spent twenty years in one role! But it’s more about layoffs than boredom for people my age. We want to develop mastery at a lot of different roles because the job market has changed drastically. We’ve seen jobs, departments, whole divisions, get phased out. The way I look at my development, you’re not going to be able to phase me out if I am proficient in a lot of roles.”
As important as building skills, for these young professionals, is achieving expertise and mastery. A robust 69 percent of Millennials without financial privilege identify this as an important aspect of intellectual growth, as well might their employers. But again, for all its importance, employers aren’t providing it: an astounding 68 percent of Millennials without financial privilege say they simply aren’t realizing this expertise and mastery in their careers.
Neha* used to be one of them. While working for a major US retailer, she was enrolled in a training program with the supposed goal of designing new products for the company. But the “special side projects” she was assigned to develop had no future. “They were just busy work, nothing that would ever become a real product,” she says. Worse, the training program mimicked a reality show, where managers piled on more projects to see which trainees would break first. “You couldn’t learn from your mistakes: if you made a mistake, you lost a lot of support,” she says. “Maybe they thought the reality-TV-show aspect would attract Millennials, but actually it just demoralized us. It was impossible to build more expertise in areas I already had some training in, and I did not feel like I was getting the new skills that would improve my technical or design abilities.” Today, Neha is leadership program coordinator at a nonprofit that helps low-income South Asian women and girls expand their horizons. “It’s almost a dream job for me,” she says. “My manager gave me all the tools I needed and had total faith in me. It’s that new economy mentality—give your employees space to expand their horizons, let them have mastery over something, and they will express their initiative.”
Eager to Innovate
Opportunities to innovate also matter to the Ninety-One Percent. More than half of them (56 percent) say that an important aspect of intellectual growth and challenge in their careers is becoming more creative and innovative. That’s something employers are acutely intent to harness, as innovation in today’s globalized economy is the key to growth. But yet again, our findings point to a glaring gap between what employers acknowledge to be a business imperative and their actual investment in addressing that imperative. Fully 69 percent of Millennials without financial privilege say they don’t have this aspect of intellectual growth in their jobs, a finding echoed by many of those we interviewed while they explained why they’d left a previous job for their current employer.
Michele,* an account executive at an up-and-coming advertising agency, left one of advertising’s biggest firms out of frustration at being hired for her fresh ideas, only to find that creativity was welcomed only from those working in roles designated as “creative.” What appeals to her about her current employer, she says, is that even as an account person, she’s empowered to contribute her opinions or solutions at meetings reviewing creative ideas. “There have been a number of situations in which the creative director has taken up an idea I offered,” she says, citing a fifteen-second YouTube ad for cough drops that features her innovation.
Yet, even more than seeing her ideas implemented, Michele appreciates the opportunities to expand her skillset to include the creative side of the advertising industry. “I think having that insight into the creative process has helped me a lot in my main role as an account manager,” she says. “I can speak the language on the creative side better now. That makes it much easier to communicate our ideas to the client. That would never have happened at my former agency.”
Intent on Understanding People Unlike Themselves
Another aspect of intellectual growth and challenge that employees—and employers, as noted in Chapter Three—identify as important to their careers is acquiring knowledge of different people and cultures. Many of our interviewees attest to the importance of language skills in bridging divides on their globally dispersed teams. Talent specialists at multinational employers have likewise stressed they won’t even consider a candidate who is not willing to be posted internationally. But both qualitative and quantitative evidence points to this aspect of intellectual growth being the least developed: a whopping 73 percent—nearly three out of four—of Millennials without financial privilege say they are not acquiring knowledge of different people and cultures on the job.
One financial services professional lamented that he could not access language training through his employer, even though further expansion of his current responsibilities as an analyst covering Latin America would demand knowledge of Spanish or Portuguese. Another points out that his global employer is so siloed that it’s nearly impossible for requests for international assignment from Millennials like himself to be matched up with vacancies from offices abroad. “My employer pays lip service to the geographic preferences that we voice,” says this financial services professional, “but there’s a fundamental disconnect between requests posted through HR and different parts of the business.”
The loss to the business that such underinvestment represents isn’t easily quantified, but stories from interviewees like Chris,* a financial analysis manager based in Dubai at a global pharmaceutical company, make clear the extent of the toll. Chris recognized early in his career that in order to have meaningful and sustainable progression, he’d need to have international experience. “Without firsthand exposure to local markets, how can you understand how the price of oil impacts local government or the economy?” he observes. “Terrorism, war, currency devaluation, economic shocks…you may see these topics discussed in a report, but if you didn’t experience them you can’t manage your business around them.” In other ways, too, being in Dubai has given Chris vital insight. “I have much greater appreciation for the difficulties introduced by time zones and cultures. In the Middle East, we work Sunday to Thursday. I am sensitized to religious holidays in a way I might not have been before. Once you live it, you really get it: during Ramadan, for example, people work on a modified work schedule because they’re fasting. For thirty days, they’re supposed to be working only five to six hours, but they’ll be there for eight to ten hours because they are dedicated to their jobs—and they haven’t eaten!”
Chris perceives the value of gaining such cultural insights firsthand: “Certainly my experience in Dubai is a big piece of what I will take back when I return to the US and step into a global management role,” he says. But he’s not at all confident that senior leaders appreciate how important international experience is for global team members, let alone global team leaders. “When I speak to managers back in the States,” he says, “most of them aren’t looking far enough down the line to see that the future of our company lies outside the US, in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. That’s a pretty big oversight, one that’s going to cost them a lot more in the long run than what they’re reluctant to spend on their people now.”
5
Rewarding Professional Relationships
While growing up in New York, Veronica* had always imagined a future for herself in local government. Her parents both worked for the city, and she planned to follow in their footsteps. “Everyone thought I was crazy for limiting myself,” she says, recalling her friends’ reactions when, upon graduating from Lafayette College in 2007 with a bachelor’s degree in sociology and a minor in economics, she made the unpopular decision to apply for a position at the mayor’s office. It turned out to be a great move: when the global recession hit in 2008, Veronica held onto her job. She spent the next four years working for various agencies in city government before pursuing a master’s degree in urban policy. Upon graduation, she was offered a prestigious internship at a federal agency.
It seemed like a dream come true. “It was one of the most intellectually stimulating environments
