It’s Graduation Time. Lesson One.

It will be graduation time soon.

So what kind of world will you be graduating into?

There will be at least two worlds.

The first is one you can’t control and that world is called the New Normal.

The New Normal Started in September 2008 when the world almost melted when Lehman Brothers went away. You may have never heard of Lehman Brothers.  They were a 156 year old company when you were in your teens.  Those effects are still being felt today.

It probably didn’t mean as much to you then as it did to your parents.  But then again you may be graduating from a school neither you nor your parents wanted you to attend because of it.

It may have happened before you even entered college but it has defined the world you are graduating into.  Things are getting better but things are different and you will live in that difference unless it changes.

The New Normal affected your college experience.  Few courses and more competition for them. Larger class sizes. Longer graduation times.  I read an article in the New York Times that only half of first time college students graduate in 6 years.

What’s up with that?  I went to the University of Western Ontario which you have never heard of and I got two degrees by staying for 6 years.  That’s how I got to California.

In fall 2012, a record 21.6 million students are expected to attend American colleges and universities, constituting an increase of about 6.2 million since fall 2000. More people for fewer jobs.  I graduated into the kind of past.

The average student college debt will be $27,000. Yea.

The current unemployment rate in the U.S. is 7.7%  Better.

The unemployment rate among people under 25 is 16%. Ouch

The unemployment rate among people under 25 in Spain is 55%. That gets people into the streets. As the Rolling Stones sang in the 60’s the time is right for fighting in the street boys.

That world didn’t impact graduates much in the Old Normal but it is does in the New Normal.  As Marshall McLuhan said when I was going to school “It’s a Global Village”. You may have never heard of him and you may not have been to Spain but you are living his prediction.

You need a new lens to see in the New Normal.  In the Old Normal your parent’s friends were more old people.  In the New Normal they are data bases. Mine them.

The second world is the one that you can control and that is the world you personally create around you. How well resourced are you?  How well LinkedIn are you?  How resilient are you?  How well rounded are you?  What would make you interesting to a company? How wide is your network?

More on that in Lesson Two.  Soon to come.

You can connect with Hank on LinkedIn:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/hankblankcom

Follow his updates on twitter: @hankblank

Like Blank and Associates on Facebook

You might enjoy these articles.

Don’t Let Your Business Cards Weaken Your Personal Brand

The Slash Generation.

Watch this Video on Why Young People Shouldn’t try to Get a Job.

 

Creating an Agency Culture in the New Normal.

I grew up in the Old Normal working at agencies like JWT. When I was transferred from JWT Toronto to Chicago 700 people worked there.  It was hard to find me when I first arrived.  JWT Chicago was founded in 1891 and went away in the New Normal.  Lehman Brothers was founded in 1850 and they melted in 2008 creating the New Normal.

Although the advertising business has changed dramatically since I entered the game there is no doubt that the best people want to work at the best places.  Definitely creative people do.  But in the New Normal creative people can come from the big idea space and also the big technology idea space. The latter could be in charge in the next New Normal.

So how do you create an agency culture in the New Normal? How do you achieve it in an environment where employees can sit right next to each other with their ear buds providing their invisible cubes?  Their separation and privacy while working in close physical intimacy.

First you have to understand Millenials.  They like your money but they don’t belong to you. They want stability with agility.  They want direction and at the same time they want participation.

Many agencies try to create a culture with free food, allowing pets in the office experience, free massages etc. etc. etc. The stuff that gets them articles on being the best places to work when many often aren’t close to that.

Sure free food is nice but it is about capturing your employee’s personal passions and using that fuel to create a unique agency dynamic and experience.

Youth hasn’t changed in the Old and the New Leader. They want to be led by a Leader.  Being a leader is hard.  You have to inspire and inspiration is a true gift.

Agency principals don’t go out much. Few are the face of their agency’s brand.  Attend industry events.  Attend Ad2 events where the entry level people can talk to you.  Agency principals you need to set the example.  Dynamic agencies that attract good people are easy to find because they are out there.

The key with youth is to harness their /talents. They are the slash generation.  You know what their job description is.  You know where they went to school.  Now capture the / that follows that.  Their slash talents are their passions.

Create a culture by filling your agency with those voices.  They may have been interested in heavy metal, mountain biking, music, animation, blogging, photography, Pintrest, Tumbler, Q, speak three languages, cooking or whatever.  In the agency world passion can lead to New Business.

