RIP dream job: How the allure of a dream job is fading for Gen Z

Mudit Jain can’t remember the last time anyone around him talked about wanting a “dream job”. “For me and most of my peers, it’s all about finding a job that helps us thrive,” says the 21-year-old electrical engineering student in IIT-Kanpur.

When he started his undergraduate course three years ago, big tech companies were laying off thousands of employees—triggered initially by the pandemic and then by market uncertainty and internal restructuring. “For people of my generation, those layoffs have been a huge turnoff,” says Jain, who is now gearing up for internship season. “The process doesn’t let you choose anyway. The company decides whom they want and what criteria matter. If you don’t fit in, it doesn’t matter if that’s your dream company.” Jain understands it is a trade-off; you gain something by working, but you lose, too. “That’s why they call salary a ‘compensation’ and not a reward,” he says.

With a year left for placement, Jain has already distanced himself from the idea of a dream job, an aspiration that top students traditionally brandish.

It took his senior, Riya Talati, a 2018 graduate from the same premier institute, a few years in the real world to reach the same conclusion. “When I was in college, there were a few companies like Google, Microsoft and Amazon that everyone said were the best. That if you got in any of those, your life was set,” she recalls. In her third year, Talati landed an internship at HUL, the FMCG giant that has been dubbed a dream destination for students for decades. After graduation, she spent a few years in a consulting firm and decided she didn’t want to work in a big organisation anymore. “Their processes are very set, they don’t change anything for you, and at the entry level, you can’t make any changes either,” she says. Talati doesn’t have dream companies on her mind the way she did in college. “Now, I focus on the role and the team I’ll be working with,” says the 28-year-old product manager from Bengaluru who studied chemical engineering.

Jain and Talati recognise that their mindset contrasts with that of their parents’ generation, which valued the stability of longterm careers. If the security of government jobs was the pull factor in the 1980s and ’90s, it was the status that came from working for large conglomerates in the 2000s. None of that holds the same importance for their generation of professionals and aspirants.

The allure of a dream job, as we once knew it, is fading for the younger workforce, starting with the Gen Z cohort. Unceremonious layoffs in big tech—a coveted destination over the last decade—along with heightened 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.

SHAKEN BY LAYOFFS
Since the pandemic, the tech industry has seen significant layoffs worldwide. Over 1,30,000 employees have lost their jobs across 398 tech companies so far this year. In 2023, 1,193 firms laid off over 2,64,000 employees. In 2022, 1,65,000 people faced a job cut in 1,064 companies, as per data collated by layoffs.fyi.

Job-aspiring Gen Z has realised that “big tech is as unstable as working in a startup,” says Harish Uthayakumar, an electrical engineer from BITS Pilani’s Goa campus, who graduated in 2022. Uthayakumar, who now runs a social learning platform, says he has seen dream jobs shifting with “every VCfunding cycle” during his time on campus.

“In 2018, my first year, everyone wanted to work at Google, Microsoft, or Amazon.” He would see students on LeetCode, an online platform that helps in preparing for tech interviews. In his second year, artificial intelligence and machine learning took the spotlight, and by the third and fourth years, it was all about crypto startups. “I remember a student getting a Rs 95 lakh offer from a blockchain platform.” Every six months, students’ dream jobs changed based on the highest offer someone got. By 2022, his final year, VC jobs were the hot choice, he adds.

Uthayakumar notices a shift in the mindset now. “Recent batches are more open-minded and willing to explore. They ask themselves if preparing for a technical interview makes sense instead of following the crowd.

Premier business schools are seeing a similar shift. “While freshers tend to be more ambitious and slightly more prone to peer pressure, those in final year are more pragmatic when it comes to a dream job,” says Aban Padung, placement coordinator, IIM-Ahmedabad. While every student has a different idea of a dream job, he says, “final-year students consider a plethora of factors such as quick growth, client exposure, work-life balance, good pay, sectoral preferences”. But above all, “they want a leadership-oriented role where they can take ownership with strategic importance,” says Padung.

