Chapter 17

I attended the Mid-Atlantic Career Counseling Conference in Lancaster today and was not surprised to learn that many of the topics focused on at the conference related to our discussions in class. Always having my eyes and ears open for material for my blog post, specifically, I was also thinking about the issues addressed in Chapter 17 and discussed in class last week to which to relate the conference material. Out of all the presentations I participated in today, I really enjoyed the material presented by Dr. Mark Taylor, who is a nationally renowned speaker that focuses on multigenerational career counseling. In his research, he describes the traits of specific cohort groups like Traditionals, Babyboomers, Generation Xers (that's me), and the newest generation, Generation NeXt, which will be the students that we'll be counseling in schools. Brown also addresses this issue of the "who" in the labor force in the text, citing long and short-term trends, as well as describing the population that actually that actually fills the jobs available. Brown touches on the "who" of the workforce in fairly general terms, indicating that factors such as birth rate, immigration, longevity, and retirement rates are influencing the demographics of the workforce. The pool of workers is also becoming increasingly diverse as a result of these factors, with respect to age, race, and other variables. I found Taylor's discussion helpful to fill in the pieces of the general trends described in the text. According to Dr. Taylor, the generation that we now need to focus on and provide career counseling for is Generation NeXt. These students are born anytime from 1986 till the present, so many of us may even be on the cusp or may be part of this generation. Generally raised by independent, pragmatic, Generation Xers, these students are part of the era of the wanted, precious, protected child that grew up in child-centric households. These children may have had helicopter parents that acted more as friends and in service to them rather than the reverse. Unfortunately, this background creates problems in the workforce when Generation NeXt students began working with and rubbing up against more traditional Babyboomers and more practical Generation Xers. Taylor's ultimate recommendation is to be aware of the various nuances of each generation and their typical defining traits in order to work with them most effectively. I think this is also Brown's underlying recommendation when describing the various cultural and demographic influences of the workforce. Brown, D. (2012). Career information, career counseling, and career development (10th ed.). New York, NY: Pearson Education, Inc.