Millennials are the startup generation, by default

They're narcissistic, creative, less likely to be team players & more likely to work for themselves

With information at our fingertips, it's easy to feel empowered and at times narcissistic. The latter trait appears to be evident across the millennial generation (also known as Generation Y), according to hiring managers surveyed, in a recent study conducted by Elance-oDesk and consulting firm Millennial Branding. 

It doesn't seem all that surprising. After all, this is the generation (21 yrs old to 33 years old) whose teenage and early-adult years have been filled with "selfies" - a self-portrait of oneself. To wit, the word was added to the Oxford English dictionary in 2013. 

This generation of narcissists is also expected to become the largest generation in the US workforce in 2015. This is up from 36% today, according to Dan Schawbel, founder of Millennial Branding. 

Yikes! Should we be afraid? Will our workplace be run by self-absorbed Gatsbyesque egomaniacs?

To be sure, the study asked hiring managers (all of whom were born between 1965 to 1981 and are in my Gen Y generation - 33 yrs old to 49 yrs old) to ascribe characteristics to the generation that more likely demonstrated it. They only had two generations to choose from, their own - Generation X, those born between 1965 to 1984, or the younger Gen Y.

I can tell you that my 13-yr-old Gen Z son, whose phone holds more computing power than the computers that landed the first astronauts on the moon and who tells me he wouldn't be the man he is today if it weren't for YouTube, is far more likely to be narcissistic than most 20 yrs olds, and my two year old tops them all.

Rest assured, when these Gen Y types are hiring managers, they will likely believe their generation is less narcissistic than the younger.

But I digress. There's more to this study than just narcissism. It is a look at how millennials work, and their propensity to follow or create their own path. You could say they are the startup generation, but only by default.

Given that this group essentially moved into the workforce during the worst financial slump since the Great Depression (the youngest Gen Y person was 15 years old, while the oldest in their mid-20's in 2008) and then the worst five-year-recovery ever, it's easy to see why they wouldn't hold their elders in the highest regard and they'd look inward for their own salvation. 

The numbers bear this out. Some 40% of unemployed workers, or 4.6 million workers, are millennials, according US Census data analyzed recently by Georgetown University Center on Educaiton and the Worforce. In June of this year, while the unemployment rate dropped to 6.1%, the unemployment rate for 18-29 year olds was 15%. 

With job insecurity like this, it's no wonder that in the Elance-oDesk study, 79% of millennials would consider quitting their regular job and working for themselves in the future, if only to ensure that receiving unemployment isn't part of their career trajectory. If they didn't come into the workforce knowing job security, it's highly unlikely they'd expect it, even if they are the lucky 60% of their generation that have it. 

"I can’t blame this generation. I can’t blame them for focusing on themselves. They’re reinventing what it means to be successful," said Jaleh Bisharat, SVP of Marketing at Elance-oDesk.  

Ironically, it's this generation that is in demand. 

According to the study, and not surprisingly, millennials are more technologically adept. Indeed, the older Gen Y's were around 2 yrs old when the Internet started becoming commercialized, and Yahoo and Amazon were going public. By the time these children were required to start doing some research papers in 6th grade, they were already able to access information at their fingertips with Google and Wikipedia.

Hence this generation should have the skills to be more productive. 

"This is the first digital native generation," said Bisharat. "We as hiring managers need to figure out how to attract and retain these people." 

Yet, as we've seen above, the challenge with this group is that 1) there may not be enough jobs for them and 2) they're not likely to be satisfied, even if they landed a job. 

Nearly two-thirds of millennials expect to stay in their job fewer than three years. This compares to five years for Gen X and seven years for the Baby Boomer generation and 10 years for those over 66 years old, said Schawbel. He also pointed out that 82% of millennials believe it's far easier to start a business than ever before because of technology. 

Yet starting a company and being a free agent are two different endeavors. Externalities shaping today's decisions are causing this group to start companies because it's easier to do so, and at times, they have no choice. It doesn't mean these workers can build a startup, defined as a temporary organization seeking a scalable and repeatable business model, according to Steve Blank.  

Indeed, building, not starting a startup requires a certain mentality and personality that's found in all generations. This generation just happens to have more at-bats. 

In the first screen shot, you'll notice that hiring managers (those above 33 years old) actually saw their generation as being nearly as equipped to be entrepreneurs. Millennials were seen to have an "entrepreneurial" attitude by a 10% margin over Gen X. That means hiring managers don't see anything particularly unique about millennials [over their generation] when it comes to having an entrepreneur attitdue - being self-driven, self-directed risk-takers with self-initiative.  

This also maps with other studies that show that the percent of college freshman that want to start businesses dropped. Nearly 48% wanted to be successful in their own businesses in 1977 vs 41% in 2012, according to data from the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) at the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA.

So while millennials are the startup generation, it doesn't mean we'll start seeing a new Mark Zuckerberg pop up every year. Zuckerberg, who is 30 years old, will likely be the best-known entrepreneur of his generation. Larry Page, co-founder and CEO of Google, and his co-founder Sergey Brin, are the best founders in their generation. Both men are 41-yrs-old Gen X'ers. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates (both born in 1955) are considered the best-known founders in their generation. 

Are millennials the startup generation? Sure. They're starting more companies than past generations before them. The consequence isn't that we'll have a bunch of half-baked companies in existence, the consequence is a generation of workers who learn to like the flexibility and freedom of the startup world, but the security of a larger company. 

Maybe we should call millennials the freelance or free agent generation.