RIP Dream: How the appeal of a dream job is fading for Generation Z

Mudit Jain cannot remember the last time someone around him talked about his dream job. “For me and most of my fellow students, it's all about finding a job that will enable us to be successful,” says the 21-year-old electrical engineering student at IIT Kanpur.

When he started his undergraduate degree three years ago, major tech companies were laying off thousands of employees—first triggered by the pandemic and then by market uncertainty and internal restructuring. “For people of my generation, these layoffs were a huge turnoff,” says Jain, who is now gearing up for internship season. “The process doesn't give you a choice anyway. The company decides who it wants and what criteria counts. If you don't fit in, it doesn't matter if this is your dream company.” Jain understands it's a trade-off; you gain something by working, but you also lose. “That's why salary is called 'compensation,' not a reward,” he says.

A year before the internship, Jain has already given up on the idea of ​​a dream job, a dream that the best students traditionally boast about.

His supervisor, Riya Talati, who graduated from the same prestigious institute in 2018, took a few years in the real world to come to the same conclusion. “When I was in college, there were a few companies like Google, Microsoft and Amazon that everyone said were the best. If you got into any of them, life was secured,” she recalls. In her third year, Talati bagged an internship at HUL, the consumer goods giant that has been a dream destination for students for decades. After graduating, she worked at a consulting firm for a few years and decided she didn’t want to work in a big company anymore. “Their processes are very fixed, they don’t change anything for you and at the entry level, you can’t make any changes either,” she says. Talati no longer has dream companies in mind like she did in college. “Now I focus on the role and the team I will be working with,” says the 28-year-old product manager from Bengaluru who studied chemical engineering.

Jain and Talati are aware that their mindset is at odds with that of their parents, who valued the stability of a long-term career. If in the 1980s and 1990s the attraction was the security of a government job, in the 2000s it was the status that came with working for big corporations. None of that has the same meaning for their generation of professionals and aspirants.

The allure of a dream job as we once knew it is fading for younger workers, especially Generation Z. Infamous layoffs at major technology companies—a coveted target over the past decade—as well as increased awareness of workplace issues through social media and a growing tendency among younger professionals to see work as a means to an end rather than an end in itself are driving this shift.

Shocked by layoffs
Since the pandemic, the tech industry has seen significant layoffs around the world. So far this year, over 130,000 employees have lost their jobs across 398 tech companies. In 2023, 1,193 companies laid off over 264,000 employees. In 2022, 165,000 people across 1,064 companies were affected by job cuts, according to data compiled by layoffs.fyi.

Career-hungry Generation Z has realized that “the big tech industry is as unstable as working in a startup,” says Harish Uthayakumar, an electrical engineer from BITS Pilani campus in Goa who graduated in 2022. Uthayakumar, who now runs a social learning platform, says he saw dream jobs change “with every VC funding cycle” during his time on campus.

“In 2018, my first year, everyone wanted to work at Google, Microsoft or Amazon.” He saw students on LeetCode, an online platform that helps prepare for technical interviews. His second year, artificial intelligence and machine learning were the focus, and the third and fourth years were all about crypto startups. “I remember one student who got an offer of Rs 95 lakh from a blockchain platform.” Every six months, students' dream jobs changed depending on what offer someone got. In 2022, his final year, VC jobs were the hottest choice, he adds.

Uthayakumar now notices a change in mindset. “The younger generations are more open-minded and willing to experiment. They are asking themselves whether it makes sense to prepare for a technical interview rather than following the crowd.”

A similar trend is being observed at leading business schools. “While freshmen tend to be more ambitious and a little more susceptible to peer pressure, final-year students are more pragmatic when it comes to their dream job,” says Aban Padung, placement coordinator at IIM-Ahmedabad. While every student has a different idea of ​​their dream job, “final-year students consider a variety of factors such as rapid growth, client contact, work-life balance, good pay, industry preferences.” But above all, “they want a leadership-oriented role where they can take on responsibilities with strategic importance,” says Padung.

