Imagine you’re a senior person at a company and you’re looking for the right person to work for you. You’ve been looking at resumes all day long, and you’re tired and looking for some inspiration. You open yet another email, hoping for “the one”, and it’s addressed to: To Whom it May Concern.

I counsel a lot of people who are interested in leaving fairly staid corporate jobs for greener pastures—namely start-ups or small agencies. They fantasize that these new environments will provide all kinds of fresh thinking and ways of doing business and that they themselves will be respected and appreciated as elder statesmen with the gravitas and savoir-faire that are just the thing that was missing.

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.