A famous essay claims that young people new to the workforce exhibit: “slipshod assistance, foolish inattention, dowdy indifference, and half-hearted work…”
The author went on to complain about the “imbecility of the average [person]” and about the failings of young workers in general in an essay that was well-received and loved by older generations the world-over.
This was illuminated in a recent WSJ article called A Message to Millennials from 1899. The author is a successful “Gen X’er” who also points how his generation was ridiculed in the early 1990s, before somehow finding success themselves: “Rolling Stone’s review of the 1994 movie “Reality Bites” noted that the characters, recent college graduates, “take comfort in ducking reality through talking, toking, watching ’70s reruns and grooving to such oldie hits as Squeeze’s ‘Tempted’ and the Knack’s ‘My Sharona.’ ”
It appears that every older generation is very concerned about the abilities of every younger generation, and it also appears that we probably have nothing to worry about.
At JVM, we fully intend to keep on hiring millennials, marketing to millennials, and, of course, making fun of millennials (but only b/c I can’t help it).
MILLENNIALS AND TECHNOLOGY
Interesting aside: There is one thing that millennials can do better than any older generation: learn, embrace and integrate technology.
The inability to do so in general is strangling the mortgage industry. The average loan officer in the mortgage industry is somewhere between 54 and 57 years old, depending on the source.
I’m 55 myself and I can barely turn on my computer let alone learn entirely new technology integrations. I am being a bit facetious but companies with too many non-tech-savvy employees can be severely handicapped.
We are making massive new technology integrations at JVM, and every vendor we work with is stunned and amazed (literally) by how fast we implement new software.
It takes us a few weeks in most cases which is in sharp contrast to the months or even years it takes at many firms.
The sole reason we can move so fast? We have no loan officers and a plethora of tech-savvy millennials.
Conclusion: Everyone needs technology to survive in 2018, and if you want to implement it quickly, bring on the millennials (but still make fun of them).
Jay Voorhees at (925) 855-4491 Real Estate Broker, CA Bureau of Real Estate, BRE# 01524255, NMLS# 335646
