Pre-Internet Days Shed Light on E-mail Etiquette

Life before electronic communication is a foggy memory for the oldest millennials. For the youngest members of Generation Y it's basically an incomprehensible reality. E-mail has been a routine part of communication for most millennials.

But despite its familiarity, e-mail blunders are all too common. There are a number of books and articles that have been written to help people communicate more effectively over e-mail (in fact, I've linked to one such item at the end of this post).

But navigating the immediacy and accessibility that e-mail offers is tricky. This is particularly true for people who have little awareness of what communication was like before such efficient means existed, and this obliviousness can lead to trouble in the workplace.

Although most e-mail oversights turn out to be little more than an embarrassing faux pas, serious electronic misconduct can lead to an employee's dismissal. A study from the ePolicy Institute and the American Management Association found that 25 percent of surveyed employers have fired an employee for violating e-mail policy, according to an article about dismissals related to e-mail issues.

For millennials, e-mail problems can first crop up in college. "To: Professor @ University .edu Subject: Why It's All About Me," a 2006 New York Times article examined how the issue plays out on campus. According to the article, professors complain that "students seem to view them as available around the clock, sending a steady stream of e-mail messages — from 10 a week to 10 after every class — that are too informal or downright inappropriate." Although students' experience in college might help them improve some aspects of their e-mail etiquette, the mistakes don't magically disappear after they leave the Ivory Tower.

Millennials can learn a lot about appropriate electronic conduct by consulting older coworkers who have a greater awareness about how e-mail has changed communication in the office. Understanding the context can make for more effective communication.

Rick Holton, 56 — the founder of Holton, a communications consulting company — says that apart from speeding up the process of communication in business, e-mail and other tools have made marketing cheaper and easier and have contributed to work-life balance because it makes working from home a lot easier. But it's important to be aware of the drawbacks.

"E-mail has reduced the amount of personal contact we get… It can keep us out of the loop at the companies we work for, and managers can forget who we are if they never see us. Electronic communication also contributes to America's growing solipsism. Baby boomers are self-absorbed, no question, but their children (and now grandchildren) are far worse, all of which may have some troubling implications for American society," Holton says.

"Young people who have grown up with electronic communications should learn that communication isn't in the volume, it's in the content," according to Holton. He adds, "…the volume of information is far less important than having it be the right information."

Holton recommends considering what your communication goals are and then determining what your approach should be. Audience is important too. "Many older people don't care much for e-mail, even if they have access to it. Businesspeople in the South, I've often found, send handwritten thank you notes and expect to get handwritten notes in return," he says.

Holton's six tips for writing more effective business e-mails are available here. Author Judith Kallos operates the Business E-mail Etiquette blog, which has some great posts about things to be aware of when using e-mail at work.

At Work, Size Does Matter

Recently, I started thinking about how company size affects work experience after talking to a friend about his new job. He is one of five employees at his office and there are no satellite offices in other cities. I was intrigued because I've never worked at a company that small. I've had some internship experiences at companies with fewer than 50 employees. While these gave me a glimpse into what it is like to work in a smaller environment, being an intern just isn't the same as being a "real employee" for various reasons. The rest of my experience has been in larger environments and the conversation got me thinking about what both environments can offer millennials at the start of their careers. I was further intrigued when I came across this 2007 survey from NetWorld, which shows that the larger a company is, the less likely employees are to say they are very satisfied with their jobs. For the purposes of this post and the sake of clarity, I'll define small companies as those consisting of about 100 or fewer employees. Large companies are those with 500 or more employees and medium size is everything in between.

My hunch is that during the first few years of your career, smaller companies could allow you to be a lot more hands-on from the start. Based on my own experience and the experience of friends who work in small environments, it seems like it is generally easier to be given and to take on more responsibility at a small company because there are fewer coworkers to pick up the slack. At small companies, job descriptions tend to be less fixed than they are at large organizations so it is easier to step outside your everyday responsibilities and try out other roles, which can be great for your professional development. You also get to interact with employees that are more senior than you are quite often. "I see the big cheese daily and work directly for him," my friend observed.

