Generation Y doesn’t exist!
October 13, 2008 by ProGrad
“Generation Y is all a myth” according to Blair Whitehead from ProGrad.
ProGrad places hundreds of graduates each year into corporate clients in Australia predominately in sales, account management, business development and marketing roles. They receive close to 1000 CV’s a week from graduates looking to work with their client partners and place the top 4% that make it through the process.
Blair Whitehead makes these comments; “One of the biggest frustrations we face as an organization is this myth of Generation Y, a generation that is described as been selfish, lazy, lacks commitment, has transient qualities and little responsibility. Did it cross anyone’s mind that these attributes are often associated with immature people, not a whole generation?! “
“We place hundreds of graduates each year into progressive roles in our corporate clients and they are hard working, financially savvy and have a great work ethic. The difference is that they have a more mature attitude, despite being in their early twenties” says Blair.
“Everyone eventually takes on the attitude of an older Generation. We have seen this over the last 3-4 years. Once our candidates have matured in the working world, they soon change their perspective. Generation Y would be better explained as simply “a time in your life”.
We see Generation Y becoming Generation X right in front of us every day - it’s a part of growing up and simply gaining more responsibility!”
“Our advice is not to accommodate a “Generation Y attitude. There are plenty of people that were born in the GenY bracket, from 1980 onwards that do understand that they need to start at the bottom of the company and work very hard to get ahead, those are the candidates that we look for and place.”
“If you want to combat the GenY problem, we advise clients to look at the maturity of the candidate before offering them a job. It truly is not an age factor. We have met 20 year olds that display more maturity than some 30 year olds.”
“Industry needs to shake off this idea of a poor GenY attitude before it sticks, and people start using it as an excuse for non performance.”
“Generation Y is dead, long live Generation X”
Blair Whitehead is the Operations Director for ProGrad, a specialist in the field of graduate recruitment.
If you would like to speak to one of the ProGrad graduate management team, please contact us on 02 8235 8300. Alternatively, you can apply to ProGrad online by clicking here.
ProGrad have offices in both Sydney and Melbourne. For more information, please email us at info@prograd.com.au
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