{"id":9431,"date":"2018-05-28T11:27:54","date_gmt":"2018-05-28T15:27:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=9431"},"modified":"2025-10-17T17:56:04","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T21:56:04","slug":"generational-career-shifts","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/generational-career-shifts\/","title":{"rendered":"Linda Schweitzer Tracks Generational Career Shifts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Linda Schweitzer Tracks Generational Career Shifts\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

A fresh-faced CEO slides into the lobby for the televisions cameras, two programmers are shooting pool on break and the communications staff are meeting over lattes brewed by on-staff baristas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Companies have pulled out all the stops in the race to attract millennial talent, but have they alienated other demographics in the process? Is any of it what workers really want?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, that depends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What we value most changes as we age. Plus the three generations currently in our workplaces have had vastly different career trajectories and value different things.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cEverybody wants meaningful work,\u201d says Linda Schweitzer, associate professor and interim dean at Carleton University\u2019s Sprott School of Business<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Schweitzer co-authored Generational Career Shifts: How Veterans, Boomers, Xers and Millennials View Work<\/a>,<\/em> with Dalhousie\u2019s Eddy S. Ng and Guelph\u2019s Sean T. Lyons. The book examines career trajectories and workplace values of current workers and \u201cveterans\u201d (older retired workers) over the first 10 years of their careers, considering the first 25 years of the latter three.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEverybody wants information to do their jobs, and to be doing the job they expected. It\u2019s about managing expectations and being transparent. \u201c<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And they want work-life balance, but what exactly that means varies.<\/p>\n\n\n

\"Linda<\/figure>\n\n\n

Work-Life Balance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cEverybody wants a life. It\u2019s just that we define it differently. When I\u2019m 26, work-life balance means time for my hobbies, vacation time, to hang out with my friends, to volunteer. When I\u2019m 35, it might mean time for my family.  Arriving and leaving work at the same time each day. When I\u2019m 50, it might mean time with my parents. What flexibility means, changes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each generation\u2019s workplace experience \u2013 and perception \u2013 is impacted by economic and cultural trends.  Baby boomers began their careers during an economic boom and advanced rapidly, Millennials were told they\u2019d step into a leadership vacuum left by retiring  boomers, and generation X got caught in an intergenerational squeeze play with lingering ramifications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey\u2019re the unhappiest generation,\u201d Schweitzer says. \u201cGeneration X is getting pushed from both sides. They didn\u2019t advance quickly because baby boomers took all the jobs and kept them, and now millennials are going to lap them. If you have two candidates for one job, and one is a generation Xer who has had that job for 20 years and the other a millennial who\u2019s been working for five years, you\u2019re going to choose the millennial. They seem more ambitious. It\u2019s only taken them five years to get to the same point.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cThe truth is that it was a numbers game. The gen Xer couldn\u2019t get the job because there were no jobs. There\u2019s a lot of attention on millennials, but employers have to be careful about overemphasizing them. Recognize who are the gen Xers in your company, and don\u2019t piss them off. You still need them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The generational experience of millennials also presents unique challenges. Their narrative was that they\u2019d step into a leadership void left by retiring boomers. Except that boomers haven\u2019t retired, and that hasn\u2019t happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMillennials have unrealistic expectations. They want to make a lot or money, and advance quickly, but they\u2019re not willing to sacrifice their lives for it. Employers can use the carrot — if you do this, you\u2019ll get ahead — but young people won\u2019t do it forever. They need to see that advancement. They need to feel like they\u2019re moving ahead, or they\u2019ll leave.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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Frequent Job Changes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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On average, millennials expect to be promoted within a year of graduation and when reality fails to meet expectations, they\u2019re prepared to jump ship. Generational Career Shifts <\/em>found they changed jobs more than their predecessors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t just money,\u201d Schweitzer says. \u201cIt was ideology. This isn\u2019t quite the job that I thought it was going to be. When I talk to employers I tell them, you need to be honest with people. Don\u2019t upsell the job; they aren\u2019t going to stick around if it\u2019s not what they thought it would be. They\u2019ll quit.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cThirty years ago, if you suckered someone into a job, they wouldn\u2019t quit, because they\u2019d be afraid of what that looks like on their resume. These days, they\u2019ll just walk away.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

But Schweitzer cautions against overcompensating. Millennials\u2019 expectations will likely come back to Earth as they gain experience, and it can alienate other generations to focus too heavily on them. Besides, the next generation is already waiting in the wings, and they don\u2019t necessarily have the same values.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEverybody is starting to talk about generation Z,\u201d Schweitzer says, \u201cwho we\u2019re saying are born after 1995. The oldest of them just graduated university.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey\u2019ll still want meaning in their work, work-life balance, advancement, recognition, autonomy and independence. Everybody wants that, but generation Z hasn\u2019t been told they\u2019ll inherit the Earth. They\u2019ve come up with a narrative of a lack of jobs, precarious work and difficulty getting ahead. They don\u2019t have the same expectations and that will make all the difference in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A fresh-faced CEO slides into the lobby for the televisions cameras, two programmers are shooting pool on break and the communications staff are meeting over lattes brewed by on-staff baristas. Companies have pulled out all the stops in the race to attract millennial talent, but have they alienated other demographics in the process? Is any […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":410,"featured_media":9614,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_story_type":[13],"cu_story_tag":[1922],"class_list":["post-9431","cu_story","type-cu_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","cu_story_type-research-discovery","cu_story_tag-sprott-school-of-business"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":"blueprint"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/9431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/410"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/9431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97710,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/9431\/revisions\/97710"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_story_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_type?post=9431"},{"taxonomy":"cu_story_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_tag?post=9431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}