Nurture them. Agency principals often rule by two different philosophies.  Carrot or the stick.  Incentive or fear.  Although we live in the New Normal with lots of fear after the Great Recession the stick strategy neuters culture.  The carrot strategy is the only one that will succeed.

Be a rewarder. Surprise your chosen ones.  These are the few that truly get it.  They are intuitive.  They were born to be in the game.  They know they are good but they are like thoroughbreds.  They need to be nurtured and supported. They respond to little perks.  Praise for sure and an occasion serendipity acknowledgement.  A weekend at a hotel or a gift card or a gift for the significant other if you have kept their partner on the road too long.  Valuable employees love when you invest in them. It affirms their sense of self-worth.

Teach your employees well.   Create a monthly agency forum where you invite unique and different talent to speak to them at a company meeting.  Create your own TED. Have a monthly networking mixer with significant others some months and internally on alternate months.

Be an innovator. Ideate.  How do you create an environment where everyone will be encouraged to generate ideas? Involve them in your New Business brainstorming.

Be Honest. Make them marketable.  Teach your employees well.  Advertising is an industry with ups and downs. Client wins and losses.  In advertising to cut costs you can’t close a plant, you have to fire people.  It is as simple as that.  That is the nature of the business today and in the past.  So make them marketable if things change. Train them on LinkedIn and how to network.  One day you may have to launch them on a new path but they may want them back.

You can connect with Hank on LinkedIn:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/hankblankcom

Follow his updates on twitter: @hankblank

Like Blank and Associates on Facebook

Watch a video on How Agencies Can Get More New Business.

You may also enjoy these articles:

Networking Tips for Young People Who Hate to Network.

What Makes a Great AE Today?

The Most Powerful Word in Agency New Business is NO.

How’s The Year Going So Far?

So how are things going so far as we enter year five of the New Normal? Having a jolly old time?   The New Normal was created when the world melted in the fall of 2008.  Lehman Brothers went away.   Remember those days? I am sure that the 2.8 million people that lost their jobs that year do. Some may still be looking for the job that they lost. They may be working but they don’t have the job that went away never to return.

Are things getting better? Are your loving things at work?  Doing less with more?  Looking over your shoulder from time to time? Get a little nervous if your boss calls you into their office?  How do you like your recent yearly salary increases? Did you get one?

How’s the job search going?  Is it easier or harder? Do you often feel it’s all in vein? Do you think that everyone thinks that you are too old?  Don’t have enough experience?  Have been on the beach too long? Do you think that the people interviewing you are smarter than you?

How are your New Business efforts going?  Is New Business even harder or are leads coming in and your task is to separate fact from fiction?  Do you feel you even need more leads today? Does New Business take more time and are the budgets smaller?  Do you have to provide more for less?

How’s your networking going or is it the same? Do you view networking as an intention or a mission?  Do you connect with people that energize and are totally aligned with you? Are you just networking with people just like you?

Are you living large?  I network with a lot of people. I talk to 2O year old people and have drinks with the people who run multinational agencies. They all share their stories.  I shake the hand of my UPS driver at Starbucks while he sits with Fed Ex Driver and a couple of other guys talking music.  I talk to sales people at the same time that feel they are out of touch for today’s game.

I have lunch with marketing people who wouldn’t have met me in the past but now that their company is changing I appear more valuable because I am a networker with a large network. I am happy to help. Will they?

I text with the President of a prominent local company while I am going for a run.  Presidents are optimistic enough to relax a bit these days.  But bit is a short word.

I meet with marketing people that are looking for their next gig.

I meet with people who are waiting for checks. Are your clients slower to pay?  I can relate to that being a solopreneur in the New Normal.  Balancing the regular pattern of bills versus the irregular flow of checks.

I hear from people who have been downsized seven times. They called themselves a survivor and I certainly do agree.  There are many worst alternatives.

I hear from people who tell me how tough things remain.

I hear from people who tell me how things are good.

2013 is the 5^th year of the New Normal.  This is the future and Leonard Cohen wrote a song about it in the Old Normal. The lyric said “I have seen the future and it is murder”.  But then again this is the New Normal after all.

You can connect with Hank on LinkedIn:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/hankblankcom

Follow his updates on twitter: @hankblank

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/hankblank

Watch a video by Hank on Don’t Let Your Business Cards Weaken Your Personal Brand.

You may also enjoy these articles:

Are You a Finder or a Grinder?

Why College Students Need to Get into Linkedin.

What Do Agency Review Consultants Do?

Why College Students Need to Get Into Linkedin.

I live surrounded by young people.  I have hired paid interns for ten years and often speak on campus colleges on networking and why young people shouldn’t try to get a job.

