There was an article in the Vancouver Sun a week ago that stated more Generation Y’s want to be self-employed than to work for an employer.

The Gen Y group ( 25 and younger) are creative and unstructured. They like the flexibility and autonomy that they perceive self employment will give them. They are highly successful at starting businesses because of their technological knowledge. In addition they use the principles of Malcolm Gladwells book “The Tipping Point” in that they leverage their connections through Facebook, My Space and other networking forums.

In regards to today’s employers attracting this elusive generation keep in mind that the Gen Y’s are looking for workplaces that offer entrepreneurial thinking along with training so that they can succeed quickly.

One could argue that every generation wants to be entrepreneurial but it is Gen Y who is least afraid of the risk factors. Part of that is that they have built in security with most Gen Y’s living at home until the age of 26 on average. So if they dont bring in revenue one month it doesnt mean life or death.

Employers can capitlize on the inherent desire of Gen Y’s to create, innovate and run their projects by providing interesting work and encouraging new and different ways of doing things that have been done the same way for a long time.

Be prepared to one day be working for Generation Y if not full time, at least on a project basis. Unless of course you yourself have the entrepreneurial bug and then you will be hiring or marketing to them. Bottom line- we need to tap into their way of thinking and into their knowledge on networking.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 16th, 2007 at 12:13 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.