My name is Charlie. I'm 23. I'm hungry, I'm ambitious, and I'm lost. Welcome to Generation Y in the late noughties.

Silver spoon

Ok, it's not as bleak as all that, and certainly not for me. I have a great job, enough money and good prospects. But then I would say that, I'm Gen Y. There is a perception that we twenty-somethings were born with a silver spoon in our mouths, and while that may be an exaggeration, it is true that none of us have any experience of economic hardship or recession. Now that these ugly macro-economic terms are rearing their ugly heads again, we honestly don't know what to do with ourselves.

Credit crunch

The problem is that the war for talent is over and we simply aren’t prepared to admit it. Up until the credit crunch, the reality is that most graduates would find a great job and they knew it. As a result they could afford to be a little bit picky. But now that it looks as if the market might be changing, is Generation Y prepared to change with it?

I’m worried that the answer might be no. My school friends make an interesting sample group of sparky young minds – ranging from Oxford graduates to car designers from Coventry – working for law firms, in the public sector and even for recruitment consultancies… But even the best of us can act like prima donnas when it comes to careers: playing potential employers off against each other; walking out of jobs that don’t pander to our talents and desires; and the worst crime of all in an economic downturn – rejecting a perfectly good job because we’re waiting for something better. We aren’t prepared to work our way up from the bottom – we much prefer to slot in at the middle and steamroller on up from there.

Gen Y dilemma

So we do further study to put off the inevitable or live at home for an extra couple of years, all in wait of the perfect job opportunity. It all feels very comfortable and a little continental. But what happens if recession really hits home, culling job opportunities and tightening even our parents’ purse strings? Will we Gen Y-ers be able to come to terms with that dirty word “settle”?

I still hope it won’t come to that. Not for me anyway, I’m too talented. Typical.