So what has killed the dream job? Aside from layoffs, it's the greater insecurity of our times, says Taru Kapoor, former head of Tinder in India and Southeast Asia, who holds degrees from IIT-Delhi and Harvard Business School. “In the past, job security was the most important thing. Dream jobs were supposed to last a lifetime and bring respect and financial security.” Government jobs, careers in banking and medicine, and positions in large corporations were highly regarded. “The social contract was clear: get a job, work 40 hours a week for 40 years, and plan your life around the security of a steady income and respect in the job.”

Over the past two decades, job security has declined, says Kapoor. The younger generation understands this and is looking for ways to make more money now, she adds. “They know there will be tough times. So they want to take advantage of fleeting success while it lasts. It's a risk-minimization strategy.”

Changing aspirations
Career aspirations are going beyond traditional dream jobs, says Ishaan Preet Singh, an IIT-Delhi graduate who works in the VC industry. “Becoming a creator, influencer, unicorn founder, or getting 100,000 subscribers on Substack – these are the new goals that are suddenly achievable,” he says. Moreover, dream jobs at Google and Meta no longer signal exclusivity, as they have grown large and employ thousands of people.

According to the IQOO Quest Report 2024, only 19% of Generation Z respondents in India and 9% globally consider advancement in a prestigious company as their most important career goal.

Meanwhile, about 24% of Gen Z in India and 22% globally are looking to pursue careers in “emerging fields” such as content creation, gaming and AI. IQOO is a subsidiary of consumer electronics company Vivo. Google and Meta did not respond to ET's emails.

YOUNG & INDEPENDENT
Headhunters have found an increasing emotional detachment from work among young professionals. “Generation Z, in particular, has a perception that companies are self-serving and not focused on building their careers; employees are merely incidental to the development of a company,” says K Sudarshan, MD for India and regional head for Asia at EMA Partners, a global executive search firm. In contrast, older professionals, including millennials and Generation X, were much more emotionally involved in their jobs, especially in the early years of their careers. According to Randstad Employer Brand Research 2024, about 51% of professionals are leaving their current employer to improve their work-life balance.

Sudarshan says the growing number of options for younger workers has affected the aura of a dream job. “Earlier, people could only choose between five or six great companies, so it was a matter of life and death. Today, many of these firms, like the FMCG giants, are struggling to attract top talent,” he says. In a separate conversation with ET earlier this month, Rohit Jawa, CEO and MD of HUL, challenged this assumption. “If you talk to people who want to do marketing or work in services or consumer, we continue to be the first choice,” he said.

Gen Z fears have not affected management consulting, with jobs at McKinsey and BCG still in demand among young candidates, headhunters say. Abheek Singhi, head of corporate leadership at BCG India, says top recruiters are increasingly acknowledging the shift in career aspirations of young professionals. “Many companies are now incorporating social impact, diversity and flexibility into their job profiles to attract and retain skilled talent,” he says. However, he points out that the effectiveness of these changes varies across industries.

Tech giants like Microsoft and Amazon, which have a large presence in India, say a shift is underway. “Generation Z values ​​meaningful work, a supportive environment, alignment with their values ​​and contributing to broader societal goals rather than just a company's brand name,” says Suman Yadav, director of higher education talent acquisition at Amazon India, in an email to ET.

“To align with the evolving concept of 'dream jobs' among the younger generation, we have shifted our recruitment from campuses to experiential work, where students get a chance to experience life as a Microsoft employee,” says Rajiv Kumar, MD, Microsoft India Development Centre.

Essentially, dream jobs have been replaced by the idea of ​​an “ideal job,” says Sumeet Singh, CMO of Info Edge, which owns portals like Naukri.com. In its latest ad campaign, Naukri.com is trying to dispel the misconception about Gen Z's attitude towards work by portraying them as ambitious people who have a clear idea of ​​what they want and what they don't want. “Managers often tell Gen Z that they don't take work seriously. In truth, Gen Z values ​​more than just their careers, which previous generations were not conditioned to do. So if any of us did, we were labelled as outsiders.” The young cohort may just be a slacker.

(With contributions from Sagar Malviya)