You finish college with flying colors. You are a young, fresh graduate, who can’t wait to go into the world and immerse yourself in real life.
“This is it!” you think excitedly. The first thing you do is contact your close friends and batchmates, asking them about their plans. You get a variety of answers and possibilities. Your head spins as you consider your options. Some of them plan to further their knowledge and get a master’s degree. Some of them already applied for work abroad, while some are still chillin’, waiting for jobs to come to them, instead of going out and looking for them.
You, however, are really bent on making money as soon as possible. You have a lot of dreams and you want to get started on fulfilling them immediately.
And so you begin the hunt. You decide to try the local paper first. You open it to the classified ads section. Under employment, you quickly scan through the job openings, carefully looking at the qualifications underneath them. Your pulse quickens as you see one that seems to fit your idea of a job. Grabbing your pen, you draw a circle around the ad, labeling it option 1. You scan through the rest of the ads and flip quickly through the paper, drawing circles here and there. After which, you make final edits on your resume and send it to the e-mail addresses listed under each job. And you wait.
The next day, you keep checking your e-mail, anticipating responses. You also check your phone regularly, just in case they sent you messages instead. The day passes by without getting any feedback, no e-mails, no texts, nothing. You try not to worry and begin making excuses for them like they probably have a lot of resumes to go through, or maybe your e-mail is stuck due to web traffic.
Suddenly, your phone rings and you grab it immediately — an unknown number is calling. Nervously, you pick up. “Hello?”
A voice on the other end introduces himself as the head of the hiring department in their company, and asks whether you are still interested in applying for the job. “Yes!” you blurt out immediately. Arrangements are made, and there you are, on your way to your first job interview.
With mixed feelings, you go to the company’s office, and pass through the interview smoothly. But on your first day, you realize it is different from what you expected, and this is not what you applied for. Promptly, you leave the company.
And you are back to square one. You return to the classified ads section of the newspaper. With less excitement, you flip through the pages, scanning through the ads slowly, hoping to see an ad you missed. But there is nothing else. You wait another day, and another, and another, hoping for responses from the emails you’ve sent, but to no avail.
You are at a loss. You have an ideal job in mind but you cannot seem to find the right workplace. There are a lot of jobs that could help you make money, however you are an idealist and you want to apply what you have learned in college. If you don’t, you feel like it would be a waste of money.
Finally, you gather your courage and grab your resume. You have it photocopied and begin floating it, giving it to the human resource departments of companies you would like to work for. You walk around town, taking care to look for posters of job openings and such. You sit down somewhere, tired and dejected. You never expected job-hunting to be this difficult.
But you do not give up. You go ahead and float your resume some more, praying for guidance. Finally, you receive another call. You go through another interview. You quit because it isn’t your idea of a job. You wait. You receive another call.
By Erwin Shim D. Fonite
