I graduated with a degree overseas last year and I was among the lucky ones to secure a job within a few months. However, I didn’t anticipate the rude awakening that was lying in wait.
While I am now an employed person on paper, the career path that I had envisioned isn’t quite so clear.
The authorities have been calling for youth to consider finding employment outside of the country. As someone in her early 20’s, I am not opposed to the idea. But for these foreign employers to consider taking me on, I would first need to acquire some work experience, which is currently a tall order.
I don’t think underemployment is talked about often enough. For fresh graduates, it is the reality. We have been called entitled or too picky all too often, but really, all we want is to land a job in an environment where we can pick up skills that may prove useful in the future.
Instead, a lot of companies are merely filling up their entry-level positions, with no desire to see their staff climb up the ranks.
Unlike the generations before us, we are the first batch of graduates that have parents who joined the workforce at the tail end of the economic “good times”. Thus, not all of us have our parents as financial safety nets if our quest for a decent-paying job falls through.
I dread to think about the generation after mine.
Whenever experts talk about the list of professions that will soon be obsolete because of artificial intelligence (AI), I cannot help but wonder how much more widespread job insecurity will become, because even in the current environment, there is plenty of job insecurity to go around. It seems like every day, there is at least one big company around the world downsizing its workplace.
I often wonder if it would better to skip university. What I’m doing right now wouldn’t be too difficult to grasp for someone straight out of high school. Yet companies tend to prefer degree holders, even if the job itself is entry-level clerical work. Perhaps it is time to put to rest the myth that finishing university guarantees a coveted job.
Local Zoomer