When I think about the different types of small offices I am familiar with, most of the examples I can come up with are nonprofit organizations. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that I'm based in D.C. Still, I think it's a relevant observation because nonprofits do seem to make up a significant number of the smaller offices that frequently have openings available to employees at the beginning of their careers. Unfortunately, some of my ideas (based partially on experience and partially on stereotypes) about working at nonprofits illustrate what can be really bad about working for a small company. Not only can you take on more responsibility, but you often wind up being required to juggle a whole lot of responsibilities outside of your job description whether you asked for it or not. At nonprofits, people tend to assume that you're passionate about their work and that the money is secondary. They're also obviously not-for-profit, which often means that they're on a tight budget. So for a nonprofit employee, this means little or zero compensation for your extra hours of work. But you're probably learning a lot too.

On the other hand, the opportunities at a large company can really enhance your professional development, even if your job responsibilities initially do not. When you're entry-level at a big corporation, you're often there to fulfill specific duties and your responsibilities are probably the sort of thing you can master quite quickly. The well-oiled natured of many large companies tend to make it more challenging to step outside your assigned job and take on more, although it's not impossible. But the real professional development at a large company lies in the fact that the place has more resources, which can benefit you in a bunch of different ways. Some big organizations offer employee training sessions that focus on everything from computer skills to presentation techniques. Many large corporations also love to fill management and senior positions from within and some have internal educational programs to help with this purpose. It's a lot more theory-based, but an ambitious employee can usually find ways to work himself or herself into situations or positions where the theory can be put into practice.

When you're job searching or weighing up job offers, you probably won't have the luxury of picking from companies of many different sizes. But it's worth considering how the size of the organization will influence your professional development. Everyone will have a unique answer for this question, but considering your ideal can certainly prevent you from winding up in a situation that doesn't work well for you. In general, working at a small company offers you the opportunity to hit-the-ground running, while the experience at a large company is more of an exercise in armchair observation and assertive initiative. Individuals experiences obviously vary and there are many other factors that will play into what a job means for your professional development. As my friend who works at the company of five noted, "It all depends on who your boss is, if they are willing to let you take on major projects etc." And that's the subject of a different post.

Blogs That Launch Careers – Three Examples

If you've seriously considered blogging, you have probably come across lists and reasons why a well-maintained blog can be good for your career. The online exposure can lead to new job opportunities and there are numerous examples of people who have advanced in their careers or even changed careers because of blogging. Employee Evolution is a case in point.

For me, there's something extremely satisfying about coming across a case in point or proof of concept. In blogging and virtually any other endeavor, ideas are the easy part. But the implementation, perseverance and business savvy required to move from concept to finished product are where the real challenges arise. So when it comes to blogs, I'm really impressed by individuals who start their own small operations and create something significant enough to capture the ever-expanding blogosphere's attention.

Millennials around the world are championing this model and using blogs to raise their visibility and launch exciting careers. We're certainly not the only generation doing it, but we are the first to have the opportunity to start our careers online. Blogs provide the opportunity to become a recognized expert pretty quickly. They accelerate the pace of networking and allow you to be evaluated based on your individual qualities. Conventional approaches to becoming established often take a lot longer. More simply put: it takes years to climb the corporate ladder, but your blog's readership can explode in fewer than 12 months.

Case in point: the three millennial bloggers briefly profiled below. Although there are other comparable success stories, I've taken a special interest in these bloggers over time and have followed their successes. I learn so much from this stuff and I welcome comments with similar stories.

Samantha Brett - AskSam
In 2005, Brett published "Luv'n Txt: The Secrets of Text Appeal," a book about technology and dating. It was so well received that she decided to approach the Sydney Morning Herald with the idea for a column. On Valentine's Day 2006, Brett's blog Ask Sam launched. It started receiving tens of thousands of page hits and hundreds of daily comments almost instantly. Brett quickly became Australia's go-to-guru for relationship and dating advice. This visibility recently earned her an endorsement opportunity with Impulse True Love perfume. Since the launch of her blog, she has also published a second book and appears frequently in the Australian media.

Jon Ostrower – FlightBlogger
Last March, Ostrower, 24, started blogging about aviation. Flying had always been a passion and readers of his blog, FlightBlogger, quickly picked up on his affinity for the subject and detailed understanding of the flight industry. After just six months, FlightBlogger had accumulated almost 400,000 visitors and a loyal audience. It had become so popular that the aviation news and jobs Web site Flight Global brought Ostrower on board so that he could blog full-time. As I type, Ostrower is blogging away at the Singapore Airshow, typical of the assignments he gets in his new job.

