Fast Company has an entertaining article written by a CEO of a company that employs almost all Millennials.  The article is well worth the read, but let me give you a taste of it:

Lazy. Entitled. Fickle. Freighted with their own inscrutable agendas. These are the kinds of things people say about cats — and millennials. For today’s managers, the generation born after 1980 is a favorite punching bag.

It’s not hard to see why, given that they’re the generation of Lindsay Lohan, Jersey Shore, and flip-flops as appropriate office footwear.

I have been drawn in by these exact topics and I’m an Xer.  But further on in the article comes this dandy (emphasis mine):

Millennials don’t have traditional boundaries or an old-fashioned sense of privacy. They live out loud, sharing details of their lives with thousands of other people. Of course there are the obvious risks to this — say, that unflattering, reputation-damaging photo that should have been deleted from Facebook — but while you shake your cane at them for indulging in TMI, I see their openness as a great opportunity. For instance, when our summer intern @jimmyaungchen tweets and Facebooks about something he achieved at work, that’s free marketing for Do Something to the 1,500 people in his immediate network. I now ask job applicants how many Facebook friends and Twitter followers they have.

Excellent point.  In fact, I just did some network checking of a sales candidate for one of our customers earlier today.  I like that she asks the candidate directly.  I prefer to check on my own and it is mainly LinkedIn that I peruse.  Facebook is fine, but it is definitely closer to the social/personal side in comparison to LinkedIn.

An entertaining and informative article for sure.  It is rare to find this combination so I strongly encourage you to read the entire thing.

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