I’m glad I’m not a millennial because all anybody ever does is tell them they’re a bunch of bums, and nobody has any answers for them.
To be 20-something and entering this job market can’t be easy, but they have the awesome privilege of doing so in the middle of a massive sea change in regards to what “career” even means anymore.
Here’s what you DON'T want to do if you’re a millennial looking for work:
1. Listen to your parents
“Get a real job.” “Why don’t you go back to school?” “Take any job you can get.” This is the sort of asinine advice the people who brought you into this world are sometimes prone to making. This advice is not helpful. Why? Because it isn’t relevant to you.
You’re living in the forever recession, and things are never going back to the way they were when your parents were starting out in their careers. Yours is the Gig Economy. Act accordingly.
2. Chill too hard
Personally, I like the fact that millennials are more interested in pursuing personal fulfillment than they are scoring a promotion at Big, White and Boring. Work is lame. Life is fun. The key to life is making work as fun as possible. That said, the job of your dreams is not going to fall into your lap while you’re living with your parents and watching “Jersey Shore.”
Jessica Furseth, 31, is a freelance journalist in London and self-described “good egg.” Here’s her post on the best and worst of freelancing. And here are five things that worked for her.
Here’s what she wrote about happiness:
“As I’ve figured out how to work for myself, I have realized I operate best with hardly any system at all. One week I’ll work from the coffee shop drinking multicoloured smoothies, the next week I’ll be working in bed while living on re-heated coffee and porridge. The freedom to do it this way is half the point of freelancing, in my opinion. Not to mention how it makes me so very happy."
3. Produce nothing new
I think the biggest gift millennials will give us is their ceaseless interest in producing things that didn’t exist before. They’re making apps and art and weird things on Etsy. They’re Kickstarter musicians, online game designers and digital curators. They’re inventing job positions that didn’t exist, redefining what it means to be journalists, filmmakers and artists, getting paid to do what they love instead of love everything they do other than pull a paycheck.
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