So, what broke the dream job? Layoffs aside, it is the larger uncertainty of our times, says Taru Kapoor, former head of Tinder in India and Southeast Asia, who has degrees from IIT-Delhi and Harvard Business School under her belt. “In the past, job stability was paramount. Dream jobs were meant to last a lifetime, bringing respect and financial security.” Government jobs, careers in banking and medicine and roles in large conglomerates were highly valued. “The social contract was clear—secure a job, work 40 hours a week for 40 years and plan your life around the certainty of steady income and job respect.”

In the last two decades, job stability has diminished, says Kapoor. The younger generation gets this so they are optimising for whatever can make more money now, she adds. “They know there will be periods of struggle. So they want to leverage the fleeting success while it lasts. It’s a de-risking strategy.”

SHIFTING ASPIRATIONS
Job aspirations have shifted beyond traditional dream jobs, says Ishaan Preet Singh, an IIT-Delhi graduate, who is working in the VC industry. “Becoming a creator, influencer, unicorn founder, or gaining 100,000 subscribers on Substack—these are the new aspirations that are suddenly achievable,” he says. Also, dream jobs in 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 Gen Z respondents in India and 9% globally view growing in a reputed organisation as a major career aspiration.

Meanwhile, roughly 24% of Gen-Zers in India and 22% the world over aspire to build a career in “newage 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 & DETACHED
Headhunters have noted a growing emotional detachment from work among young professionals. “Gen Z, in particular, has a notion that companies are self-serving and not focused on building their careers; employees are merely incidental to a company’s journey,” says K Sudarshan, MD–India and regional chair–Asia at EMA Partners, a global executive search firm. In contrast, older professionals, including millennials and Gen X, were much more emotionally invested in their jobs, especially in the early years of their careers. According to the Randstad Employer Brand Research 2024, approximately 51% of working professionals leave their current employer to improve their work-life balance.

Sudarshan says the growing number of options for the younger workforce has impacted the aura of a dream job. “Earlier, people could only choose between five-six great companies so it was a matter of life and death. Today, many of those firms, like the FMCG giants, struggle to attract top talent,” he says. In a separate conversation with ET earlier this month, Rohit Jawa, CEO & MD of HUL, disagreed with that assumption. “When you speak to people who want to do marketing or be in the space of services or consumers, we continue to be the first preference,” he said.

Consulting is not hit by Gen Z angst as jobs at McKinsey and BCG continue to hold sway among young aspirants, say headhunters. Abheek Singhi, chair of practices, BCG India, says top recruiters are increasingly acknowledging the shift in job aspirations among young professionals. “Many companies are now incorporating social impact, diversity and flexibility into their work profiles to attract and retain skilled talent,” he says. However, he points out that the effectiveness of these changes varies by sector.

Tech giants like Microsoft and Amazon, which have a significant presence in India, say a change is under way. “Gen Z values meaningful work, a supportive environment, alignment with their values and contribution to broader societal goals rather than simply the brand name of a company,” says Suman Yadav, director–university talent acquisition, Amazon India, in an email to ET.

“To adapt to the evolving concept of a ‘dream job’ among the younger generation, we have pivoted our recruiting from campuses to make them experience-based where students have a chance to experience life as a Microsoft employee,” says Rajiv Kumar, MD, Microsoft India Development Centre.

Essentially, dream jobs have been replaced by one’s idea of an “ideal job”, says Sumeet Singh, CMO of Info Edge that owns portals like Naukri.com. In its latest ad campaign, Naukri.com tries to clear the misconception around Gen Z’s attitude towards work by showing them as ambitious people who have a clear idea of what they want and don’t want. “Managers often say Gen Z lacks seriousness about work. In truth, Gen Z values more than just their careers, which the previous generations weren’t conditioned to do. So if one of us did it, they were called outliers.” The young cohort is perhaps simply livers.

(With inputs from Sagar Malviya)