The Trophy Kids Grow Up: How the Millennial Generation is Shaking Up the Workplace
Author: Ron Alsop
Praise for The Trophy Kids Grow Up
"Ron Alsop provides the definitive guide to attracting talent—with this most in-depth, balanced, and clearly articulated description of the generation now choosing where to write their next personal success story."
—Robert J. Dolan, dean, Stephen M. Ross School of Business, University of Michigan
"In The Trophy Kids Grow Up, Ron Alsop has done his homework to understand what makes this remarkably talented generation tick. This thorough and insightful work will serve as the guidebook for those looking to win in the war for talent."
—Matthew Bennett, director of global recruiting, Oliver Wyman General Management Consulting
"Drawing on years of reporting experience, as well as current research on the subject, Ron Alsop provides a clear and compelling picture of the millennial generation. This book will yield insights for anyone who interacts with today's teens and twentysomethings—educators and administrators, corporate recruiters and managers, marketers, fundraisers, and nonprofit executives alike."
—Joel Podolny, dean and William S. Beinecke professor of management,Yale School of Management
"Ron Alsop's The Trophy Kids Grow Up looks beyond the campus gates to see how today's young people are changing the work force and the very nature of work itself. Parents who want a good return on their education investment should read this book and apply its lessons to the emerging young adults in their household."
—James A. Boyle, president, College Parents of America
"As organizations go global and continue to diversify, it will be critical to furtherunderstand the millennial generation in order to successfully recruit, retain, and develop the best talent. Ron Alsop delivers an insightful, down-to-earth read on Gen Y and proves why we can't afford to overlook their attitudes, ambitions, and behaviors. The Trophy Kids Grow Up is a must-read for educators and employers alike."
—Frank Brown, dean, INSEAD Business School
Publishers Weekly
Alsop, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, explores the emergence of the 80 million strong millennial generation into the workplace and the resulting ramifications in this insightful and in-depth look at Generation Y. Born between 1980 and 2001, "millennials" are a new breed of student, worker and global citizen, with distinctly different-often paradoxical-values and motivations. Millennials have a high sense of entitlement but are also philanthropic and community-minded; they set a high premium on career success but are incorrigible job-hoppers and rarely exhibit loyalty to any particular place of employment; their commitment is to self-determination and to garnering as many skills as possible before moving on in pursuit of their "dream job." Based on data collected from interviews with student recruiters, particularly in management consulting, and at accounting and investment banking firms, Alsop explains how companies can take the lead in understanding and reaching out to Generation Y and what organizations can expect in their new hires. This well-crafted book will help companies adapt to meet the desires and demands of the millennial generation and retain the best talent. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Table of Contents:
1 The Trophy Kids 1
2 Great Expectations 23
3 Apron Strings 49
4 Take Your Parents to Work 75
5 How Am I Doing? 97
6 Checklist Kids 115
7 Master Jugglers 135
8 Free to Be Me 163
9 Recruiting in Cyberspace 187
10 Dream Jobs 211
11 A Generous Generation 225
About the Author 245
Index 247
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Liar's Poker: Rising through the Wreckage on Wall Street
Author: Michael Lewis
In this shrewd and wickedly funny book, Michael Lewis describes an astonishing era and his own rake's progress through a powerful investment bank. From an unlikely beginning (art history at Princeton?) he rose in two short years from Salomon Brothers trainee to Geek (the lowest form of life on the trading floor) to Big Swinging Dick, the most dangerous beast in the jungle, a bond salesman who could turn over millions of dollars' worth of doubtful bonds with just one call.
With the eye and ear of a born storyteller, Michael Lewis shows us how things really worked on Wall Street. In the Salomon training program a roomful of aspirants is stunned speechless by the vitriolic profanity of the Human Piranha; out on the trading floor, bond traders throw telephones at the heads of underlings and Salomon chairman Gutfreund challenges his chief trader to a hand of liar's poker for one million dollars; around the world in London, Tokyo, and New York, bright young men like Michael Lewis, connected by telephones and computer terminals, swap gross jokes and find retail buyers for the staggering debt of individual companies or whole countries.
The bond traders, wearing greed and ambition and badges of honor, might well have swaggered straight from the pages of Bonfire of the Vanities. But for all thier outrageous behavior, they were in fact presiding over enormous changes in the world economy. Lewis's job, simply described, was to transfer money, in the form of bonds, from those outside America who saved to those inside America who consumed. In doing so, he generated tens of millions of dollars for Salomon Brothers, and earned for himself a ringside seat on the greatest financial spectacle of the decade: the leveraging of America.
Library Journal
As described by Lewis, liar's poker is a game played in idle moments by workers on Wall Street, the objective of which is to reward trickery and deceit. With this as a metaphor, Lewis describes his four years with the Wall Street firm Salomon Brothers, from his bizarre hiring through the training program to his years as a successful bond trader. Lewis illustrates how economic decisions made at the national level changed securities markets and made bonds the most lucrative game on the Street. His description of the firm's personalities and of the events from 1984 through the crash of October 1987 are vivid and memorable. Readers of Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities ( LJ 11/15/87) are likely to enjoy this personal memoir. BOMC and Fortune Book Club selection.-- Joseph Barth, U.S. Military Acad . Lib., West Point, N.Y.
