Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

Gen Y Employment Trends for 2013

Members of Generation Y are desperate for jobs.  

Born after 1979, most have come of age during the recession, and their professional opportunities have been limited. Payscale, a provider of compensation data and software, and Millennial Branding, a Gen-Y research company led by personal branding expert Dan Schawbel, recently found that in general, Gen Y is unemployed and underemployed at a greater rate than the rest of the working population.

Gen Y Goes Retail

The research showed that although those in Gen Y admire companies such as Qualcomm, Google, Medtronic, Intel and Microsoft, they aren't holding out for jobs that would use advanced skills such as data analysis and social media optimization, opting instead to take lower-skilled jobs to pay the rent. In 2012, many Gen Y college grads hold either full or part-time jobs as retail floor clerks and sales associates.

They Do It Their Way

While they may be working at the mall now, Generation Y entrepreneurial ambitions. According to a recent study from freelancing website Elance, Gen Y workers are embracing the freelance lifestyle at a faster rate than their older peers.  And Schawbel and his colleagues uncovered that the third most-popular major for Gen Y college students was entrepreneurial studies.

For more on what Gen Y is looking for in a work environment, check out the full article at the AMEX Open Forum.

Independent Work is Increasingly Common

Having your own business was once a rarity. 

I remember when I first took the leap. I’d go to a party and tell people what I did, and oohs and ahs would ensue. The admiration bestowed on me then was similar to that of a movie star or a neurosurgeon. Most could not even imagine being their own boss.

Today, they’re not just imagining it. They’re doing it.

MBO Partners, an advisor to organizations who want to efficiently manage their  contingent workforces, recently released its second State of Independence in America study and the results of its first Independent Workforce Index. Since 2011, the independent workforce has grown by nearly a million people and currently contributes about one trillion dollars in revenue to the U.S. economy. 

Most interestingly, though, the research tells us a great deal about the face of the independent worker–defined as people who work at least 15 hours or more per week in non-traditional, non-permanent, full- or part-time employment–in 2013.

For more on the face of the independent workforce, read my Culture Beat column at the AMEX Open Forum.

Is an IPO Still the Holy Grail?

Kevon Saber, the founder of personal wellness application Fig, perhaps best encapsulates the reason why investors are ready to throw millions at a startup that goes public:

“Entrepreneurship is about achieving outrageous results with limited resources.” 

And for small-businesses owners taking your company public is an enticing dream. However, too many startups have mistakenly focused on that as the end-game, instead of perfecting their product, shoring up their customer service, or building brand loyalty and positive PR. Add to that today's volatile market, and alternative financing sources like crowdfunding, and businesses might want to think twice about the IPO—and focus more on getting back to basics.

Over at the AMEX Open Forum, we explore why the IPO is - and isn't - a realistic solution for today's up and coming firms.

How to Build a Successful Family Business

When Julie Smolyansky was a baby, her parents Michael and Ludmila immigrated to Chicago from the former Soviet Union. It was the perfect place for the entrepreneurial couple, as they believed wholeheartedly in the American dream.  “My father was passionate about the idea that a little guy with a novel idea and the ability to problem-solve could support a family and create economic prosperity for others,” Smolyansky says.

Family and Business Values Align

In 1986, Michael Smolyansky created Lifeway Foods, a consumer health food company that specializes in cultured probiotic beverages similar to yogurt. The company grew quickly, as the elder Smolyansky was able to connect with people of all social and economic backgrounds, whether in the factory or on Wall Street.  He treated all of his employees like family and was known for his pride and generosity. According to Julie Smolyansky at Lifeway Foods personal and professional achievement was always celebrated, including milestones "ranging from a new sales record to someone’s 40^th birthday.” 

The alignment of personal and professional values is a hallmark of thriving family businesses. “Successful family businesses tend to have the family's values and culture deeply embedded into their business strategies, policies and practices,” says Don Schwertzler, co-founder of the Atlanta-based Family Business Institute. Schwertzler suggests that these values must be clearly defined, communicated and reinforced with family-business employees understanding the critical importance of standards and leaders possessing the ability to confront behaviors that violate the standards.

For more on how to make a family business successful, have a look at my Culture Beat column at the AMEX Open Forum.

Are You Putting Off Your New Hires?

I received this e-mail from a reader:

“Dear Alexandra, I started a new job last week and unfortunately, I’m already regretting my decision. I accepted the job based on the company’s strong reputation in the community, and the fact that I felt so much at home during my interview. But based on my first few days, I’m wondering if my initial great feelings were wrong. Maybe this is not the right place for me.” 

