Elsevier

Journal of Surgical Education

Volume 67, Issue 2, March–April 2010, Pages 108-111
Journal of Surgical Education

2009 APDS spring meeting
Is Your Residency Program Ready for Generation Y?

Presented as a workshop at the 2009 Meeting of the Association of Program Directors in Surgery, Salt Lake City, Utah, April 2009.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsurg.2010.03.004Get rights and content

Current residency applicants are members of Generation Y and are significantly different from previous generations of trainees as well as the faculty who attract, recruit, and manage them. Generation Y has been affected by globalization, diversification, terrorism, and international crisis. They are products of the self-esteem movement in child rearing, education, and extracurricular activities where they were all declared winners. Children's activities no longer had winners and losers or first, second, and third place; every child received a participation trophy. Even though they were raised to be a team player, their parents always told them they are special. Technology is ingrained into their daily lives, and they expect its use to be effective and efficient. Generation Y-ers desire to impact the world and give back to their communities and demand immediate access to leadership. This generation poses a challenge to residency programs that will need to attract, recruit, and manage them effectively. This article will provide an overview of Generation Y, contrast Generation Y with Generation X, and discuss how to use generation-specific strategies to attract, recruit, and manage a Generation Y resident.

Section snippets

Who Is Generation Y?

Generation Y is also referred to as the Net. Generation, Millennials, Echo Boomers, iGeneration, MyPod Generation, Baby Boomlets, Boomerang Generation, Trophy Generation, and First Digitals. The term “Generation Y” was first used in 1993 by Advertising Age, which is a magazine focused on marketing and media data and analysis. Generation Y is largely the offspring of Baby Boomers and represents more than 70 million Americans born in the late 1970s to the early 2000s. This is the largest and most

Generation X Versus Generation Y

Generation X is a “Me” generation—a cynical group. Despite being described as pragmatic and practical, Generation X-ers reject rules and mistrust institutions. During childhood, Generation X valued their friends over family. Generation X has had to learn to use technology, whereas Generation Y assumes technology will be at their fingertips. Generation Y has a distinctly different outlook of the world. As part of the “We” generation, everyone wants a hug and to be nurtured, and family and

The Business World Example

Little to no literature has been published on Generation Y medical students or residents. According to the American Association of Medical Colleges in 2008, 83% of all graduating United States medical students were between 24 and 29 years of age, which places them in Generation Y.3 Like it or not, Generation Y is the new resident applicant pool. Generation Y has already entered the business world, and thus, much of our research was from Fortune 500 companies including McDonald's, Office Depot,

Attracting Generation Y to Your Residency Program

Because Generation Y is expected to switch jobs over the course of their careers more than any other generation, perhaps 20 times before retirement, attraction is the first step.4, 5 A Generation Y applicant might look something like this on paper: Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Master of Science in Biomed Engineering at Vanderbilt, 2-year employment with National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Dartmouth Medical School, 253 United

Recruiting Generation Y to Your Residency

Many recruiting tactics used by the business world can be translated to recruiting a surgical resident. On the day of the interview, many businesses are now using Generation Y-ers themselves as the first people an applicant meets and using the vice presidents with suits and gray beards to seal the deal. These younger employees can tell the recruits what it is truly like in the workplace trenches and about lifestyles outside the workplace.8 This seemed to correspond with what many programs do by

Managing Generation Y

Managing Generation Y is such a challenge that companies such as Deloitte are mass producing educational brochures and books about generational changes in the workplace, which are based on think-tank research resulting in their reappearing on the “100 Best Companies to Work For” list after falling off.9 What have they done that we can adapt to the surgical residency? First, marking major milestones—no birthday should go uncelebrated, no award unmentioned. The first day on job should be

References (10)

  • R. Junco et al.

    Connecting to the Net.Generation: What Higher Education Professionals Need to Know About Today's Students

    (2007)
  • N.A. Hira

    What winning means to generation YWeblog entry

  • Graduation questionnaires (GQ) all schools reports; 2008 Program Evaluation Survey

  • D. Rothberg

    Generation Y for dummies

  • H. Robert

    InternationalWhat millennial workers want: How to attract and retain Gen Y Employees

There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

Cited by (0)

View full text