Millennial Thought Leaders Online Conference

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Conference Sessions

 

Click Here To Download The Official Conference Brochure

 

Monday, October 26th, 2009

 

Session 1 - 12:30pm to 2:00pm EST

The New Work Ethic: Why Even the Most Talented Young Employees Are Overcomplaining and Underperforming, and What to Do About It!

Eric Chester

President and Founder, Generation Why, Inc.

Author, Employing Generation Why: Understanding, Managing, and Motivating Your New Workforce

 

About The Session

Imagine: You pull out all the stops and pay an obscene signing bonus to land the top grad. On his first day, he shows up late to meet with the CEO. Another prized recruit rocks your culture by wearing a micro mini-skirt and halter to a lunch with your longstanding client. Your young IT guy grows bored of explaining the proper login procedure to a senior manager and calls her a moron in front of her team.

What good is it to win the talent wars if the talent you’ve won arrives with a bad attitude and a lousy work ethic?

This session will reveal the ever-widening expectation gap between employers and the emerging workforce, and what educators and business leaders can do—and are doing—to  bridge it.

 

Session Outline

• The deadly erosion of America’s work ethic
• What today’s managers expect of new recruits, and why they’re disappointed
• Why being book-smart and techno savvy isn’t enough
• Five Common Assumptions about Gen Y talent that are DEAD WRONG
• Why education and corporate training need to be reinvented
• Best Practices - What top institutions and organizations are doing to build work ethic and get the emerging workforce to go ‘all in’

 

About The Presenter

Eric Chester is an originator in the Gen-Y expert arena. As a former teacher-and-coach-turned-motivational-speaker-for-youth, Eric’s spent thirty years in the school-to-work space preparing teens for the real world, and preparing educators and employers for the next generation of students and employees. He’s not an academic, but an in-the-trenches expert who has personally addressed more than two million high school and college students, authored nine books for teens, and is dialed-in to the mindset of this burgeoning generation.

Chester frequently appears on national media (Good Morning America, MSNBC, FoxNews, CNN, ABC News 20/20, etc.) and is interviewed in major publications (Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Business Week, Workforce Magazine, etc.) to provide insight and perspective to business leaders, owners, and operators. He’s worked with leading organizations like Wells Fargo, Harley-Davidson, Ohio State University, the US Army, McDonald’s, and Allstate Insurance, presenting innovative strategies for recruiting, training, managing, motivating, and retaining 16-to-24-year-olds.

 

Opening Panel - 2:30pm to 3:30pm EST

The Millennial Thought Leaders Online Conference continues with a live, interactive panel with Intern Bridge Founder Richard Bottner and millennial expert Alexandra Levit. Participants will have the opportunity to submit questions in advance and participate in this interactive discussion.

 

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

 

Session 2 - 1:00pm to 2:30pm EST

 

The Trophy Kids Go to Work: How The Millennial Generation's Attitudes And Expectations Are Shaking Up The Corporate Workplace

Ron Alsop

Author, The Trophy Kids Grow Up: How the Millennial Generation Is Shaking Up the Workplace

Retired Staff Writer\Editor, Wall Street Journal

 

About The Session

Millennials are proving to be a complex generation with some conflicting characteristics that make them challenging for companies to manage. Although they are technology savvy and achievement oriented, most millennials don’t excel at leadership and independent problem solving. They crave the freedom and flexibility of a virtual office, but they also want rules and responsibilities to be spelled out explicitly. “It’s all about me,” might seem to be the mantra of this self-absorbed and exhibitionistic bunch of young people, yet they also tend to be very civic-minded and philanthropic.

 

Session Outline

• The primary distinguishing traits of the millennial generation and the factors that helped shape these young people
• Similarities and differences among millennials around the globe
• The significant role that parents play in this generation's world
• Millennials' great expectations in the workplace
• The generation's need for feedback and direction
• The pros and cons of multitasking and the generation's technology savvy
• The millennials' demands for work-life balance
• Recruiting and retention strategies for this fickle generation
• Millennials' dream careers
• Managing generational conflicts
• The recession's impact on the millennials

 

About The Presenter

Ron Alsop, the author of the new book The Trophy Kids Grow Up: How the Millennial Generation Is Shaking Up the Workplace, is a freelance writer and editor, as well as a public speaker and consultant on the millennial generation, corporate reputation, business ethics, social and environmental responsibility, business education trends, and career development. His other books include The 18 Immutable Laws of Corporate Reputation: Creating, Protecting, and Repairing Your Most Valuable Asset and The Wall Street Journal Guide to the Top Business Schools

A longtime writer and editor for The Wall Street Journal, he served as marketing columnist and business-education columnist. He also was editor of the Journal’s Marketplace page and its annual rankings of M.B.A. programs and corporate reputation. In recent years, he has lectured frequently at leading universities and business schools such as Wharton, Berkeley, Tuck, HEC Paris, Darden, Carnegie Mellon, and New York University. He also addresses international conferences on the millennial generation, corporate reputation, and business education, and he has advised such companies as FedEx, Dell, Dun & Bradstreet, Fujifilm, and State Farm Insurance on reputation, branding, and generational issues. A graduate of Indiana University, he lives in Summit, New Jersey.

 

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

 

Session 3 - 12:00pm to 1:30pm EST

Using social media to recruit and retain millennials

Dan Schawbel

Author, Me 2.0: Build A Powerful Brand To Achieve Career Success

Publisher, Personal Branding Magazine

 

About The Session

With nearly 80 million millennials, employers are desperately trying to figure out how to recruit and retain them, at the least possible cost.  Traditional methods of recruitment, through job boards and corporate websites, are losing relevancy and luster.  Now, with the advent of social technologies, there are new strategies and platforms available for companies to successfully brand themselves as the top place to work and grab the top talent.

