Today's College Students are the Next Great Generation and Here's Why You Should Hire Them

The following is excerpted from Jack Myers new best-selling book Hooked Up: A New Generation's Surprising Take on Sex, Politics and Saving the World. The book focuses on "Internet Pioneers" born 1991-1995. They are the first generation of college students to grow up with the Internet and the first to cross the chasm from the pre to the post-Internet Age. The following is excerpted from Chapter 20: Jobs & Careers. For more information visit www.hookedupgen.com and visit www.amazon.com for more excerpts and the full table of contents.

Lifestyles of the Non-Upwardly Mobile

The life model for Generation X and Tom Brokaw's "Greatest Generation" was to commit totally to a job and job security. For the Greatest Generation, this meant mothers in unpaid work at home and fathers who were rarely home. For Generation X, it meant both parents working long hours outside the home with children in the care of daycare centers, nannies, babysitters, relatives and a string of after-school enrichment activities. More men in this generation have taken an active role in childrearing, and this pattern will accelerate among Internet Pioneers and Natives, who will be more likely to put families ahead of careers, even changing jobs and careers to adjust to changing family requirements.

According to the Bookends Generation study conducted by New York City's Center for Work Life Policy, 89 percent of current college students report valuing flexibility in their work life as among the most important aspects of a happy work environment. For Baby Boomers, flexibilitymeant leaving work early to catch their children's ball games or dance recitals. For Internet Pioneers, flexibility includes the ability to work from home -- or anywhere -- as an acceptable option. Tim Ferriss' The Four Hour Work Weekeven suggests putting in a full week's worth of work from a tropical island. As long as the island has wireless connectivity, this scenario is entirely possible for the next wave of Internet-bred corporate managers (assuming they can pay off their student loans and afford to travel).

Their focus on outside-of-work success may lead to a very different work landscape than before, with greater flexibility in how jobs are performed so long as benchmarks are met, and with the need for corporations to demonstrate social responsibility far beyond the degree to which they contribute today. Internet Pioneers will be less tolerant of corporate malfeasance and will be aggressively intolerant of a Profit at Any Cost approach to corporate strategy.

Because the generation overall considers global impact as important as financial gain, today's college students may be able to alter the direction of businesses as a whole -first by altering employment policies and later through their influence within the management chain.

Again, the Internet Pioneer generation of college graduates doesn't feel bound to follow the implied contract of job loyalty that served their parents and grandparents. For earlier generations, a college diploma meant a middle-class job and upward mobility. However, a combination of economic recession and overabundance of college-educated candidates means this is no longer true.

The Next Great Generation

Red Tree Leadership, a management training consultancy, describes today's college students as potentially being the "next great generation.">