That’s how I got this nice poster designed by Kyle Ready when I spoke at CBU in Riverside.

I am amazed by how many college students in their senior year that are looking to enter the workforce aren’t on LinkedIn.  Young people are natives in the world of technology.  I was an immigrant to their world of technology.

I embraced LinkedIn as an early adopter.  My largest client last year found me on LinkedIn.

College students who aren’t using LinkedIn lose their native status and become LinkedIn immigrants. They look like they aren’t ready for business. They don’t speak my language. And guess what?  I don’t want to hire them because I don’t want them to train them on Linkedin.  I want to teach them other things.

As a solopreneur I want an intern to help me from the get go.  That’s my world today.  And the world that today’s college students will live in when they are 50.  There are numerous articles documenting that in the near future a large proportion of the workforce will be consultants, freelancers, or temp workers.

When I speak to students I advise them to go where you want to be.  If you want to be in business then use the social media channel that business uses and that is LinkedIn. The best way to get a job in the field you aspire to is to engage with the people living in that world. Linkedin provides you with that opportunity.  If you want to work in the future communicate with people that may hire you in the future while you are in the past.  You should start your job hunting a year before you graduate or sooner.

I recently met a young man with 500 LinkedIn connections.  He was twenty years old and was soon to graduate from UCI.  I wasn’t surprised. Did the 500 plus connections help him graduate early?  Probably not.  I am sure that his attitude of preparing for the future did.

I have always said some of the worst career advice for students comes from people in the Old Normal.  They focus on resume building.  That’s all good but resumes don’t appear on the internet but your LinkedIn profile does.

Today resumes should be infographics or simple websites.

Young people today will have many jobs in the New Normal or create many companies.

The foundation of their success will be their network.  LinkedIn is a simple platform to build it and amplify your voice.

In the Old Normal there used to be simple insights shared that ran like this.  If you saved a dollar a day starting at 21 you would be a multi-millionaire by the age of 65 based on the principle of compounded interest.

In the New Normal if you connect with one person a day starting in college you can be sure of having lots of social currency and an improved chance of financial currency as well.

LinkedIn can help you get there.

You can connect with Hank on LinkedIn:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/hankblankcom

Follow his updates on twitter: @hankblank

Like Blank and Associates on Facebook

You might enjoy these articles.

Don’t Let Your Business Cards Weaken Your Personal Brand

The Slash Generation.

Watch this Video on Why Young People Shouldn’t try to Get a Job.

I’m Just Trying to Figure It Out.

“I’m just trying to figure it out.”

People often tell me that they are trying to figure it out. After all the books, blogs, free and paid webinars and seminars on how to get to the next place – yet the majority of people don’t have a roadmap on where to go next.

Just the other day, I heard a young person say they were trying to figure it out. They were rooms away from where I sat, but their lament traveled through the air to me. They were looking for a magic way, but life isn’t as organized as Disneyland. Young people are the slash generation that many elders don’t see, and also the untrained generation. Institutions don’t invest as much in our youth as they have done in the past. The obligation of mentoring and nurturing youth may have been lost or abandoned.

There was a story on NPR recently which reported the number one psychological issue in campus health clinics today is anxiety. Young people are anxious that if that they graduate today in the New Normal, they aren’t guaranteed a job, even with a college degree – maybe even with an MBA. They have no clue on how to provide the basics for themselves once they graduate with huge student loans. That’s a big worry that can become a heavy yoke.

I can see that. Many millennials have by now spent a quarter of their lives living in the great recession. Their parents may have been downsized; their homes may have been in foreclosure.  They may have lost trust in the safety net of their parents helping them out financially. Some, in fact, may be helping their parents.

I often have a Starbucks and listen to business owners that want to take it to the next level. They tell me they are trying to figure it out. I have some clarity for them on days that can even be blind for me. Such a paradox – or could it be an irony? A metaphor? Do we teach what we need to know?

I have met too many people over the years who have been launched into the world of transition they didn’t anticipate before. Some come to me with the weight of living in the New Normal, saying they are just trying to figure it out. They weren’t trained on what to do when one is jettisoned into transition. When they worked for somebody, they often did all the figuring it out, but nothing further.

Here are some ways to try to figure it out:

1. Stop worrying, because worry won’t make the road clearer. Instead, it creates a fog. The best worry buster is an intense workout, or whatever else may work for you. Anything that disengages you from your brain for just the right time can bring you back to it focused and ready to take on the task at hand.

