Hey Generation Y – let’s get professional!
When I first started at Vantage last year, I expected that I would finally be putting to use all of the time spent going to class, writing papers, developing projects, and basically trying to learn everything there is to learn about Journalism and PR. After about a week I heard the word “Twitter” and my entire philosophy about having a bachelors degree and therefore knowing everything there was to know about my field was knocked off its feet.
While my professors half-heartedly encouraged us to maintain blogs and develop opinions about the world around us, this word had not been included in my $26,000 tuition fee. After my first lesson in “Twittering” I felt awkward and unsure of myself – writing things down so frequently for the world to see meant that not only would I have to start doing interesting things but now I would have to decide which of those things would be interesting to other people. Even more bewildering, I didn’t understand how on earth this would help me become a stronger PR professional. In college, being on Facebook or MySpace was not exactly an indication of productivity and certainly didn’t garner a professor’s respect.
But what I found most interesting is that my peers hadn’t prepared me for this revolution. Not just Twitter, but the whole notion of social networking for professional use. Isn’t my generation supposed to be innovators – the people that change the way society functions?
I’ve been on Facebook for almost five years now and before I started at Vantage I hadn’t once considered using it to gain a professional advantage. I thought of it as something “all the kids” were doing and eventually I would have to grow up, get a job and let my Facebook identity become one my many fond college memories. Turns out, I need to grow up and join more social networking sites!
Much to my confusion, I get the vibe that updating my Facebook status as frequently as I do is not that as well-received by my peers as it is by my employer. It feels like my generation is rebelling the revolution. I can’t help but wonder if we are afraid of being able to connect and talk with people – we started texting to get off the phone, after all. Or maybe we’re so used to being able to hide behind carefully controlled Facebook and MySpace profiles it’s hard to come to terms with the fact that maintaining these profiles can unveil more about yourself than the real world can. Our masks have become transparent.
In the end, I’m relieved that I have discovered the many social networking sites that connect me with a world that’s out of my physical reach. I’m enthusiastic about the relationships I am building with the professionals in my industry and hope that I can encourage my peers to come around and feel the same way.
Social networking is a whole new way to see the world and a whole new way to get to know yourself. It’s a challenge to remain interested/interesting and to keep up at all times, but with all challenges come rewards and this one is too big to pass up.
Written by Lydia Howard
Tags: facebook, myspace, social media, Twitter
February 17th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Very interesting. I think we are *all* confused at how things are going to play out with FaceBook, etc… but we’re jumping in none-the-less!!
February 17th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Social networking gives so many advantages both socially and professionally. The world, that used to be so insanely big, has become an English village. I know what some of my grade school friends are doing on a daily basis, people I’ve only seen once every five years since back in the day. When it first started, I only kept people who I have internal jokes with on my list of friends. Now, it’s such a great professional channel as well, so you just have to remember to treat it as if your mom is watching your every move.
June 23rd, 2009 at 10:40 am
Interesting post. I am finishing up my college career and your totally right they don’t prepare you for excelling in the newest trends and strategies. I am also having a hard time realizing that my profiles on sites like facebook, may eventually have to transition from fun past memories to a more professional image as I progress in my career.
I see the business opportunities on these sites but a big part of me wishes that we could leave the business aspects for sites like LinkedIn and leave facebook to be the pure social site it was created to be.
June 23rd, 2009 at 11:29 am
Shannon, I see what you’re saying, but I have to say, at the same time a lot of businesses/business operations are transforming themselves to be more social. So you have to ask yourself if it’s business that’s evolving for social networks or the other way around. When you think about Facebook from five years ago, when we were just starting college, it was about creating relationships between college kids that might not necessarily be able to connect (and worked especially well for big schools). In fact, they advertised it as something you could use for schoolwork (remember when you could list your classes and find other people in them for notes?). Therefore, I think they created it with the premise that a school network is just a microcosm of a professional society. I’m not sold on the idea that this social network Facebook created and the dependency we have on it now wasn’t their original dream. It’s an interesting thought and probably more of the unanswerable “chicken or the egg.” Either way, we can only hope that college’s begin training us more thoroughly on the skill.
June 24th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
Lydia –
I’m so pleased to see this post of yours because I have just developed a solution to this problem. My company Miller Mosaic LLC is launching the Miller Mosaic Internet Marketing Program on July 1st to help people learn internet marketing (including Twitter, etc.) without overwhelming them.
A couple of days ago I realized that the college and just-out-of-college market really needs this information. So I am going to start doing outreach to your generation.
The membership program is only $19.95 a month and will provide high-quality information in a variety of internet marketing subjects. I got my M.B.A. from Wharton in 1980, and until recently I coached teens on job preparation.
If you have any questions, you can email me at pzmiller@millermosaicllc.com and follow me on Twitter at @ZimblerMiller.
Twitter is extremely important and not easy to understand how to use effectively. You can read my post http://budurl.com/beginningTwitter, which is part of my gig as a National Internet Business Examiner at http://www.InternetBizBlogger.com, and I’ve written several other articles in different places about using Twitter effectively.
Phyllis Zimbler Miller
June 26th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
“Isn’t my generation supposed to be innovators – the people that change the way society functions?”
It would be great if that were the case, but it certainly isn’t my expectation of the gen-Y generation.
I think that using social networking sites (correctly) is great because they are there. I’m not sure these sites are overly revolutionary or overly neccessary. In many cases it’s yet to be discovered what the business model is for these products anyway.
It would be wrong in my opinion to get overly hung-up on the web 2.0 revolution. Much of the technical revolutions that have occurred in the last century made dramatic changes to how things get done, but did not change the underlying nature of things that one must really understand to be successful. My electrical engineering degree from 20 years ago is no less useful today even though the nature of the practice of engineering has changed dramatically.
That being said, the $26,000 tuition payments are also something that many new graduates will come to regret (not the degree, but the price) – something that is really problematic for gen-Y.
July 1st, 2009 at 1:45 pm
I offer this point of view to add to the discussion, not to criticize it. Nothing changes, the colors change, the shapes roll over, rotate, the light draws a different hue as the sun peeks through, but, basically, not much is different.
Computers and telephones, electronics beeps over the lines have helped people who have trouble forming human relationships over a cup of coffee, reach out into the world with a keyboard and be something that in their hearts, they can’t…quite…do – in person.
True, in time, intergrating their brains and hearts and creativity, when they eventually meld together they do great things, but, humans are humans. We are all frail, excitable, prone to exaggeration, mistakes, over-reaching, like the kids above.
What is “professionalism?” I don’t recognize it by my standards. Ok, so it’s a new generations. Maybe someday, they make presentations in board rooms in their socks – good for them. As long as they close the deal, I guess.
Their gross assumption is: everyone has computers. This is WHARTON, folks. Somebody has not done their homework. I can thing of two states where statistically, only one out of two houses has a computer. The other house doesn’t even speak “Google.”
Hmm, problem, eh? I wonder if that other house even knows what a “Facebook” is?
Roger Fulton
Tucson, Arizona
Wharton 68