s in Ecuador. • colleagues have traded their fruitless job hunt for more schooling. “We think we’re still young, © Postmedia News. Article appears on so why not continue studying until something www.working.com.
“Stop expecting [graduates] to follow the path that people followed 50 years ago”
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Youth unemployment in Canada is twice the national rate, these days hovering around a woeful λξ%.
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