When you are young and ambitious (and have not been crippled by family wealth which automatically constrains your choices), the world is at your feet. You dream of tomorrow. Like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music, you wonder “What will my future be?”

(When you are old, you update the lyrics of your favourite things from the same Sound of Music to:

“Botox and nose drops and needles for knitting,

Walkers and handrails and new dental fittings,

Bundles of magazines tied up in string,

These are a few of my elderly things.”

It wasn’t Andrews who sung that on her 69th birthday, but it makes a good urban legend.) The young never think of Botox and the other wrinkles or real life. Even the poorest dream of becoming doctors and engineers. If they haven’t been exposed to the fulfilment that comes with worthwhile work, they imagine a life of leisure. This is what creates rent seekers — the lilies of the field.

How many dreamers achieve their ambition? According to a recent survey by professional networking site LinkedIn, 30 per cent of its members surveyed around the world say that they have achieved their childhood dream job or something very much like it. Another significant 43 per cent say they are not in their dream job because their dream changed; they consciously decided to change the course of their careers.

Figures like this should be taken with a pinch of salt. First, it leaves out the Great Unwashed; they are not members of LinkedIn. Second, an online population is very different from the population at large. LinkedIn has 17 million members in India, but that’s a drop in the bucket of the total working population. (LinkedIn doesn’t claim to be representative; it’s the media that make it so to get a better story.)

In India, the real figures are likely to be more skewed because career counselling is yet to become a career. Schoolchildren are parcelled off in different directions depending on very broad parameters. In the West, at several stages, there is an effort to find out the personality profiles of the children and direct them accordingly. It doesn’t work too often; if your profile says you should be a scientist, you still try to become a banker because you make more money. It’s like the tone deaf trying to become musicians.

Schools deal in herds. Career coaches guide individual executives. A few of them have surfaced in India. They come with credentials from US business schools. Their job is to show executives who have got stuck in their upward march the right way forward.

It hasn’t been a success in India. Individuals are unwilling to pay money for something they think they already know. If you haven’t got a promotion, it is always because the other guy’s uncle is related to the chairman. And companies — that sometimes foot the bill for career coaching — see it a motivational tool with limited chances of success.

The bottomline of all this is that for most people in India, a job is something you get, rather like a lucky dip or a raffle at a fair. That’s why you will find people applying simultaneously for a sales job at a pharmaceuticals concern and an accountant’s role at a retail store. You take what you get and hang on to it for dear life.

But times are a-changing, though slowly. The younger generation has more confidence and a willingness to experiment. Some might even kick security and find their dream job or its equivalent. Incidentally, the LinkedIn survey mentioned also says that 70 per cent of the professionals surveyed feel that a dream job means enjoying what you do. In India, that would mean you don’t really have a job; you are being paid to have fun.