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In 2005, Metizo began surveying students and high potential managers in order to validate whether dreams constitute a valid starting-point for business school education and corporate development programs in career orientation using a personal development approach. Specifically we wanted to answer four questions concerning career dreams:
- For young adults, how common are dreams?
- Do young adults have one dream of several dreams?
- What is the relative importance of career, lifestyle and social contributions in the dreams of young adults?
- Do young adults believe they can realize all their dreams and does this belief change when they approach midlife?
In the programs a written questionnaire was distributed before any discussion of dreams in order not to influence the responses. Although the sample populations are statistically small, we decided that surveying different age groups across cultures would give us useful information about how common career dreams are rather than a larger data set from one country or from one university or company.
The data represents 515 responses from 5 groups of young adults in different career stages, from undergraduate students in China and France to high potentials in a multinational high tech firm and international executives in a different multinational high tech company.
The survey suggests that revision of the original concept of career dreams is needed. The findings indicate that young adults are not sure what their career dreams are. Young adults typically have more than one dream and lifestyle dreams are more common than career dreams. Another finding is that most young adults believe they will realize some dreams but not all their dreams: this is reported not only by young adults in higher education but also by mid career international executives.
Further research is needed to confirm our finding by surveying larger populations in a wider range of cultures. But it should be noted that anecdotal evidence supports the several dreams finding: in Metizo business education courses and corporate training courses more than a thousand participants have raised their hands in answer to these same questions.
