I am a tail-end Baby Boomer, but think more like a Gen X’er. But I’m still a far cry from Gen Y, a generation I’ve grown to enjoy and admire immensely. Gen Y has a suppleness of thinking combined with an inherent need to share—everything is documented and discussed. Which means we can all benefit from Gen Y wisdom, if we so choose, by simply going on Facebook, Brazen, or Twitter.

I read a good post yesterday called “The Shocking Reason Social Networking Isn’t Getting You a Job”. The post brings up a great point: many people out there networking will disappoint you at best and burn you, at worst. There are many ways to protect yourself from rude people, both on and off the internet. But my question to you today is: Are you one of them?

In the interviews I’ve been conducting for my project In the Driver’s Seat: Work-Life Navigation Skills for Young Adults, I hear loads of complaints about college career counseling. Very few Gen Y’s a few years out of college have good things to say about that aspect of their alma mater.

This has been a terrible job market for new college grads and many are still unemployed after having graduated in…2009! Now that fall’s here, many parents with kids who have moved from college back home are asking: “What’s going wrong?”

You may have heard me wax poetic about LinkedIn, for career developers, as well as job seekers. But there’s one area where Facebook has it beat, and that’s when it comes to wanting to connect with a specific group of people on a particular topic.

Since I’m interviewing members of Generation Y for my new practice and book helping young adults connect school and work, I’m privy to all kinds of career-life constructs that makes this generation stand out from, say, the Baby Boomers.