Honest & Underemployed - Generation Me

The generation captured in the film "Clerks" is known for being honest, direct, downright profane in how they talk.  And it's the first generation since the Great Depression who is having a dickens of a time breaking into the work world.  Could there be a correlation between its  verbal ways and its DOA in the job market?

Jean M. Twenge, Ph.D. psychologist, confirms what I've observed about the ham-handed verbal behavior of these young people.  Twenge calls them Generation Me. In her book by that title, she describes their mission to tell it as it is, in copious detail and often with expletives not deleted.  If you doubt that anyone would be this verbally unfiltered read their messaging on bulletin boards such as mediabistro.com.  Their parents reared them to "be themselves" so they just figure they're "being themselves."

All this is amazing.  I'm a presentation coach who helps everyone from C-level executives to unemployed professionals to be their best selves.  Given that the global job market is imploding, those who want to stay working work hard on making the right impression in their public speaking.  Management expert Tom Peters tells us in these volatile economic times, we have to carve out for ourselves a "personal brand." Key in that personal branding in how we talk - in all professional situations.

Twenge provides a telling anecdote.  The company head drops in the workplace.  He asks the young employee how she is doing.  Not bad, she answers, except for a hangover.  A hangover.  Could be a skit from "Saturday Night Live."

How could those concerned about the economic future of this generation get these young people to present themselves more effectively?  Here are some recommendations which help my youthful clients do a public speaking 180.

• Explain public speaking is a situation of choices.  Some choices work in some situations and would be a disaster in others.  Your career depends on the choices you are willing to make.

• Erving Goffman's "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life" might be a useful read.  Famous sociologist Goffman tells us that even the butcher in a rural village knows to present himself in different ways in different social contexts.

• Listen to how successful professionals talk, in the office, on the commuter train, at the country club, coaching the Little League.  You might notice that they have a menu of conversational approaches.  They have learned how to glide smoothly from one to the other.

Side Note:  In a Dale Carnegie public speaking seminar a member of Generation Me started his presentation being just himself.  The instructor stopped him.  The youth asked why.  The instructor answered that such a way of talking is offensive.  And contains way too many details - or what Generation Me labels TMI.  Another option for helping Generation Me succeed is to attend Dale Carnegie.