MEDIUM RARE
Jullie Y. Daza
Millions of us are said to be in search of a job. Searching, however, is working, so how hard the searchers are willing to search and find is up to them. The other side of the coin is that there aren’t enough jobs to go around.
Both private and public sectors occasionally put up job fairs – employers doing the searching – hoping to find the right people with the right skills, the right attitude and, yes, the right character and personality. While we are free to guess that thousands of jobs were/are on offer, we are never told the happy ending of how many percent actually, successfully land a job via a job fair.
A prosperous company recently put out word that it was hiring new staff. As a result, 90 application forms poured in two days before the scheduled date of the interview. On the day itself, 55 showed up. Of those, only 12 survived the last round. One of the interviewers said that if she had her way, she would’ve hired only four or five of them.
The manager of a chain of restaurants interviewed 22 applicants. She needed two new workers but was satisfied with the performance of only one. “That’s not all,” she added, “there have been employees who quit after a week or two because they don’t want somebody pointing out their mistakes.”
Everyone should just be their own boss. Like Meng, a home-service masseuse who promulgates her own rules. As someone who has been self-employed for the last 23 years, Meng knows the A to Z of the job. She limits her clients to women only and they must belong to the same household. As soon as she shows up at the client’s house, she takes a shower and changes into her working clothes, all in white, like a nurse.
When the job is done, she goes home by herself – “I know how to be safe” – to an apartment in Manila, where she is her own best cook, having taken subjects in restaurant management once upon a time. “It’s nice being an independent woman, Happy Independence!,” she beamed with pride.
Meng knows her job; so do her clients. Maybe she should put up a school to rival Tesda.