You choose...you lose?

It's graduation season yet again which means thousands upon thousands of newly degree-enhanced young people are bursting out of their Ivory Towers in bloodythirsty search for gainful employment. Despite their best attempts at optimism, they are well aware of the abysmal job climate that, while a small improvement from last year, will leave either they or their friends unemployed and even more likely, underemployed. Amid the scores of paralyzing statistics, horror stories of triple degree-holders holed up at Starbucks, and mixed messages from educators and parents alike, our nation's newest graduates are caught somewhere between paying their dues and simply getting short-changed. And as a result, some are refusing to take the sorts of jobs that lie outside their fields of interest and have no forseeable opportunities for advancing into a desired career, in order to hold out for something that will. 

It's difficult to take these statements at face value - but after all, isn't the purpose of higher education to promote personal and professional advancement and worker specialization? If it was 1998, I hardly think we would scoff at this idea of new grads turning down a job bagging groceries. But, it is 2010, when apparently any old job is, by default, a good job. Even those in which your skills, education, and background are underutilized or even irrelevant, even those in which you are overworked and underpaid due to severe downsizings and reorganizations. Well, the mantra seems to be, at least you have a job.

The New York Times shared a running commentary on the topic earlier this week, with psychologists, sociologists, economists, and journalists from across the country weighing in. Considering the poor economic situation, they asked, should new graduates take the jobs they may have rejected a few years back? The consensus, if you could even call it one, was that it depends. Some noted that for those fortunate enough to have  the financial support of parents, it may prove beneficial to forgo the barista job and take on unpaid work in their fields in order to gain more valuable work experience; but this of course, presents a serious disadvantage for those graduates who cannot rely on their family and will need to find paid work sooner, not later. Thus, those who don't have the luxury of saying 'no' to a job may find themselves behind their more affluent peers in terms of related work experience even just months after receiving their diplomas, a situation one expert accurately described as a 'national emergency'.

It's easy to brush off this privileged form of fastidiousness as another example of Generation Y entitlement: those selfish slackers who want the job without putting in the work to get there. But it's not the "working their way up" part that these young people are trying to avoid, because the jobs in actual question are not anywhere near their professional field of interest. Often, there is no 'up' to work toward, at least, not one that would lead into an area for which their education was intended. There is actually something to be said about choosing your first - and second - jobs out of college wisely. Katherine Newman, a sociologist at Princeton, notes, "Where you start has serious consequences for where you end up, which is one reason — besides blind optimism — why some young (and not so young) people might not jump at the first thing offered." 

For all my graduating peers and my friends, of who I am an especially fierce believer in, be courageous in the decisions you'll be making now and hold fast to your optimism, however blind it may seem. It's been my experience that the world always looks better through rose-colored glasses, anyway. 

The Rules for 'Having It All'

Who doesn't want to be able to have their cake and eat it too? Wouldn't it be silly not to? Click for photo credit.

In case you haven't heard me mention this before, I belong to Generation Y. By definition alone, this means I own an ipod, am a social media whiz, and possess a diluted sense of entitlement toward everything, including a fabulous career straight out of college. In reality, I only recently discovered my capacity for ipod-mastery, and I've somehow managed to steer clear from that holy grail of all social media: Twitter. Now as for the entitlement bit, well let's talk about that one.

Currently, my brain is waging a battle between two professional choices that more or less pit entitlement against accepting the situation. Choice No. 1 (i.e. entitlement) has me proposing an adapted work model and schedule to a brand new employer in order to follow a secondary fulfilling and fabulous, yet unpaid, opportunity (or FFU opp, for brevity's sake). Choice No. 2 (i.e. accepting the situation, as is) would be to forget about the additional FFU opportunity and just stick to the 8-5 model that was agreed upon initially, thus missing out on an incredible chance to gain valuable experience in a field of interest. I acknowledged the possibility for a Choice No. 3 which would be to forego my main employment gig to pursue solely the FFU gig, and work out the issue of income later. But I'd rather not resort to that, and if you read my entry on my current financial state, you'll probably agree that Choice No. 3 is not really a choice for me. So I have two choices. While I am positive about what I want, I'm not so clear on the rules: how far I'm allowed to negotiate, as a brand spankin-new employee, a wide-eyed and bushy-tailed young worker. On one hand, aren't workers granted the right to negotiate the terms and conditions of their employment? Because no matter what people may say in their interviews, we're all in it for ourselves, to improve and gain a certain skill set, to advance in a certain field, to reach our professional goals. The FFU opportunity is absolutely a step toward my goals, so why shouldn't I be allowed to pursue it, and to negotiate for a work arrangement that can accommodate it?

On the other hand, am I just being selfish - one of those despicable Gen Y archetypes who hop from job to job on a whim, with seemingly no regard for their employers they leave in the dust; who think they are entitled to have it all: their full-time, well-paying job AND and the career equivalent of a side of delicious mashed potatoes - even if it means adjustments will be forced on the organization's part? With a grossly overflowing pool of candidates flooding the job market, part of me think I'm just plain stupid to consider a proposal like this.

So...Do I have to choose one over the other? Or is it possible to have both? Do I have to play only with the cards I've been dealt? Or am I allowed to bring in my own set?

What this boils down to is a question on rules and what we are allowed - or not allowed - to do/to ask/to present our employers. Everyone I've consulted on the matter can't seem to identify what the rules for this situation are. But I'll admit, even if there were rules, I probably would be inclined to not follow them anyway. In this tenuous, razor-edged competitive job market, where you can go from hired to fired in a matter of hours, and jobless to employed just as quickly, I would even argue that the rules - whatever they were - are fast becoming obsolete. The question at hand is no longer about how loyal you are to your company, what matters instead is whether or not you are able to do your job - and do it better than (almost) anyone else. And once you look at it that way, the notion of entitlement - being able to pursue the maximum amount of opportunities available to you, and to negotiate for them yourself - sounds a lot less selfish. Its actually smart.
Obviously, my decision cannot only benefit me while costing the organization, and this will be factored into whatever case I present to the boss. But I've decided I can live with the worst-case scenario of Choice No. 1, especially if failure is really the best negotiating tool, as Rebecca Thorman suggests.

I certainly don't have a whole lot to lose. Come to think of it, that might just be the reason behind Gen Y's brazen insistence on having it all.