2. Figuring it out can be simplified if you surround yourself with other perspectives; you’ll never figure it out if you surround yourself with yourself. The best way to train for a marathon is to talk to someone who has run one before. They will tell you that running tight to the curves will save you a lot of steps over the 26.2 miles or 42Km. The best way to figure it out is by talking to people who have walked the same struggle.

What do I know? I have lived in the New Normal all my life. I’m just trying to figure it out.

 

You can connect with Hank on LinkedIn:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/hankblankcom

Follow his updates on twitter: @hankblank

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/hankblank

Watch a video by Hank on Networking Tips for Young People.

You may also enjoy these articles:

Are Solopreneurs the Future in the New Normal?

Networking in My Hood.

She’s Not a Great Networker.

Want to Grow Your Agency? Grow Your People.

Something is missing in advertising today: training.

It used to be the basic foundation of how agencies operated. It provided direction to all. Unfortunately, there is no training anymore. Nada. Zero. Here are your business cards. Here is your cube or office. There is a client meeting next week, and you are going to present. Here is the company T shirt. That’s all, yeah. Often nothing more. I hear this all the time. Today, there are CYA employee handbooks and very little institutionalized training; I don’t think many agencies even know what the curriculum would be.

Today’s agency training course is called Figure It Out Yourself.

In order to allow growth to occur, training needs to be the foundation of your agency’s culture. Your agency has very smart people looking for some paths they can run down. They are looking for reassurance. Everybody needs a little direction, a little confirmation, and a little reinforcement.

I live a life surrounded by Milennials, Gen Y’s, whatever you want to call them. I don’t talk much; I just listen to what they have to say, and their words tell a lot.

I listened to one frustrated soul who really didn’t know what he was tasked with at work. He felt uncertain, and that causes anxiety. Things were changing in the industry. He shared that he wanted to understand more about what he needed to do. The supervisor responded with, “what do you need to know?” How can youth know what is behind the curtain when they never pulled the levers on the other side?

Today in the agency business, many layers are missing. There are only generals and privates. The mentoring layers are gone. Many senior people focus on looking up to protect their jobs versus training down.

I talked to another young person the other day. She got a call from another agency asking her to interview, and asked for my advice. She said she really liked her current agency. Somebody had actually trained her recently, merely for an hour, which to her was a lot better than the place she had worked at previously. Only one hour. A lunch time training session. And these places still wonder why when they lose so many of their employees.

When I was a puppy, I received training frequently. Somehow, I felt that agency management referred to the idea that training was a responsibility that companies needed to do. It was not an option, but a formula necessary for success. If you don’t train your people, well, why are you the boss?

You can connect with Hank on Linkedin:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/hankblankcom

Follow his updates on Twitter: @hankblank

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/hankblank

You can watch a video by Hank on The Most Powerful Word in Agency New Business is NO.

You can also read some other Hank Blank blogs:

The Three Slide Agency New Business Pitch.

Developing Millennial AE’s.

How Advertising Agencies Can Get More New Business?

Developing Millennial Advertising Agency AE’s.

I had a glass of wine the other night with a friend who runs a large local agency.  He talked how committed his agency was to training its young people really well by rotating them around into all the areas of their product so they would be well rounded.  He lamented the fact that after a certain time many left causing a lot of turnover at the agency.

At first I was a little surprised at the rate of turnover in this economy but then again the advertising agency game has changed.  There aren’t as many layers as in past and often you get senior people stretched over too many accounts and the young worker bees.  Well trained ones are even more valuable today because there aren’t as many firemen around to put out the fires quick enough for today’s client.

Keeping talent in the advertising industry has always been an industry issue.  Deutsch in conjunction with the 4A’s conducted a study on the issue that was reported in Fast Company.  The study found that 25% of people in the business don’t love it.  That sounds high but I recently heard that in the general workforce, 40% of people don’t like their job.  I also know many people in transition who would be more than happy to be unhappy at a job just to have one.

Not only has the number of people in the advertising industry declined in the last decade according to the 4A’s but the average age of the industry has increasing become younger.  According to an IPA study in the UK the average age of an employee in the Mad Men biz is 34 and more than two fifths are said to be thirty or younger. I think it is the same on this side of the pond.

I often blog on today’s Millennials.  I have lived surrounded by them.  I have a number of friends in advertising and PR who are 28 and are working at their third or fourth agency. In a thin margin game even young people can be put on the beach.   Advertising has always been an industry where you get your first job at an entry level salary and then jump to another agency for a salary increase.  The other option is to stay and get promoted to increase your salary.  The first option is more expedient for many when they have today’s college loan debt levels. Rock on Congress.

