Wrong prong for the plug

Tamara Erickson’s book on how the Millennial generation (Gen Y) can fit in a thrive in today’s workforce has some great stuff–from a good description of Gen Y and their parents’ generation, the Baby Boomers to helpful tools in discovering occupational strengths. Erickson describes the younger generation with high acuity (they’re the first generation that had computers from birth; they want to figure things out on the job, etc.) and does so in a very accessible voice.

But there’s one major problem with this book: the target market doesn’t care! The younger people entering the workforce don’t want to be labeled (Erickson does this all over the book); they don’t want to fit in to a workforce defined by their parents; and they’re certainly not going to spend time reading a 250-page book about those things. Erickson even mentions this in the book (one of her interviewees mentions that he’s not likely to read a whole book on career strategies for generation Y).

This book is much better suited for Baby Boomers or older Gen-Xers who actually care about making the workplace viable for everyone. The Gen Y cohort will just continue doing what they want and, unfortunately, they won’t read this book.