Generation Y + Blogging = Crazy Delicious

Brazen Careerist has opened for business. This is one of Penelope Trunk’s ideas and whenever I talked to her about it last year, I was pacing around and ultimately thought it was a good idea.

I don’t know about anyone else but I am definitely a pacer. Back in the good old days, I’d be that guy that has the 50 foot telephone cord wrapped around the house. I am also one of those dreaded people that talks on the cell phone while driving. I will personally be a spokesman for your hatred of cell phone talkers if you like.

In my pathetic defense, I’d like to state for the record that I don’t do it because of some misguided productivity boost that taking your life and the lives of your fellow people on the road into your own hands allows. I have a really hard time sitting still and talking on the phone at the same time and I think much better if I am walking, driving, or doing something (I assembled a coffee table from Ikea while on the phone to my Dad talking about sports).

Anyway, I got distracted. What was I saying? Oh yeah…

So I talked about this site that focuses in on Generation Y and trying to make Generation Y more accessible to employers who fail to understand the paradigm there. And I am a bit conflicted.

See, I like the idea from a Gen Y and hiring manager standpoint. And I am in the enviable position of being in Gen Y and also routinely making decisions on recruiting sources, hiring practices, etc as an HR manager.

And a lot of bloggers (professionals and amateurs alike) have recommended blogging as a great way of reaching out to employers in a different and more authentic way. I agree with this personally and received a great many leads that eventually led to me applying at my current job as well as interviews and job offers from several other companies.

So yes, the idea is good.

So why the apprehensiveness? Because I know why I read blogs and I know what I am attracted to: Good writing. People who write about interesting things and who write about them well get me interested enough to read through an entire article (I rarely read full blog articles). Being a good communicator is great too but…

I am looking for all kinds of employees (not just great writers). Just blogging about whatever comes to mind works only if whatever comes to your mind is useful at demonstrating something interesting about your background or experiences. And being that I don’t think the gap between Generation Y and the rest of the working world isn’t as huge as people think, I am worried about the potential risk of targeting a group of people that isn’t that difficult to understand.

I know that the co-founders of the venture with Penelope are often considered representative of Gen Y in the workplace and that they do their best to show distinctions between Gen Y and the rest of the workforce. I’ve spent time with managers though and after talking with them for about five minutes, they got it enough to understand the dynamic better.

The last issue is that simply Gen Y still isn’t widely sought after yet. It is still much easier getting a position with five to ten years of experience in your field and given that I am on the leading edge of Gen Y (age-wise, not philosophy-wise), most people don’t have that yet. In fact, my argument is that a lot of Gen Y probably doesn’t have more than a couple years of experience of anything. That makes the site ahead of its time but not in the complimentary way that is usually stated.

That being said, for companies looking to target Generation Y, BC is positioning itself to be “THE” place. Now if we can only figure out a way to get Gen Y to do what they perpetually fail at (stay in one place for long enough to see site growth), this is an idea that could see tremendous growth.