Why is Marco the Millennial so sad?
In Digital we are now hitting a time of exponential growth and our work force is set to change forever.
“Millennials” have been getting bad press of late but when you take the time to understand the mindset of a millennial it can be quite eye opening; by the way I don’t think this is restricted to age, it is more about your attitude to life.
There has been a recent study regarding “Millennials” and figures show that millennials will comprise more than one in three working adults by 2020. They are set to comprise 75% of the workforce by 2025, Gen X we are on our way out!
With Almost 70 percent saying that giving back and being engaged are their highest priorities and that they put an emphasis on corporate social responsibility.
In short, they want to be engaged, however millennials do need to be praised for what they do; smart leaders should harness these skilled workers but will have to change their own mindset to understand how to get the most out of their new enthusiastic employees.
The millennial, let’s call him Marco, and he is very pleased to be Marco by the way, because he is the best. However what you might not know is that Marco is unhappy with where he is in life.
When we achieve higher than our expectations, we feel happy. When our expectations aren’t hit, we are unhappy.
So why on earth is “Marco the Millennial” unhappy? Marco’s parents were born in the ‘60’s-80’s. They were raised by Marco’s grandparents, those that grew up across the Great Depression and World War 2.
So Marco’s grandparents were obsessed with security and raised his parents to build practical, secure careers. How many times did your parents say to you “I had to work in a coal mine, you’ll never know how easy you have it.” They wanted his parents’ to have careers better than theirs, they were pushed to go to school, use the new education system, to exceed and always push themselves. Marco’s parents therefor were brought up to envision a prosperous and stable career for themselves.
They were taught that there was nothing stopping them and they could achieve anything they put their mind to, but that they’d have to work bloody hard to achieve this.
After graduating, Marco’s parents embarked on their careers. As the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s opened up, the world entered a time of accelerated economic prosperity. In fact Marco’s parents did even better than anyone expected them to.
Armed with a much more positive outlook on life than their own parents, Marco’s parents raised Marco with a sense of optimism and were told they really could achieve anything, they could even be Prime Minister if they put their mind to it. All around the world parents were telling the Millenial kids that they could be whatever they wanted to be and that they should follow their hearts.
This left Marco and his fellow millennials feeling extremely hopeful about their careers, there parents had done well, they had been brought up in a good house and their parents had achieved everything they had wanted, so why shouldn’t they.
The model millennial has been told that he is special, that his parents want him to have all the things they never had and that they want him to follow his own life goals. And this leads us to our first point about Marco the Millennial.
- Millennials are extremely ambitious
Marco needs more than than prosperity and security. The fact is “a job” isn’t exceptional or unique enough for him. Where his Grandparents wanted to live The Dream, a Millennial wants to live Their Own Dream and to achieve greatness.
According to Google stats Millennials no longer look up “job security” but have instead changed their searches to “rewarding career” and “bucket list goals”.
They still want to be as prosperous, just like their parents did but they also want to be fulfilled by their career and their life choices.
Time for Fact 2!
2. Millennials Can Be misguided
Marco has been taught, that everyone will go out into the world and get themselves a good job, but Marco is exceptional and is set to achieve great things.
So here is the dilemma Marco will work hard, he is ambitious and will aim high for that Senior Marketing role, but he is straight out of Uni and doesn’t have the experience and becomes deflated because of the repeated rejection. However Marco may well actually get offered that job with the money, career aspirations and training but is it the job that he deserves, is it special enough for him, probably not and this in turn once agin leaves him feeling unhappy and unfulfilled.
The other reason Marco feels like this, is that his is the first generation to be entirely incorporated into social media. All his friends are Instagramming photos of their new car, Facebooking their new work nights out, Snapchatting him pictures of their “life changing” events and he is sitting there, feeling unfulfilled and outright depressed.
So he decides to get out of his funk, get his hair cut, buy some new threads and goes out for a wild night with his mates....Instagramming, Facebooking and Snapchatting the whole night to show the world how great his life is.
Unfortunately his friends are all Millennials too, they are just as unhappy and all they see is Marco is living the high life....so they are now sitting there, feeling unfulfilled and outright depressed!
So before you go Millennial bashing next time, please spare a thought for poor old Marco!
