All of my research and conversations with millennials lead me believe that companies need to start investing in their career education. My latest study with Monster.com shows that 33% of millennials select training and development opportunities as being the most important when considering working for a company. Only 24% of millennials are satisfied with their access to a mentor. Millennials demand a career education at work, which can come in the form of mentors, rotational programs and online and in-person classes but that might not even be enough for them.
I believe that the workplace will (and should) become an extension of college. It will be continuous learning, not just through experience, but through a career department within companies. I could see it falling into the “learning department” and under the “chief learning officer”. Many companies such as General Mills and SunTrust Bank already have people in these roles but soon all companies will. Millennials are forcing companies to invest in them because if they don’t, they will leave.
In the future, you will see companies hiring career services professionals internally and externally to support their millennial workers. Millennials will see this as a value add at first and then they will end up expecting it out of all companies. Every college has a career services department so why shouldn’t every company have one too? Companies can use these departments to steer millennials in the right direction so that they will stay longer and become the next generation of leaders. It will also take away stress from millennial managers who have to give them constant attention, feedback and advice. That type of knowledge should be distributed to all employees and be consistent.
Of course, these departments should cater to all employees and we can’t single out millennials but since millennials will be the majority of the workforce in the coming decade, it will justify them in the first place. These career services departments will help decrease turnover rates and provide leadership development training and mentoring that will help with succession planning.
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Dan, I think you’re onto something with the idea of career services being available to Millenials and other job seekers, but I don’t agree that these services should be offered through companies, in part because there’s an inherent conflict of interest there. What’s good for my company isn’t necessarily good for me.
My belief is that we are all responsible for taking care of our own development and that these services should be accessed independently of the companies that we work for. We need an “honest broker” who can work with us on setting and achieving professional development goals that are independent of where we work. I’ve seen too many people who tailored their careers to the needs of the companies that employed them, only to find that they were virtually unemployable by anyone else when they were laid off.
Ongoing career services is a great idea. I just don’t think that these services should be offered through our employers, unless there is going to be a sort of EAP approach to providing them.