The boomers' kids get a job
Their resumes are gilded, but the `echoes' may be a drag on the economy
But America's employers may have to brace for a letdown. Although the echoes learned to be big spenders before they could spell the word "allowance," they picked up some awful financial habits in their teens: Teachers report that their high school students are taking on staggering amounts of debt; that could crimp spending when they're older.
Chairman Greenspan's faith may be misplaced, too. As the oldest echo boomers--those born in 1977 and soon after--have entered the workplace, there are signs they may not be as productive as the experts had predicted. They apparently have novel notions about the workplace, shaped by their peek through the keyhole at the economy; for a decade all they got to see was the dot-com boom. According to dozens of workplace consultants, echo boomers may boast all the technological savvy and self-confidence in the world, but they have managers complaining of problems rare just 10 years ago: no-shows on entry-level job interviews. Requests for promotions after only months on the job. Quitting without giving notice. Demands that every aspect of the job--even menial tasks--have meaning.
Kate Heneroty left her last job because it was too dull. She now works at Socketware, an Atlanta software developer. She is talented and driven. ("When I was 22, 23 years old, I wasn't as bright," says her boss, Tricia Robinson.) But Heneroty landed the new position because, as she tells it, a recruiter caught her when she was having a bad day. She fired off her resume and jumped. Management consultants caution that this may become an enduring trait of echo boomers: Their never-ending search for the ideal job may make them as fickle as generation X-ers, who famously abandoned the pretense of the lifetime company- employee relationship. "[Echo boomers] are loyal, until the day they leave," says Bruce Tulgan, who cowrote Managing Generation Y. "And that makes them very high maintenance."
Spoiled rotten. That's not all that makes them a management headache. Thanks to the involvement--some say indulgence--of their parents, echo boomers grew up blaming teachers, coaches, and others if they didn't get the best instruction--and the best grades, says Ron Zemke, coauthor of Generations at Work and president of Performance Research Associates. Rich Clark, general manager of Atlanta Fish Market, says the restaurant's young workers "critique everything you do, because they have had a lot done for them." Managers, he says, end up apologizing and finishing the job themselves. "If a guy has a terrible night because you didn't follow through on his training, you have to say, `Let's work on it, it's my fault that you're having these problems.' " Just how coddled are the echoes? One employee's father called Stacie Connerty, 29, human resources director for the chain that operates the Fish Market, to negotiate his son's salary. "He told me, `I'm just trying to get him a good deal.' "
But not all echo boomers fit a neat stereotype. Sokha Son, 20, a field mechanic at the Port of Seattle's auto repair shop, skipped college and plans to stay on the docks until he retires. But he's not just clocking in and clocking out. "I didn't know about fixing cars and trucks when I got there, nothing," he says. Son, who was born in Cambodia and raised in the States, goes to classes two nights a week during the school year to catch up.
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