Guess Who's Conservative?

Penelope Trunk goes deep to look at Gen Y and the Big Four after hearing from BusinessWeek that the Top three places to work in the eyes of Y-ers are Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ernst & Young.

Well, for one thing, the Big 4 are acutely aware of what young people want. Deloitte has been studying generational issues for years and Cathy Benko, Global e-Business Practice Leader for Deloitte, just published a great book, Mass Career Customization, that replace the corporate ladder motif with a lattice. And workers can move laterally or up or down on the lattice depending on their personal goals and career aspirations. The Big 4 get the best candidates because these companies have been the fastest to react to the new workforce conditions that place young people in the driver’s seat .

But here’s what else is going on: Gen Y does not admit it, but their top priority is stability. This is a fundamentally conservative generation. And in the middle of this very long article in Business Week, is an important quote from Andrea Hershatter, director of the undergraduate business program at Emory University and veteran of college recruiting:

“There is a strong, strong millennial dislike of ambiguity and risk, leading them to seek a lot more direction and clarity from their employers, in terms of what the task is, what the expectations are, and job progression.”

The Real Deal about Gen Y: They’re Inherently Conservative [Brazen Careerist]