 

Session Outline

• Learn how to develop an employer branding strategy.
• Discover how to use social networks like Facebook and Twitter to recruit millennials.
• Understand how to interact with millennials on social networks.
• Learn how to build a blog to attract millennials and keep them involved in your corporate culture.
• Get the tools needed to listen to conversations about your brand online and do something about it.
• Hear how millennials want to be talked to in social networks and how you can build those relationships.

 

About The Presenter

Dan Schawbel is the leading personal branding expert for Gen-Y. He is the author of the bestselling career book, Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success (Kaplan, April 2009). With over 800,000 results for his name in Google, Fast Company calls Dan a “personal branding force of nature.” He is the founder of the Personal Branding Blog®, which was the #1 job blog by Careerbuilder in 2008, is an AdAge top 50 marketing blog and is syndicated by Reuters, Forbes, Fox Business and other major networks.  Dan is also the publisher of Personal Branding Magazine®, head judge for the Personal Brand Awards® and director of Personal Branding TV®.  He is BusinessWeek's youngest columnist and a columnist for Metro US, Mashable and other high profile sites.  Dan is a keynote speaker at colleges and universities, such as Harvard and MIT and he helps both individuals and companies with branding.

 

Session 4 - 2:00pm to 3:30pm EST

The Millennial Generation: How Does Higher Education Fit in The Picture

Rachel Reiser

Author, Millennials On Board

Associate Dean, Babson College

 

About The Session

The Millennial Generation is comprised of individuals born between 1982 and 2002 - the oldest of them have hit the workplace, and hit it hard. They are often characterized by their inclination towards ultra-achievement, hyper-scheduling, excessive parental involvement and attachment, team-orientation, optimism, and a disproportionate orientation towards technology. They are powerful personalities with high expectations for themselves and others, and perhaps the most important Millennial behavior is their expectation for more selectivity and options.  They have grown up with a huge array of choices and they believe that it is their birthright. The American Higher Education environment, particularly at our more selective and elite institutions, has been a strong factor in perpetuating many of the Millennial qualities, particularly their expectation for personalization and customization features that meet their changing needs, interests and tastes – and this has significant implications for the workplace.

Millennials have been extensively researched and written about in academia, but only recently in a business context as they become members of the workforce. This webinar considers prevalent research and examines the psychography of this unique generation, with attention to its relationship to the educational environments of which Millennials have been a part and the resulting implications for the workplace.

 

Session Outline

• An overview of the general demographics and psychographics of the Millennial generation.
• A discussion of experiential factors that impact their outlook and assumptions for their work environments, and the associated highlights and hurdles that these present.
• Consideration of key “lessons learned" and action steps that organizations can take in response to these various issues.
• Interactive discussion: participants will invited into the discussion and asked to share best practices with the group.

 

About the presenter
Rachel I. Reiser is the founder and principle of Generationally Speaking; Generationally Speaking provides consultation to companies and other organizations in helping them to consider their work in the age of the Millennial Generation. Rachel is also currently Associate Dean for Academic Services at Babson College in Wellesley, MA.

In a career spanning over 15 years in higher education, Rachel has held positions at several schools working directly with college students, providing her with the opportunity to experience first-hand the changing characteristics of today’s late adolescent. This, coupled with her own observations, has fostered her professional interest in generational studies. Rachel has researched, written, and presented extensively on the demographics and psychographics of the Millennial generation.
Rachel is an active member several professional organizations, and is the 2006 recipient of the Massachusetts Association for Women in Education Award for Professional Excellence.

Rachel is also the author of “Millennials on Board: The Impact of The Rising Generation on the Workplace,” a new book that directly addresses the bearing of this emerging generation on today’s work environments.

 

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

 

Session 5 - 1:30pm to 2:30pm EST

 

Millennials Seeking Meaningful Work: How to Lend a Helping Hand

Alexandra Levit

Author, Success For Hire and MillennialTweet

Columnist, Wall Street Journal

 

About The Session

This session will address techniques for advising Millennials on finding their holy grail - meaningful work!  We'll discuss how to instruct them on doing a simple self-assessment, networking in highly competitive fields, formatting a resume to showcase the right skills, and gaining critical work experience.  The session will also address how to set realistic expectations and how to motivate Millennial clients over a long job search.

 

Session Outline

• Learn the "four questions" associated with a simple (and free) self-assessment
• Advise Millennial clients on creating a roster of general and specific skills
• Show them where to research careers that map to their self-assessment and skills
• Guide them in networking effectively in their chosen fields
• Help them create functional resume that highlights transferable skills and unusual but relevant work experiences
• Mentor them in wading into a "dream job" a little at a time

 

About The Presenter

Alexandra Levit is a nationally recognized business and workplace author and speaker. A syndicated columnist for the Wall Street Journal and Metro US, Alexandra has authored several books, including the brand new MillennialTweet, a book of all tweets on best practices for managing the Millennials.

Alexandra makes frequent national media appearances and has been featured in thousands of outlets including the New York Times, USA Today, National Public Radio, ABC News, Fox News, CNBC, the Associated Press, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, and Fortune, and her articles regularly appear on the home pages of CNN, MSN, and Yahoo!. Known as one of the premiere spokespeople of her generation, Alexandra regularly speaks at conferences, universities, and corporations including Campbell's Soup, CIGNA, the Federal Reserve Bank, McDonalds,and Whirlpool — on issues facing modern employees.

 

Friday, October 30th, 2009

 

Closing Panel - 1:30pm to 2:30pm EST

The Millennial Thought Leaders Online Conference will conclude with a live and interactive questions & answers session with our millennial experts. The closing panel will feature Ron Alsop and Rachel Reiser.

 

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