Advice for new grads from a CEO who loves hiring millennials

NEW YORK (FOX 5 NY) - College graduates in 2018 are entering one of the best job markets in decades—but also one of the most competitive.

Rob Schwartz, the CEO of the major global ad agency TBWAChiatDay New York, loves hiring this generation and has some advice for its members.

If you're not familiar with TBWAChiatDay, you might be familiar with its work. The company's clients include Apple, Gatorade, and Michelin. Its "1984" Super Bowl ad for Apple put the agency on the map. The Derek Jeter farewell ad for Gatorade was a powerful one for many New Yorkers. 

As CEO of the New York office, Schwartz loves hiring New Yorkers. He says New York people are inherently creative, energetic, and diverse.

Data strategist Mariana Sun is one of those people. A 2014 graduate of NYU, she now helps inform strategy and creative with the insights she finds within data.

Rob says the firm also loves hiring millennials. In fact, more than 70 percent of TBWAChiatDay employees are millennials, like Avi Steinbach, a copywriter. He describes his job as anything involving words—social media, brainstorming the big idea for a campaign, and pitching scripts.

The millennial generation is one a lot of companies have struggled with, but not TBWAChiatDay.

Rob says millennials come into the business with a lot of knowledge already because they've been marketed to since the moment they were born. He says millennials have turned complaining into an art form, which is really good because TBWA has taken those complaints and turned them into progress.

Rob's advice for this generation, especially new graduates looking for work:

• Demonstrate curiosity.
• Don't know everything.
• Ask some questions and express what you're interested in.
• Also, see threats as opportunities.
• Spend your time obsessing on solutions.

More advice from the C-suite: Rob says worry less about work–life balance and more about work–life integration, making the two parts of your life work together.

For example, he says that starting every day by reading 10 pages of whatever book he is into puts him in the right mindset to deal with the threats or opportunities that are about to come his way.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Pew Research defines millennials as anyone born between 1981 and 1996. The generation's age in 2018 falls between 22 and 37.