After a lengthy hiring process, this is not a good situation for either the company or the new hire. It’s too bad, because I’m willing to bet that the company is a decent fit for my reader. But what goes on during the first several days of employment leaves a powerful impression, and obviously the culture my reader was prepared to love was absent from that impression. Now he might leave as a result. What should the company have done differently?

It is challenging enough to establish and sustain an organizational culture of which you are proud, and then to communicate that culture effectively throughout the hiring process. You don’t want to waste all that effort by dropping the ball once the offer letter is sent. In my Culture Beat column at the AMEX Open Forum, we explore helpful ways to introduce and/or reinforce a terrific culture to those just coming on board.

Apple's New Leader is a Model for Us

Tim Cook was a 14-year veteran of Apple when Steve Jobs passed away and Cook took over the company for good. From the beginning, Cook let it be known that he would continue in Jobs’ footsteps. At the February Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference, he said “Apple is this unique company, unique culture, that you can’t replicate. I’m not going to witness or permit the slow undoing of it, because I believe in it so deeply.”

So far, Cook has made good on that promise, prompting Adam Lashinsky, author of Inside Apple, to comment to Matt Nesto, “What stands out is how little he stands out.” According to Lashinsky, Cook has been a good steward of Apple's culture, a corporate climate that is famous for being very product focused, intensely secretive and unapologetic about doing things its own way.

For more lessons we can learn from Cook's leadership, check out my Culture Beat column over at the AMEX Open Forum.

Improving the Lot of Female Leaders

According to the 2011 Catalyst Census, women are no further along the corporate ladder than they were six years ago. Women still hold only 7.5 percent of executive officer top-earner positions and only 16 percent of board seats.

I recently met a psychologist who studies gender dynamics in the workplace, and she told me that she can’t imagine a world in which the gap between male and female leaders is totally closed. Apparently, there are too many biases and other factors involved—many of which we can’t control.

But what about what we can control? Are there things we can do within our cultures to facilitate the growth of female leadership? For five suggestions, please have a look at my Culture Beat column at the AMEX Open Forum.

 

How to Tell if You're in a Rut

Here in Chicago, I was on the Blue Line train reading Les McKeown’s book, Predictable Success. The book came recommended by about a dozen people I respected, and so far it hadn’t disappointed me. Then I got to the part about the "big rut" and stopped cold.

My business had been in a rut before, and I believed it would be in one again. I thought I was powerless to stop it. Now I realize this: Not only can I stop it, but I can recognize the characteristics that got me there in the first place. According to McKeown, four changes occur to push an organization into a "big rut."  To learn more about these changes and what you can do to combat them, check out my article at the AMEX Open Forum.

Lessons from a Startup Junkie

My friend Chris Guillebeau has become an expert at helping people opt out of traditional employment and create the time and income to pursue ideas they find meaningful.  He is joined by people like Jun Loayza, the co-founder of RewardMe, a digital rewards program for restaurants and retailers.  Jun is something of a startup junkie.  Through his career, Jun has raised over $1M in funding, failed at two startups, and successfully sold one startup.

I thought it might be useful for those of us considering startups to learn from Jun’s experiences, so on the Fast Track blog, we distill some of the most critical lessons he derived from his success and failures. Hope you'll check it out.

Talking Your Manager into Flextime

Happy New Year, everyone!  It's "Reader Mail" time! 

I’m a manager in a small department and have to get approval of flexible schedules for staff from my Boss.  Boss wants everyone to be at work during normal business hours, doesn’t like flexible schedules, and sees all requests as the same (trying to get out of work).  Yes, I’m confused about this thinking and believe Boss doesn’t really understand flextime and its advantages, but I’m wondering how to best discuss this.

Boss tends to overreact whenever I bring up the topic and gets into the issue of “not trusting the employee to really work and not goof off.”  I see a request to temporarily change a schedule by arriving earlier and staying later on some days and leaving early on other days because of family schedules/child care issues to be different from a request to work at home on certain days on an ongoing basis.  The first example involves working all hours at the office for a limited amount of time and the second example involves working some days at home with no finite term, but Boss lumps all these requests together and denies all of them.  Any suggestions or advice on how I can approach the subject and try to get Boss to logically consider these requests?

For answers to this quandry from four career experts including me, check out the full post at the Fast Track blog.