Being a Millennial in the Workforce

Being a “millennial” is hard enough with the pressure of increasing education standards and trying to figure ourselves out at the same time. Getting a job in the professional workforce is close to impossible because it’s getting harder and harder for 20-somethings to prove themselves to CEO’s. A millennial could have volunteer hours, internships, a 4.0 GPA, and still won’t get the job because they don’t have “real experience” or the CEO would rather have someone older. There is this dark cloud around millennials because a lot of companies might think that they are “lazy” or “entitled”. Not all CEO’s feel this way, but a majority of them have a hard time giving a millennial a chance to prove themselves because they don’t want to go through training a new person with no experience.

Karen Hopkins says, “I think it’s difficult being a millennial in the work force because there isn’t a focus on building a career, it’s more about making money and hustling. From hearing about my parents generation, they all found a career and worked there for years and worked their way up. I feel like you don’t see that with this generation. It’s all about who you know and job hopping when another opportunity arises. While this allows people to explore different jobs and find something they are passionate about, it doesn’t create job security and financial stability like we often see with our parents generation”

In the workforce today, it really is all about who you know. You could have all the qualifications, but if the CEO’s, friends, cousin walks into the interview, they get the job because there is a personal connection through other people. This makes it hard on people that are actually qualified and worked hard throughout school. This doesn’t mean that if you have connections to not use them, because we all know to use our resources. The problem now, is that it used to be that you went to college and got a job right after and worked hard to prove yourself. Where as now it’s about who you know rather than how hard you actually work.

Kerry Lindsay, another millennial joining the work force says, ” I think being a millennial in the work force is hard because we have so much to disprove as a generation. Like that we are “lazy”, and “expect everything to come easy”, but like myself and many others would agree, these are just stereotypes that every generation has to break through. I personally enjoy going to work and proving myself despite my age or sex. I don’t let any of that hold me back, rather I let it push me forward!”

The way to break through that negative stereotype, is to simply work harder. Follow up with emails, go out of your way to figure out how to make you own connections. It’s important to stress that not everyone has a negative outlook on millennials. Some CEO’s jump at the chance to hire a millennial because they are more trainable because they haven’t developed their work habits yet, so millennials can be molded and shaped more easily. Millennials are more eager because they know they have to prove themselves, and they are willing to go the extra mile to get where they want to go. Millennials strive for success, so show your hard work ethic and keep trying hard to prove to the world that millennials are going to be a successful generation.