Dear Millennials,
I get you, I really do. You get a bad rap. Your elders slap labels on you like it’s a sport. Lazy. Entitled. Narcissistic. Coddled. The media loves to pick on you and in some ways you’re an easy target. A simple Google search of “millennials and workplace” brings up 1.15 million articles of tools and advice, which shows we haven’t really come to understand who you are quite yet. Kids these days, am I right?
But there’s a different way to look at it.
I get it. You were raised differently. Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat are your major news networks. The Week and theSkimm are your daily newspaper.
You walk around with your face in a phone and people call you self-absorbed. But really you’re probably doing 12 things at once, connecting with people and shopping and publishing a blog post on Medium simultaneously. The people calling you lazy might actually be half as effective as you.
Being misunderstood is so commonplace in your life that it’s become the default conclusion any time things don’t work out for you. You’re probably so over it.
But we need you to keep pushing the working world forward.
Yes, you will need to work hard to get to a higher position. I don’t believe the stereotype that you think you deserve to be CEO on day one. You know that if you work hard and learn that will come in time. In the meantime, use your enthusiasm, curiosity and dedication to drive yourself forward. These are all timeless, universal attributes of the successful.
I read once that laziness is the mother of efficiency. It’s important that we learn each other’s strengths and weaknesses and how they are often two sides of the same coin. I think your generation only appears lazy out of your ability to make excellent use of the conduits of information you grew up manipulating like a third arm.
It’s time the status quo professional work environment sees you for what you are, a hard working generation that has fresh ideas and creative solutions. Maybe we can all learn from each other. Go ahead, challenge the workplace paradigms, but don’t forget to work hard along the way. Find your true purpose in life. Bring in new apps that will help our business. Show how you’ve built your own brand on social media. We need you to help define the workplace of the future. Let’s do it together.
Now let’s have a look at that resume.
Sincerely,
Aaron Blank
President and CEO
The Fearey Group