Brian Stelter – TV Decoder
Stelter is probably the most well known on this list. His transformation from anonymous college freshman blogger to New York Times journalist has been well documented in the media. In 2004, Stelter launched CableNewser, which quickly became a staple for anyone who pays attention to the TV news business. After a few months, he began talks with Mediabistro.com and eventually joined the site. The blog was renamed TVNewser and Stelter started blogging for cash. He continued working on the blog until he graduated, establishing a solid reputation as a journalist and TV news expert. Nowadays, Stelter can be found writing and blogging for the New York Times, where he has worked since graduating from college in 2007.

Millennials in the Newsroom

As millennials come of age, they're infiltrating the work force in all areas and all industries. Many, like me, are becoming journalists. And some, like me, are continually re-evaluating this career decision. While I think you can find recovering journalists in almost every generation (I've chatted with way too many people who seem to have concluded that being a journalist was more appealing on paper than in practice), there are some unique reasons why the news room can be a toxic place for millennials. At the same time, the digitalization of news is providing opportunities that mesh really well with the Gen Y mentality.

Keen observers of Gen Y know that this generation craves work-life balance. For us, sacrificing a personal life to climb the ranks at work isn't a reasonable trade-off. We want jobs that can accommodate life, not a life that has to accommodate the job – an aspiration that is often at odds with the status quo in many work places. It is an especially lofty goal when it comes to journalism, a career that often requires late hours and weekend work to meet deadlines.

Predictably, millennials in journalism aren't happy about those long hours. According to a 2005 Poynter survey, journalists between 20 and 34 years old were most likely to say they had considered leaving journalism because of work-life balance issues. And newsroom vets generally aren't getting it. Danna Walker, an adjunct journalism professor at American University who also works as an editor and producer at CBS, says that "the older generation didn't know what to think" when millennials first showed up in newsrooms. "The assumption is that millennials aren't as willing to pay their dues," she says. In fact, the whole "pay your dues" mentality is "worn out," according to Bea Fields, author of "Millennial Leaders." Control tactics do nothing to attract and retain Gen Y employees, as Fields explains over at Y Blog.

Newsrooms also rarely meet Gen Y's mentorship and training expectations. A young journalist recently submitted a question to "Ask the Recruiter" columnist Joe Grimm, a well-know recruitment and development editor for the Detroit Free Press. The recent graduate wrote that he got "minimal feedback" from the editors at his paper, leaving him with "no idea" whether he was doing a good job or a bad job. "If misery loves company, you have plenty of both," Grimm writes in response, citing a survey that found that lack of training is the number one complaint that journalists have about the profession.

But millennials aren't totally doomed to an otherwise unhappy or non-existent future in journalism. The Internet and multimedia news can add a "wonderful dynamic" to newsrooms, says Jill Geisler, a journalism leadership and management specialist at Poynter. Young journalists with technical skills are in big demand to staff news Web sites. As a result, many new hires are commanding respect from day one because they're often the only person in the newsroom with the multimedia know-how to perform certain tasks. "As editors realize they need new approaches and people with new media skills, younger folks are becoming more valued," Walker writes in an e-mail. A Gen Y friend who works for NBC in Washington, D.C. tells me that she and some of her other colleagues are sought after by their older newsroom counterparts who are hoping that the millennials can teach them a thing or two about the computer programs they learned in journalism school. In many situations, multimedia is not only allowing Gen Yers to get a foot in the door, but it's immediately positioning them in roles where they are taken seriously from the start.

In addition, the expansion of online news is also catering to Gen Y's job-hopping tendencies. New positions are popping up in many companies that are launching or expanding Web sites to complement print work. Job-hopping within the industry is common, observes Meg Martin, a multimedia producer for the Roanoke Times. "There's a lot of crossover and a lot of news organizations are encouraging people to explore different positions," Martin says.

The news industry is facing a moment of significant challenges and prospects in terms of recruitment of Gen Y journalists. Will digital news be journalism's proverbial "knight in shining armor" when it comes to recruiting millennials and then retaining them for longer than five minutes? Could it set journalism apart from other industries in the quest to adapt to Gen Y? The answer will certainly depend on how individual newsrooms resolve work-life balance concerns, training needs and other issues that matter to millennials. But for me and the thousands of other millennials with notoriously high student loan payments, the bottom line might just end up getting the largest say.