Saturday, April 4, 2009

Career Salad

First of all, I would like to congratulate all those who have graduated this month. Be proud, for all your hardships have paid off.

Following my daily routine, which is drinking coffee every breakfast, and browsing the paper afterwards, or drinking coffee while browsing the paper, I came across the editorial section of the Philippine Daily Inquirer. I admit that I usually do not read the editiorial columns unless the topic is really relevant to my life, or to what I have for the moment. True enough, I didn't bother glancing through the paragraphs after checking the titles of the editorial articles. But what caught my interest was the editorial cartoon.



From Page A10: Opinion Section of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, April 4, 2009 Issue

As you can see in the illustration, in my own interpretation, the batch of graduates rains from the sky and joins the already existing flood of those who are unemployed. Flood, which is slowly engulfing our Country's economy to lower levels.

It really is a struggle for many people to look for jobs in this trying period. Many get laid-off, and quite a number still, do not get the job they were aiming for -- either you are underemployed, or you are forced to make a career shift due to the current situation.

While it is true that indeed many suffer in many aspects of their life, due to this Economic Crisis (Family members killing themselves in America, etc.), we should still be thankful in a way, because the effect of the Crisis here in the Philippines is cushioned by the growth of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Industries. These BPO companies help alleviate the problem of unemployment in our Country. They offer thousands and thousands of jobs to all those who are in need of them. To those who are not familiar with what a BPO unit/corporation is, these are the companies who are "employed" by other corporations to do certain business processes for them, for reasons like they do not have the sufficient number of employees to do that certain business task or process. For example, Company A would like to hire Company BPO to help them in screening out Application Forms or Resumes. Another well-known example here in the Philippines are the Customer Service Centers or the Call Centers -- the BPO companies who run these Contact Centers have many accounts for other various companies who may need their services for Customer Help or Support.

Many people are not happy with the fact that they do not get to work on the job which they are really aiming for way back their earlier years, but due to financial constraints, they are somehow forced to take on these ready opportunities. But there are still those who refuse to take jobs not in their field of profession. They wait, and wait until the job they are eyeing for comes. I myself can be classified in the latter. I see many openings in online job search engines, and various advertisements on paper, but everytime I imagine myself taking on the job advertised, which does not really fall under the field I would like to work on, I find myself getting all worked up, and anxious -- I end up not applying for the positions I see.

In this economic situation we are in, is it still okay or proper to be choosy on jobs that are available, or would it be wise to grab whatever it is that you think you could work on, and gain experience, and just transfer to the one you like later on?

---------------------------------------

My plans for what I want to happen with my career right now is really complicated due to the many confounding situations I am faced with. I would dedicate an entire blog post for that next time.





2 comments:

  1. we graduates are about ot dive in to the pool of the unemployed. Scary yet true. hayyy..

    ReplyDelete
  2. yeah... :(

    thanks for reading, joyce :)

    ReplyDelete