A Look at Life After Graduation
Post by
Mark Kaefer | September 4th, 2008
Earlier this year, the Boston Globe published an article on the habit of job hopping by 20-somethings. In “Job hopping an option for young people,” author Penelope Trunk made her argument that the best thing a Gen Y working professional could do early in his career is to move around, a lot, so he could figure out what he likes among other things.
When I first read this advice it seemed backward. It’s not in line with what my college career counselors preached. And it’s certainly the opposite of what my parents drilled into me when I was first starting out as a young grad. But… that was over a decade ago.
Experience issued a press release today covering our June 2008 “Life After College” study, which surveyed hundreds of young alumni who use the Experience Network to help manage their careers. We learned many interesting things in analyzing the results. Most notably, what Penelope wrote about last spring held true in our research: generally speaking, we found that Gen Y is always on the job hunt even when they’re happily employed.
Here’s a breakdown of what we found at a high level:
- 70% of young grads reported they left their first job within two years of their joining
- 43% of Gen Y are not in the career they expected to be in after college, either because they couldn’t find a job, or another opportunity presented itself
- 60% are currently looking for another job or career, despite the fact that 57% indicated that they are also happy at their current job
- 74% of recent graduates are in a career that aligns with their college major
Let’s face it… job hopping is not going to go away. But employers can be proactive and reduce Gen Y attrition rates by tailoring a few common practices to accommodate the needs of entry-level employees, including:
- Setting realistic expectations (sharing what it’s really like to work at a company, forgoing the polished corporate speak)
- Embracing new forms of direct communication (incorporating instant messaging, text messaging and other interactive media into daily communications)
- Promoting lifestyle benefits (bringing young employees together for meetings and training sessions that marry entertainment and learning; allow work-at-home flexibility, etc.)
What else are you doing to retain the Gen Y talent you’ve worked so hard to bring on board?
Tags: attrition, Gen Y, job hopping, retention
September 29th, 2008 at 3:39 am
It’s interesting how we label it job hopping. It’s what Gen Y’s do and they aren’t doing it for more money which is what motivates some people to leave their current jobs and to find something better that pays more. They have a different mindset and they are very confident. They look at the older generation as having worked 30 years to receive $60K and think there is no way I will stay at a job for that long and make so little. My college grad clients are accepting $50-60K offers right out of college.
A lot of companies want to hire college grads so they can train them and mold them, and not pay them as much as their employees that have been there for 10-15 years. It will be interesting to see how things play out in the workplace. The generation Y’s are texting and using facebook to communicate in the corporate world. This is very new to some baby boomers.
October 2nd, 2008 at 11:05 am
As an employer of recent grads, I have found the results of this survey to be accurate. We have a big drop of employees after 1 year, and a smaller drop at 2 years. I think a lot of the first drop is the shock of working for a living. It’s sad to me that my gals don’t stick around to get the benefits of being at our school for 4 years or more, which is when the big benefits kick in. We want to reward the employees who make the big contributions, and that realistically happens after we’ve trained them and worked with them for at least a year. It’s important to note that not all recent grads are job hoppers - thank goodness!
October 2nd, 2008 at 11:17 am
Our research shows that there are many clear reasons behind job-hopping, and some can be changed with strategic thinking and management.
We run on-going surveys from managingthemillennials.com and these show that poor retention in low-paying, low-engagement jobs will continue.
However, where organizations need better engagement and retention from skilled Millennials to prosper, they can easily save themselves a massive amount of money. They can also tap into the innovative and energetic talent that this generation brings to the table, by getting their GenY’s’ heads into the game.
Organizations often have a really hard time taking a step back from the picture to see how easy it can be to get GenY to commit to a business. There is no silver bullet. It is a series of specific policies and skills that change the way this generation feel about their company, relate to it and (arghhh!) in some cases end up with tattoos of the company logo on their bodies!
I have a flowchart of the process at http://www.c-psolutions.com/services with a voice-over explanation.
Organizations need to watch their engagement and retention metrics (what gets measured, gets managed!) and keep a dollar value on them. They also need a written “employment branding” strategy and an exit process, so that the data feed back into selection and management. The cost of turnover is huge: the base cost is 1.5 x annual salary when you lose a reasonable worker in your lowest paid job. (mail me for the studies). After that it just goes up… and up.
One key tool is the competency-based, buddy-linked on-boarding process. If you lose a Millennial’s loyalty and enthusiasm in the critical first six month (which begins before employment), it never comes back.
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:55 pm
Rebecca, Rita and Glynis — your insight is much appreciated! Glynis, I absolutely agree with your comment on engagement and retention. Thanks for the links, too.
October 8th, 2008 at 8:53 am
[...] Here’s the detailed findings of the survey: [...]
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[...] A Look at Life After Graduation: Here you can read about what other college grads are doing. [...]
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