Career Preparation

The unemployment/underemployment problem facing millennials predates the great recession. It goes back to the early programming they received from their parents when the economy was booming in the early 2000’s. And parents haven't let up. Dreams? Passion? Love? Sounds more like the teaser copy on the back of a smutty romance novel than sage career advice. The mindset of today’s parents is all about getting their kid to aim for the stars, to believe their dream, and to

You invested a lot of time, energy, and money bringing on that new employee. They show up on that first day ready for your orientation doing their best to disguise their nervous anxiety. Feeling a bit anxious yourself, you want to get them up and running as quickly as possible so as to maximize your ROI. After all, you need to prove to yourself and your team that you made a great hire. As the day draws to an end, you begin to reflect on how things went on Day #1. But it's

My daughter and her husband have a handsome 2 yr. old Boxer. Titus is 70 pounds of energy, love, and affection. And man, he is a handful! He chews, digs, barks...and when she's walking him, Titus pulls my 105-pound daughter like an eighteen wheeler with an empty load. Whitney did a lot of research to find a really experienced behavioral trainer, and she hit pay dirt with Clem, an honest-to-goodness dog whisperer who's worked with canines for almost fifty years. Clem doesn'

My last day of teaching high school and coaching football was June 3, 1986. Due to declining enrollment of the school district where I was employed, my position was being eliminated. I didn't know it at the time, but looking back, I think I escaped just before the Apocalypse. Back then, I never feared parental retribution by giving a student a bad grade or by getting up in a player's facemask and yelling "Dammit Johnson, you're not giving 100%!" In all but a few isolated

Michele Klein, HR Manager for Fidelity Exploration and Production (a large player in the booming oil and gas industry) was doing an exit interview with an engineer who was leaving to take a similar job with a competitor. As her final question, she asked, "If we had known that you were thinking about leaving several months ago, would there have been anything we could have done to keep you?""Absolutely." the engineer replied. "I didn't realize that you had bigger plans for me.

The wife and I were out running errands on Saturday morning when we happened upon an unexpected and rare energy explosion. As we approached an intersection, we noticed a human billboard doing his very best to get the attention of the passing motorists; and getting attention from motorists is obviously what an individual in this occupation is paid to do. Human billboards have become commonplace in our metropolitan area, but this particular young fellow was going all out. He

The phrase "Coffee is for Closers" resonates with anyone who's seen the classic film, Glengarry Glen Ross. This 1992 movie stars six Hollywood A-list leading men as salesman who work for an unethical real estate outfit. The actors portray fast-talking hucksters who lie, exaggerate, and use a series of con games to goad unwitting prospects into signing on the dotted line for overpriced real estate. (If you haven't seen the movie, and you have a high tolerance for foul languag

In this new economy, time is the commodity that is the most prized. Seldom do you run into a colleague or associate who has a wide-open schedule or is looking for a way to fill some empty or idle time in their day. Forced to do more with less, time-crunched leaders push their people to find the fast-n-easy solution when they encounter a problem such as an equipment breakdown or a customer service complaint. But the quick fix is seldom the right fix, and the Band-Aid approa

The employment landscape in America for 16- to 24-year-olds is abysmal; the worst it's been in more than 50 years. So if you've got a teen or a young adult on your holiday gift list, don't head to the mall or to your nearest big box retailer. What they need most from you cannot be found in stores. According to Opportunity Nation, 5, 527,000 young adults (or one in 7 young adults ages 16-24) are not in school or working. Unemployment rates for youth ages 16-24 are double the

Bodybuilding is the most narcissistic, self-absorbed ‘sport’ ever conceived. I can offer that critique as a former competitor, promoter of numerous state bodybuilding championships, emcee of the Mr. & Ms. Universe competition, and color analyst for ESPN’s bodybuilding coverage. (All of these things took place before Bill Clinton was sworn in, but my opinion has not changed much over the years.) That being said, I owe a great deal of my own work ethic to the principles I lea

This headline makes absolutely no sense, but please don't shoot the messenger just yet. If you're confused about what's really going in with regards to Generation Y/Millennials in the workforce, turn off the news and stop reading the papers. The media is more confused than you are. Either that, or they're purposely trying to confuse you to force you to buy more papers to get unconfused. Yesterday, a story appeared in USA Today under the headline "Gen Y Most Likely to Hold L

Last Thursday while vacationing with my family in a small Colorado mountain town, I suffered a personal crisis when one of my highly visible dental crowns split in two and fell out. I had Crystal, the receptionist at my dentist for the past 15 years, on the phone in minutes and explained to her the severity of the situation. After six minutes on hold, Crystal returned to tell me that Dr. B wasn’t going to be in on Friday, but that he could fit me in on Monday morning. “How

In this highly entertaining infographic produced as a join effort between the University of North Carolina Business School and the Young Entrepreneurs Council (both largely comprised of the under-30 crowd) viewers are able to see the clear cut differences between older workers and millennials (a.k.a. Generation Y, Generation Why, Boomlets, Nexters, etc.). Through surveys, the respondents that represent this young cohort indicate their preferences and desires when it comes to

In 1989, 56% of the 16- to 19-year-olds in America were actively participating in the workforce. This meant that an employer hiring a young person in the late eighties and early nineties had better than a one-in-two chance that the young person they were considering understood what it meant to hold a job. In 2012, however, only 33% of those in the same age group are actively participating in the workforce. And the numbers for African-American and Hispanic teens are much lo

Fans of The Beverly Hillbillies will remember the running joke that Jethro (the most educated of the entire Clampett family) had "made it all the way through the 6th grade." Yee-Haw! When this series originally aired in the sixties, no one celebrated such a modest accomplishment. Of course you made it through the 6th grade, and the 7th, and the 9th. Everyone did. It was expected that every student made it through to high school. The first celebration of academic accompl

"Success comes from good judgment. Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment." I can't verify the correct source of that quote, but I've heard many a version of this little axiom over the years. Makes me wonder how old I'll be before my experience will pay off and I'll stop doing so many stupid things. That day of enlightenment is nowhere in sight. As you'll see from this video, my latest blunder involves a surgery that I could have easily a

Quid pro quo (from the Latin meaning "this for that") is a commonly used term in business negotiations. It’s also the foundation of every employer/employee relationship. To illustrate, let’s say the quid represents the compensation an employer is willing to part with in exchange for labor they need to operate their business. The quo, then, represents the amount of work an individual agrees to provide in exchange for an agreed compensation. Our free market economy serves as

by Mark Sanborn and Eric Chester (This is Part 2 of 2 offering ideas on how to recruit, manage, and retain 'firsters' - i.e. young adults entering their first 'real' position. Here's a link to Part 1.) In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, Dennis Nally, the chairman of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), summed up the challenge of today’s first time, entry level employees, or “firsters”: “How they want to work…is very different than the prior generation. If your

Plenty. You see, an entitlement mentality is not innate, rather it's learned and often engrained into an individual. It stems from multiple experiences of an individual getting something for nothing, leading them to believe they are deserving and should have what they want without putting forth the effort that is normally required to produce that result. This cognitive conditioning usually begins at an early age. Last year, a community Easter Egg Hunt in Old Colorado City

The most common adjective used by today's employers to describe the young emerging workforce is 'entitled'. While there are many exceptions and contradictions to any demographic stereotype, this label that young employees are having a difficult time shaking implies that they act as though they deserve more than their employers feel they are worth. The reality is that employees are entitled to certain things (i.e. a safe working environment, ethical treatment by management,