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Friday, November 7, 2008
"Kids Today"
The event industry (or certainly the UK one) often laments about the dearth of keen, eager and bright-eyed new blood coming into the industry - and staying there.
All too often the new "marketing exec" arrives one year, and the next they disappear either on a gap year or drift off into another industry entirely.
Even worse is the recurrent shortage of motivated sales people. Once there was a steady queue of graduates lining up for media sales and expo sales jobs, hungry for the chance to earn commission levels that gave them decent salaries straight out of college, and eager to use sales as a step into a career.
The PlayStation generation now seem to regard anything that involves "ringing people up" as being tantamount to a call center job - which is of course beneath them - and with the print media industry in decline as well finding young sales talent is harder than ever.
But now we are diving head first into a recession.
Graduate jobs with career paths and training courses will suddenly become scarcer than "use-only-once" grey carpet tiles in a trade-show aisle.
Tarquin and his 2.2, returning from his gap year surfing in Antigua may well find that his ability to pick and choose jobs is now restricted to being rejected after filling in a McDonald's application form or a Burger King one.
Will this means exhibition organisers suddenly find themselves a far more attractive proposition for the next set of graduates to hit the market?
Will hard times lead to more and more hungry potential sales people answering that "A Career in Media (ahem, shsssshhh, it's that dirty word, Sales)" ad in the Guardian instead of flicking over it?
It will be an interesting test indeed.
In theory, supply and demand will work in the industry's favour.
But even with less alternatives, there must still be a significant chance that the "me first", "OK-magazine" generation may still prefer to wait for jobs in organisations and industries they will actually have heard of, where they can see they could gain some transferrable skills, and still get home comforts like training - and not be exposed to the performance-scrutiny of working for a small privately owned entrepeneurial firms where the owner/CEO watches their impact on revenues and costs on a daily basis.
Time will tell, but it's by no means certain that supply and demand will in itself be enough to make our "invisible" industry of SMB employers built on the backs of results-driven sales jobs attractive to "kids today".
All too often the new "marketing exec" arrives one year, and the next they disappear either on a gap year or drift off into another industry entirely.
Even worse is the recurrent shortage of motivated sales people. Once there was a steady queue of graduates lining up for media sales and expo sales jobs, hungry for the chance to earn commission levels that gave them decent salaries straight out of college, and eager to use sales as a step into a career.
The PlayStation generation now seem to regard anything that involves "ringing people up" as being tantamount to a call center job - which is of course beneath them - and with the print media industry in decline as well finding young sales talent is harder than ever.
But now we are diving head first into a recession.
Graduate jobs with career paths and training courses will suddenly become scarcer than "use-only-once" grey carpet tiles in a trade-show aisle.
Tarquin and his 2.2, returning from his gap year surfing in Antigua may well find that his ability to pick and choose jobs is now restricted to being rejected after filling in a McDonald's application form or a Burger King one.
Will this means exhibition organisers suddenly find themselves a far more attractive proposition for the next set of graduates to hit the market?
Will hard times lead to more and more hungry potential sales people answering that "A Career in Media (ahem, shsssshhh, it's that dirty word, Sales)" ad in the Guardian instead of flicking over it?
It will be an interesting test indeed.
In theory, supply and demand will work in the industry's favour.
But even with less alternatives, there must still be a significant chance that the "me first", "OK-magazine" generation may still prefer to wait for jobs in organisations and industries they will actually have heard of, where they can see they could gain some transferrable skills, and still get home comforts like training - and not be exposed to the performance-scrutiny of working for a small privately owned entrepeneurial firms where the owner/CEO watches their impact on revenues and costs on a daily basis.
Time will tell, but it's by no means certain that supply and demand will in itself be enough to make our "invisible" industry of SMB employers built on the backs of results-driven sales jobs attractive to "kids today".
Labels: expo, graduate, industry, jobs
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