Adam Vater can tell you exactly when he was laid off from a sales support job at a small Monroe company.
It was Friday, Jan. 2, 2009, at 4:30 p.m.
What makes Vater angry is his annual review two weeks earlier, when his bosses said he was doing fine, Vater said. He had been with the company for a year and a half. He planned to work his way up. Then his boss said his position was a luxury for the company and was eliminated.
“I was just in shock,” said Vater.
Vater's shock and anger is prime data for Stacey Randall, who owns SBR Consulting. She helps companies understand generational differences so they can recruit and retain talent. She is seeking participants to take a survey examining how the recession affects Millennials' attitudes toward corporate America. Millennials – or Generation Y – are the sprawling group of at least 75 million people born after 1980.
For the survey, Randall is looking for anyone under age 30 who was laid off after January 2008. It takes about 10 minutes to do the survey. It will be available at www.surveymonkey.com/recessionsurvey for about six weeks. Randall hopes to get at least 500 participants nationally. She plans to release a summary identifying trends and key findings.
The survey grew from her clients' desire to know how Millennials are handling the recession. Randall said Baby Boomers and Generation Xers experienced previous recessions and the dot-com bust. Millennials, on the other hand, graduated from college and easily found jobs, Randall said.
“This generation has never been through something like this,” she said.
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