What Are You Looking for in Your Dream Job?

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We are living an entrepreneurial and adventurous economic period, where creativity is the driving force of progress, gather diverse people together is crucial and group work skills are valued a lot. Therefore, the WhatsApp and other group chats highlight the “team work spirit” that characterizes this generation as workers. Team spirit is obviously a good point, but in this case, we are talking about lots of teams (always changing) where relations are mainly virtual and not interpersonal. As students, if there is a group assignment, “Let’s create a WhatsApp group” and in few seconds: “You were added to «Finance assignment by John»”. As individuals, “Hey guys, let’s hang out some day!”, and then, once again “You were added to «Coffee with the girls» by Cary”. And, when it’s done, the group “dies”. They are very connected, in fact. And they belong to several groups. But is there space for lasting and strong relationships? Till when are these social tools appropriate to create successful work teams? This is an actual managers ‘concern.

Regarding these relationships considerations WhatsApp is not the only App “guilty”, Tinder has even more responsibility. Tinder is the new app that helps you find your “soulmate” and the person that fits you according to matching personalities and to similar interests in life. How? Swipe Right. If you like what you see you “like” the other person’s profile if you don’t like what you see: swipe right again. Simple right? You don’t even need to learn how to communicate, how to introduce a conversation or even how to open your heart with someone, all you have to do is to “Swipe Right”. People don’t even need to learn the social coping mechanism anymore.

Recalling the creativity dimension, ideas used to happen when our minds wander and we see something and we think, “I bet they could do that…” That was when innovation happened. We now live in an environment where phones are everywhere so instead of looking for originally and innovation from the outside world or from the little things that happen in life. We now look for ideas on our own phones, and Pinterest is one of the big sources of creativity. The social network's goal is to "connect everyone in the world through the 'things' they find interesting”. Another example is the social network named Flickr with the slogan “find your inspiration”. A key of success at the workplace is creativity, but if these group of workers go to the same place to get ideas, are we really going to be that original?

But this is just one side of the coin. Of course generation evolution had a positive impact in many fields.

The way they grew up leaded, for example, to the development of new family patterns. Experiences such as Exchange (as students) made them more independent, especially men. In opposition to the previous generation, in today’s young families men participate significantly in the household work and help more taking care of children, while mothers have more time to invest in their careers. This men/women equilibrium within the house, makes everyone happier: men take the weight of ensuring absolutely the economic sustain of the family off of their shoulders, which allows them to choose other personal and professional paths, and women find in this balance space for their own professional fulfillment. This freedom of choice (achieved by the distribution of the economic weight and housekeeping tasks by both) induced in the society higher standards of jobs satisfaction. At this point we are facing the big challenge of finding the equilibrated/fair/uniform distribution/allocation of our time through our priorities with the aim of never disregarding that so much important job satisfaction/fulfillment.

In what concerns society, they stand out for being open minded. In fact, although bullying is a reality frequently discussed nowadays it doesn’t means that it characterizes exclusively this generation, since(never disregarding that) there is still room for improvement when facing, for example, cyberbullying. Intolerance, incivility and misbehavior have always been real but not called by its name and fought as it is now. The truth is that with globalization and culture sharing values widespread, millennials are more willing to accept the difference among human beings than previous generations, which reflects on more tolerance in the work place and, consecutively, on the existence of successful diverse work teams.

Lastly, in the professional field, it is important to highlight their readiness of change. As it have been said, Generation Y is used to adapt easily to new tools, patterns and trends in the corporate and business world, due to the technological evolution which this generation has witnessed during its childhood and adolescence. For that reason, they are workers who are able to keep up with innovation and identify growth opportunities, since they are always updated and seeking for the “next step”.

However, analyzing millennials demands going further than just the “pros and cons”.

Firstly, there is the need of facing the lack of accuracy that arises from generalization. Grouping the millennials means associating and portraying as a whole 56.8 up to 86 million people in a single and too simple way: it implies ignoring individual differences and compact such a wide range of ages, given that when addressing millennials we are not only considering 20 years-old students but also 35 years-old parents, for example. Given that, is it fair to assume that so many people in such different life stages behave and think homogenously?

Moreover, its crucial to notice that the above characterization of millennials is not a self-portrait but a review trough prior generations perspective. And, at this point, appears the danger of looking critically and out of context (descontextualized). So, if you are not a millennial and you want to evaluate them fairly, compare your self today with your 22 years-old self, for example. Don’t you have slightly different values now? Aren’t you less self-focused? Didn’t you have big expectations about what you would achieved and how great you were going to be that you haven’t quite achieved? With this being said, maybe it is important to be aware of the distinction between what can be said specifically about GenY and (what can be said) about young people in general, because the complex process of growing up and being young adults is something that any generation can avoid.

Nevertheless, recognizing and pointing out that there are several elements of the actual context and of the context in which they grew up which intensify and bring out