I’ve been honoured to be part of wonderful conversations with talented professionals from the Millenials generation. They have the ambition to go up fast and want to get the most out of their careers.
While coaching and guiding play a big role in the mentoring relationship, learning on both sides (mentee and mentor) is crucial. I get amazing learning and energy from each mentoring relationship, and I really believe that a few principles coming from Millennials can help any generations calibrate their own career principles, and managers of the new generations understand better the motivations of their young employees.
I am going to share with you my learnings from mentoring Millennials.
- Get a job for today, not for tomorrow.
I was in a conversation with one of my new generation mentees. He knows what he wants, is focused on that and decided to say no to whatever does not meet the requirements. “I’m not going to take a job that I don’t fully enjoy today just because it will help me develop for a future role.” The new generation does live & work for the present, and they want to get the most out of it NOW. How many of us have accepted roles not because they are the perfect fit for you now, but because they help you prepare for the expected perfect next role on the envisioned career path? The new generation is better aware that many roles we see today will be dramatically changed or even disappear in the near future.
- Dare to tap outside your main area of expertise.
Our generation is used to having progressed steady and consistently, by acquiring skills and knowledge related to a main area of expertise. What Millennials have is the courage and confidence to tap into the new, being interested to test different types of jobs, domains, companies – they easily move from HR to Digital Marketing, front office to back office, Communication to Sales, big multinational to privately owned start-up. They follow the trends from others in their (on-line) communities, but most of all, they follow opportunities. They are able to bring fresh ideas from everywhere, and dare to take almost any kind of job.
- Don’t stay too long in a role.
While older generations still spend 10.1 years in a role, the Millennials spend in average 2.8 years, while expecting to change jobs every 2 to 3 years in search for new challenges and development opportunities. If you look at the resumes of the young ones, they pretty much send the message of job-hopping. Not a good message for the recruiters in our generation, unless we understand that Millenials are loyal to their learning & continuous development, rather than to a manager or a role. There’s no surprise that a Millennial doing a great job and enjoying it will say no to an extension. “The time is up, what’s for me next?” they would say.
