OBTW, some of what Warren Kinston has developed about the framework of Interacting for Benefit (how careers progress) shows how this getting stuck happens for the kids coming out today.

I appreciate and savour your timely insight(s).

If modern social cycles (~10 years for crashes; ~ 50 years for Kondratieff waves) are too long term for most people to “see” we are doomed to continue behave ignorantly…

…it reminds me of the data-point about gold-fish having attention spans of a few seconds.

Now we know why “Those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat it”.

I’d like to say that Requisite Organization implementation would make your life better, but I’m not sure that it will. PeopleFit continues to be exceptional, in my experience. (And probably MVC Associates, although in a different way.) They, too, would look at your experience and assume that you cannot do the work or, even worse, that your job hunting represents not generational reality but some personality defect (what Jaques called “-T”) that disqualify you from working. This is especially true if you are higher mode; I say this because I tried to pawn all my Mode7+ folks on the RO folks who were complaining about not having anyone in the succession pipeline when baby boomers retire.

The only good news I can relate is that your experience models that of people who have created new realities. These people are always hated, even after they succeed. They are never beloved but feared.

I wish I could say something more encouraging. I’m certainly trying to figure out a social solution to this problem. Strauss and Howe said that 13th-ers would never succeed but take upon themselves to pay for the sins of the Baby Boomers and restore a future to their children. We’re not the only generation to be in this boat, and now we have an entire new cohort that will be with us.

I’ll close with this thought: Money is a proxy for stratum and capability. My brother was a recruiter in the oil industry years back. He taught me that no one had any idea what anyone was worth: it was all based on whatever you had convinced someone else to pay you. The magic number for him back in ‘93 was US$100k. If no one was paying you that, you weren’t worth anything.

I’m dedicated to this issue: I have too many of you people around me. I’m not entirely sure that it will come out the way that we’d like, though.

I’ve been labeled as a job hopper, simply because I lived in an expensive city and needed to earn more money. A lot depends on your first job.

I’ve also found recruiters don’t evaluate my on my work, but just on how long my past jobs have lasted, grade or last salary. This is just lazy because I have a publicly available portfolio of work. But it is simpler to ask to a number, than to take 15 – 30 minutes to actually examine the work I’ve done.

Really a lot depends on the first job you get. Employers should evaluate the whole person.

I particularly enjoyed this post. Forgive me for my tardy kudos. I’m linking to it on my current post.

Regards,

Michelle

All that said, if you are a graduate coming out in today’s market, you will probably always be looked down upon by those who got their first jobs in boom times. Maybe the massive unemployment figures mean that won’t happen, but I think not. The employed are making more, and the unemployed are being less and less likely to get employed. He who has is given more, and he who has not will have even what he has taken from him. I always despised those words of Jesus but I have come to realize that they’re more true than most people undersand, a principle of networks. I’d rather kick against the pricks than accept it in the world of work, though.