Some people feel that young people move because they are the entitled generation and are self focused.  I don’t buy into that.  Maybe for a few but not the majority.  I think the entitled generation went away after the world melted.  A 23 year old has lived a quarter of their lives in the great recession.  Many have seen a parent or both parents in transition.  They know what foreclosures are.  They also know plenty of friends who are unemployed or having trouble finding a job.

So how do you foster an environment in the advertising, PR or digital game that Millennials want to work and stay?  Certainly training is important but they want more than that.  I think like most people in a relationship they want to know where they stand. Young people like direction.  In this case what is the agency’s career plan for them?  Not for the next month but the next two years. That provides vision and objectives for them.

They also want guidance. In this case it translates into mentoring and mentorship.  I think that everyone that joins an agency should be assigned a mentor.  A mentor for somebody who is 23 in today’s advertising business can be somebody who is 27.  I have always been a big believer in mentoring up and down and everyone in the Slash Generation has their own set of skills that everyone can learn from.  Capturing that helps everyone grow no matter what their age.

You can connect with Hank on Linkedin

http://www.linkedin.com/in/hankblankcom

Follow his updates on twitter @hankblank

Facebook http://www.facebook.com/hankblank

You can watch a video by Hank on Why Young People Shouldn’t Try to Find a Job.

You can also read some other Hank Blank blogs.

Why Every Solopreneur Needs an Intern from the Slash Generation.

The New Glass Ceiling.

The Three Slide Agency New Business Pitch.

The Slash Generation

I spend a lot of time with Millennials.  I knew many when they were teenagers. Some younger.  I have used smart paid interns for over a decade.  My first intern now works at Oakley.  Another intern that worked for me in the past recently got married.  His new bride works for Oakley as well and reports to my first intern.  Yes pretty crazy.  I have written about some ideas in this area in a post called Why Graduates Are Looking for Jobs in All the Wrong Places.

I recently went to a New Business Conference up in LA sponsored by Think LA.  One of the closing panelists was Mike Sheldon the CEO of Deutsch LA a very large and successful agency.

He shared a comment that resonated with me. Not totally sure about the context but he talked about using the power of account coordinators/slash video people and using their passion to get things done at the agency.  As I remember they used them for research or interviews.  They were hired to do one thing but their passion skills were also being utilized in other ways.  That only happened because they were recognized.  Somebody saw the slash skills.

Now CEO’s of major agencies rarely talk about harnessing the power of entry level people but that has been something I have doing for years.  Maybe I live closer to them.  I bet Mike has children.  I bet he has a daughter.  I could be totally wrong.

I believe that we can do great things by capturing the power of the Slash Generation. It is a win win opportunity.  Many young people have a hard time entering the work force and many employers often try to evaluate young people by old rules and need to change their hiring lens. I am not talking about the advertising industry here.  It has always embraced outliers to a degree.  Few companies today would hire somebody with no college degree that studied calligraphy like Steve Jobs.

I believe that the Slash Generation also needs to bring their slash skills to the forefront more and not neuter them. Conformity shouldn’t be the aspiration of youth.  It is the compromise of later life.  Forget your parent’s resume template.  That is from the Old Normal.  The resume, bio, curriculum vitae of the Old Normal has to become an infographic of you. Can’t do an infographic then make it highly visual. Young people don’t read and old people are tired of reading.  It should outline both your achievements and your passions. Do not suppress you passions.  Photography, building computers, being a DJ can be valuable to the right company.  If companies don’t get it they aren’t right for you.

If companies want to hire their potential future success based on the criteria of the Old Normal they will be left behind. Company growth doesn’t come from rigidity.  It comes from adapting and reinvention. Who better to reinvent you that the future generation?

You can connect with Hank on Linkedin

http://www.linkedin.com/in/hankblankcom

Follow his updates on twitter @hankblank

Facebook http://www.facebook.com/hankblank

You can watch a video by Hank on Networking Tips for Young People.

You can also read some other blogs that may be able to help you.

Graduating Into a Recession

The New Glass Ceiling.

Why Young People Shouldn’t Try to Find a Job.

Networking Tips for Young People Who Hate to Network.

Why MBA Schools Need to Teach a Course On What To Do When You Get Fired.

Why Young People Shouldn’t Try to Find a Job.

I had a great time recently speaking to the students at CBU Graphic Design class on How to Rise Above the Crowd.  My presentation was about how to transition learning into a career. My expertise comes from my experience as a person who has to create a job each and every day as a solopreneur in the New Normal.

