Millennials' trump card?

Being a 'Millennial' (born between 1981 and 2000) I was happy to read this article in Forbes that foretells how poor myself and my generation is likely to be thanks to the Great Recession and the Baby Boomer generation leaving us with a dust bowl for an economy.

I have spent the last few years as a finance journalist and there is no doubt that this 'recession' isn't just going to go away. This is the new normal and it is going to be tough for Millennials to garner the wages they expected when they were at college in the first part of this century.

But there are ways in which we, as a generation can play a trump card and move onwards and upwards in the new 21st century economy and I think social media will have a lot to do with that.

This article reminded me of a maxim my father always said to me when I was growing up and considering my place in the professional world: "If you can do something useful that no one else can, you'll have work". He always stressed that I needed to bring something new to the table and become an indispensable asset.

Simply, we are the social media generation. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter - these things were built by us, for us. We are the generation that will develop how the world talks to each other and how businesses do business with their customers. As such, we can bring something to the table that the older generations cannot - we know social media, we know how to communicate and we know how it all works. We will be who businesses need as this decade progresses if they want to keep up and carry on being successful.

It isn't going to be as easy for us as it was for our parents or grandparents in the world of work. But we need to show those generations what we can do to change their businesses and world for the better. We need to offer them something indispensable that they cannot do themselves.