Smart is the New Rich: Money Guide for Millennials

Chapter 5Millennials at Work

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Millennials will make up half of the U.S. workforce by 2020.

Let's get this out of the way right away. Millennials have a pretty bad reputation in the workplace. Don't shoot the messenger—I'm not saying the stereotypes (Google the phrase “millennials at work” and you'll find insults) are correct, but you'll have to be careful to prove them wrong on your own. In any job interview or corporate setting, it pays to be aware that somewhere in the back of the mind of the hiring manager, there is fear that you have an unrealistically high opinion of yourself and that your parents never made you work hard for anything.

Millennials will be about half the workforce in the next few years, so hiring, training, and promoting good millennial talent is critical for companies. But human resources departments are struggling with how to manage millennials. Sean Bisceglia of Scout Exchange, an electronic recruitment marketplace, surveyed 20,000 human resources managers and found plenty of troubling stereotypes.

The people who hire and manage millennials say they're pretty worried about some of your generation's work habits. Most don't want to work more than 40 hours a week, and many lack person-to-person skills.

“Young employees have overoptimistic expectations about how quickly they'll climb up the corporate ladder,” Bisceglia wrote in an opinion piece in ...