Young people can certainly get a lot of advice these days on how to get a job.  Most from people who live in the Old Normal and don’t walk the physical or digital sidewalks of the New Normal.

You can listen to politicians who largely live an entitled life and whose hearts don’t beat in the New Normal.

Your college professors will give you advice as well but if they have never worked in the business world and strictly have an academic background their advice will be largely theoretical. Like a nun advising you about birth control. I love you Sister Mary Agnes.

Your parents will give you lots of advice but there is a good chance that if they have been employed for more than ten years with the same company that they found their last job in a newspaper  and not from a recruiter calling them because of their Linkedin profile.

You can get advice from your peer group but that will largely be peer wisdom.  Better for a bar.

First, young people need to understand that your focus shouldn’t be about getting a job; it should be about creating your long term personal brand strategy in the working world of today.  You see in the New Normal you will have at least 12 jobs at different companies but your brand will be yours forever.  Twenty years from now there may be no employees only contract worker bees. You need to focus on developing a long term career strategy versus just a job at just a company.

You need to be a brand within a brand.  Even if you work at Apple you need to have your own personal brand and your own unique identity and it needs to be coherent.  Consistency is key in branding.  Your brand says everything about you.  Your brand includes the way you dress to your personal branding material to your on line social media strategy.  Your social media thought leadership should amplify your brand.

Here are the mandatories for young people today and into the near future.  You must have your own personal website.  You must have your own personal business cards and carry them at all time in addition to the business card of your employer.  You must rock on Linkedin because it is the social media channel of business.  You must own the first page of Google.  All ten postings with a presence that is consistent with your personal brand.  All of the digital platforms that you use must be based on your name and not an alias.  Do not tweet about tacos.  Tweet about show how smart you are.  Most important, develop a powerful personal network that others don’t have that reflects your brand and the resources you uniquely offer.

You can connect with Hank on Linkedin

http://www.linkedin.com/in/hankblankcom

Follow his updates on twitter @hankblank

Facebook http://www.facebook.com/hankblank

You can watch a video by Hank on Networking Tips for Young People.

You can also read some other blogs that may be able to help you.

Graduating Into a Recession

The New Glass Ceiling.

Why Graduates are Looking for Jobs in All the Wrong Places.

Graduating into a Recession

I was having a coffee with a friend the other day and she said something that stuck with me.  It was about the plight of young people graduating into a recession.  It was clear that she had children or at least felt their pain.  Her browl furrowed. The frustration was apparent.  I have written many blogs targeted to Millennials including Why Graduates Are Looking For Jobs in All the Wrong Places. I write for Millennials because I am surrounded by them both in my personal and work life. I have enjoyed working with the paid interns I have used for over ten years. The majority have graduated into the workforce.  Occasionally I meet young people who make bad choices.

Soon afterwards I was listening to Q on CBC.  It’s the Canadian in me.  Jian Ghomeshi was away but the guest announcer was interviewing  Emma Keonig  who recently wrote a book called, ‘F**k I’m in my Twenties.’ It was about the lament of youth and the difficulties of finding jobs in the New Normal.

Emma, who I believe lives in New York shared some great perspectives about a world where you could be famous on the internet but couldn’t afford to buy a bagel in the morning.

Yes, these are very difficult times for graduates.  I took a look into a rear view mirror in order to find good times to graduate.

In the Sixties you could graduate and listen to Country Joe McDonald singing ‘One Two Three Four What Are We Fighting For’ and hope you didn’t come home in a Box.  Politicians were telling the public that we had to be in Vietnam, otherwise Asia would go Communist. My college roommate’s sons live in Shanghai.

In the Seventies millions of Boomers were graduating into a bubble where they were overwhelmed the job market.

Terry O’Reilly , the guest announcer on CBC shared his perspective that when he bought a car in the Eighies his interest rate was 22%.

In the late 1990’s we had another recession.

In 2001 we had the Dot-com bust.

Now we are in the Great Recession.

You can’t control the economy. You can’t control when you were born.  You can’t control who your parents will be. You can only control your choices and how you react and adapt to the circumstances around you.  That is how youth succeeds and every generation of young people is smarter and better.  I am glad I live with a lot of them.

You can connect with Hank on Linkedin

http://www.linkedin.com/in/hankblankcom

Follow his updates on twitter @hankblank

Facebook http://www.facebook.com/hankblank

You can watch a video by Hank on Networking Tips for Young People.