Stereotypes slapped on Gen Y men and women can make them seem unemployable to traditional, big business.
They’re cast aside as lacking in discipline, respect, and self-awareness. They’re over-qualified. Over-stimulated. Hyper-connected. Over-sharing. Just all up over-everything, only to be lacking in experience at the same time.
And then there’s the fact they want to travel and find work that actually fulfills and satisfies them. The nerve! And they want to take photos of themselves and those around them while doing it. The absolute narcissism!
This generation born between the early 1980s and 1990s – my generation, I might proudly add, although I will concede I’m at the older end of it – can’t be cast aside as being too difficult, too demanding, too photogenic, or too vocal regarding how they want to work and their desire to actually have a say over the work they do.
But this generation’s so-called lack of experience is seeing many within it – as well as the generation behind it – suffer when it comes to getting a job. According to July ABS stats, 13.5% of 15 to 24 years olds are out of work, a figure that’s rising compared to the ‘steady’ 6% unemployment rate across the country. Sure, that’s the young end of the Gen Y spectrum, but a lack of employment prospects at such a young age can have a significant impact later on. It’s also a trend that shows employers may be choosing experience over ability.
Meanwhile, this generation suffers when it comes to pursuing careers and job opportunities they actually want – putting some in a perpetual cycle of unpaid internships, or being underpaid and exploited by employers. Others end up working unchallenging and unsatisfying jobs they dislike in order to clock up the years that their Gen X and babyboomer managers believe they need before being given the right to start creating and expressing their own ideas.
Unfortunately, the gatekeepers of big business are not always keen to let a different generation in, especially in to decision-making roles. Not unless they do their time in junior positions lacking in autonomy — their five to ten years being bossed around and following procedures and long-established processes.
Unemployment or missing the opportunity to get an ‘in’ on decision-making roles can be particularly problematic for women. You spend your twenties interning, volunteering and doing everything you can to prove you have the experience and expertise required for a certain industry or job, only to get to your thirties and start realising you might want to think about having a family. That often means career breaks, stints working flexibly and questions about work/life balance.
I’m continually inspired by some of the leading women who’re pioneering the new-world order from their twenties and early thirties – Julie McKay from UN Women, tech guru Tammy Butow (who, currently in New York, has some tips to share with Women’s Agenda today), OneShift founder Gen George and the many game-changing and disruptive entrepreneurs at the League Of Extraordinary Women are some that quickly come to mind.
These women are just the very tip of the iceberg. There’s plenty of untapped, ignored and under-utilised talent below the surface. Many of whom are waiting to be discovered as they simply don’t yet have the confidence to put their head above water. And all that waiting could leave them disappointed later on as – and ultimately everyone missing out.
Too many young, brilliant, energetic and innovative women are cast aside by big business as lacking in experience and therefore as missing the tick-a-box qualifications needed to fill particular roles. The sad, difficult truth for women is that the time we’re considered worthy enough for such positions inconveniently happens to coincide with the time we often choose to start a family.
Nobody takes on a job with the perfect set of qualifications and experience needed to fulfill it according to its set criteria. No president, prime minister, CEO or director knew exactly how to fill such a role on the first day in the job. If they were able to have other people believe they did, then they were simply great at faking it.
And experience doesn’t always result in competence. In some cases, especially in a business environment where change is constant, experience can slow one’s ability to move with the tide.
Give Gen Y women the opportunity to fake it just like everyone else. There will be absolute gems in the crowd – and women who change our economy and way of working for the better.