From life as a latchkey kid to becoming connoisseurs of MTV and weathering multiple recessions, Generation X has now entered into a new, complicated era: enter the career crisis.
Late last month, The New York Times published an article called “The Gen X Career Meltdown” that’s thrown a spotlight on the often-overlooked cohort born from the mid-1960s to the end of the 1970s that is smaller than the baby boomer and millennial generations it’s sandwiched between. This week, Rob Barnett, headhunter and career advisor, author “Next Job, Best Job” joined Audacy to discuss it.
“You know, the article got a lot of people talking… the headline certainly got attention,” said Barnett.
Gen X had the unique experience of growing up with a fairly analog life filled with things such as record players, landline telephones and typewriters. Right as their careers took off, so did the internet.
Here’s some context, via The Guardian. Microsoft released its Internet Mail feature in 1996. That year, Hotmail and other companies began offering free email accounts. By 1997, there were 10 million users worldwide with free web email accounts and by 2001, “virtually every business in the developed world signed on.”
Host Rob Hart of the Noon Business Hour on Audacy’s WBBM Newsradio, a Gen Xer, started his broadcast career 25 years ago, amidst this change.
“The remarkable thing about the transition is that it happened very quickly and it happened to a lot of people... so you can’t really say that ‘maybe they weren’t future-oriented,’ because the pace of change in media, Rob, has been head-spinning,” he told Barnett.
The New York Times’ article focused on the impact of technology on Gen Xers in creative fields.
“Talk with people in their late 40s and 50s who once imagined they would be able to achieve great heights – or at least a solid career while flexing their creative muscles – and you are likely to hear about the photographer whose work dried up, the designer who can’t get hired or the magazine journalist who isn’t doing much of anything,” said the Times. More than a dozen Gen Xers were interviewed for the article.
The Independent also reported on Gen X’s career trajectory last week. It noted how we went from an era where it seemed somewhat possible for Carrie Bradshaw on “Sex and The City” to afford living in Manhattan writing one column a week to the follow up show “And Just Like That…” which depicts less rosy career situations for its key characters.
“And that all tracks with what I see among my friends now,” said author Stephen Armstrong. In the U.S., Gen X has become the first generation to earn less than their parents and now they’re caring for both their own children and their aging parents.
While things may look bleak, Barnett said its not time for Gen X to lose hope.
“A lot a people between those magic ages of 45 and 60 that had been downsized laid off and job eliminated and all those horrible other words that add up to fired,” he said. “But what it means is that you’ve got to get out there now and get the help that you need to make these career pivots.”
Even though multiple articles on the Gen X struggle have focused on the media, Barnett said technology has impacted their work in every industry.
“We’re working with job seekers every day in one-on-one sessions to help them figure out how to make a career pivot, how to have the skills that can transfer to the other industries and the other work that’s out there,” he said.
Chris Wilcha, a 53-year-old film and TV director in Los Angeles, told The New York Times that even the “sellout” jobs seem to be drying up. Hart noted that in advertising, some work has shifted to social media influencers who don’t have experience in the field, but make up for their lack of expertise with followers.
Skills Gen Xers have cultivated might seem obsolete, but Barnett said that finding a career or jobs that need that expertise might just be a matter of shifting perspective.
“There are still plenty of jobs out there in media companies, big, medium and small, but people who’ve worked in media their whole lives can now take those skills directly into brands,” he said. “Brands behave on social media just like everyone else. And a brand that’s trying to sell a product needs the skills of media people in their company to teach them how to communicate one-on-one with their consumers.”
So, how can Gen Xers make these pivots? Even in this new era, Barnett thinks the old method of networking is still important. That can look like creating a community on LinkedIn or finding ways to meet in-person with hiring managers.
“Those resumes and LinkedIns – if they look generic, if they looked like everyone else’s – you’re going to stay at the bottom of the stack,” Barnett said. “But you’ve got to figure out a way how to present yourself uniquely, credibly, and as the individual that you are.”