Wasted Potential

Walking around the market in the bustling “tiangge” of Cebu City to buy some materials needed for the next pet “fun”, it was a bit hot even if it was a late afternoon. Youths loitering beside the road and laughing with their peers without a care in the world was an amusing scene to see especially those teenage boys that likes to watch basketball on their smartphones and biking around the area while teenage girls often make themselves appear attractive by wearing nice clothes even if they will just go to the supermarket to buy essential needs for tonight. For every young people happily walking beside the sidewalk full of people who do an honest and dignified work there are those older (but still young) counterparts who just got off from the state – sponsored modern jeepneys which came from Ayala Mall after a day of work. Ayala Mall itself is slightly near from IT Park, still walkable, but you’ll get drenched in sweat after walking that distance in the early morning. I knew that feeling because I used to do that.

These young professionals who boarded from 12L jeepneys seemed to be two to three years younger than me yet they looked more seasoned than me in terms on carrier achievements the way they dress and walk. Probably I don’t have this so called “Success Walk” because when people look at me, they just see an ordinary person who had barely something going on in his life (but that’s misleading, at least according to me). Just look at them. How professional they look! I guess they have achieved their true calling by working on the companies with the kind of jobs that trigger envy to us ordinary people which also aligned to the courses they have taken when they’re still studying in the university. Just look at the engineers working in Lapu – Lapu City! They also seemed to be serious and deep in thoughts, especially the women which are known to do their best at whatever tasks they were set out to do. Men on the other hand, often find time to appreciate what they see when they get out of the office despite how bust they are. That’s why men look at left, front and right while women look front and down when walking.

All these talk of young, professional – looking ladies and gentlemen who often wear their IDs with thick slings while going to the market, who likes to wear jackets and sweaters even if it is 4 PM and is hot outside (but they do look cool and feels “millennial” – ly) and often looking serious are just a small subset of people I’m going to talk about in this essay because the other side of the coin, the silent majority of millennials which aren’t playing in the corporate scene, those who are currently unemployed and now looking for a job and the underemployed youth who have their education that doesn’t match to the type of work they were doing. These people are much more interesting to know than those who have achieved success because there is only one version of success (we recognize success when we see one) while there are countless faces of failures unique to an individual. Success looks the same to successful people while we see different versions of failure to countless unsuccessful people. We’re talking about the unsuccessful counterparts of the touted “next generation of workforce”.

I did notice that youth who toils in the market, those ordinary – looking young people who looked like same age as their corporate counterparts, are either in a relationship (how did I know? Their significant others accompany them in selling in the market) or have already a child. Despite the apparent success young professionals emanating from their modern – looking lifestyle, their jackets, their IDs and hair gels, do you think they knew the secrets of a career success? Do you think their potential was fully unlocked after they were hired by their respective companies?

Underemployment. One of the worst things a person who aspire to achieve a career will undergo at some point in his life. We knew several examples of underemployment before and the most famous ones are those nurses that ended up working in several business – process outsourcing companies at the heart of any provinces here in the Philippines, especially Metro Manila and Cebu City, after getting rejected by the public and private hospitals due to their lack of experience. Sometimes these heartless hospitals will say to these new board passers “Please just come in our hospital as a volunteer nurse in exchange of gaining experience working here.” Looks like working in a business – process outsourcing companies where their capabilities will not be used but pays decently is a better alternative than working in a hospital where their potential will be fully used but pays in peanuts. What is worse is that your first job that you get will influence your overall career in the long run. When you first job was a data analyst, your succeeding jobs will also involve data analyst work. Until you shake up something up, you’ll get strings of data analyst jobs just like beads on a string and you can’t break into new careers because HR recruiters will deem you “inexperienced” at your new field. You’ll be stuck at a career similar to your first job and you’ll be surprised how much time you’ve wasted on similar lines of work after decades.

I don’t know if this trend continues but pretty sure there would be countless examples of underutilized skills among the young professionals and the ordinary mass alike; an information technology graduate that ends up working as analysts which can be competently done by high school graduates (to those people who blame this information technology graduate on why he ended up in this job and not using his capabilities, you must be really that dense and you don’t know the circumstances that befell on him), those engineers that ends up with a contractual work that pays Php 13 000 per month on a job that didn’t require his license or even his education (the hypereducated poor), and those college graduates who courses never seemed to align to their current careers due to unlucky circumstances (I haven’t heard of a company that trains their newly – hired employees about the entry – level jobs they will work from now on). I might have not seen the plight of high – school graduates who can’t go to university to get a degree due to financial problems (Philippine student – aid is out of the question because the most likely salaries these graduates will take can’t even support their own families, let alone paying their debt they incurred during their study in the university) but I really think they got it worse due to the nature of hiring style of most employers only accepting college graduates even if the job can be done by high school graduates like customer service representatives. Most of the high school graduates work as a construction worker, cashier in a small supermarket or a helper. The job themselves aren’t that bad but the salary is the problem. Why do the government is excited on announcing that they have reduced the number of unemployed youths in the Philippines every year when they youth themselves are now transferred to jobs which don’t fit to their capabilities and engaged in low – wage work due to stingy employers who thought “Gee, these jobs we’re offering is too easy so we’ll slap them with a minimum wage! They don’t produce value anyway.”?Minimum wage exists because employers want to cheapen out on labor to make their company afloat and companies who offer minimum wage or just slightly above it are the worst. Weak employers pay minimum wage. There are too many low – quality jobs here in the Philippines either.

Even famous companies wanted to cheapen out when it comes to human beings because they can be negotiated into doing their own bidding. They are not stingy on buying the equipment needed for production but they reluctantly pay human beings properly even if they badly needed a hand. These employers just wanted to see the world burn with their “business as usual” mantra. Human beings might tolerate receiving a low pay but that doesn’t mean employers must do it. What’s the point of giving a salary to people if they still struggle financially and making their life worse? A starving employee can’t properly work, yet these employers offer salaries that makes people starve. The owners already have Mitsubishi Montero and a couple of houses deep within the executive villages where they live so why don’t they offer themselves their extra money to increase the salaries of their workers? Oh well, they might have thought of it but they are powerless themselves that they don’t know how to take care of people, ending up weird policies like giving work paying a minimum wage and hiring experienced people with the salary of peanuts (Just imagine yourself getting paid Php 15 000 per month as an engineer in a cheap company. You’re devaluing yourself and your license yet I couldn’t blame you because higher – tier companies nowadays aren’t interested in inexperienced engineers who had potential. They are looking for people who can hit the ground running and you used these low – paying companies as a stepping stone for your eventual breakage into engineering world).

I once talked to an electronics engineer who have been looking for an engineering work few months after he resigned from a certain company. I asked him how his job hunting went and he said it was difficult. What he noticed is that on the job postings these engineering companies post jobs which required three to five years of experience with salaries slightly close to Php 19 000 per month. They were posting senior roles with junior salaries. This might not have been that bad if these employers were to be realistic until he told me that entry – level human resource generalists’ job postings shows salaries which ranges from Php 17 000 to Php 22 000 per month with much less demanding qualifications. A real, actual engineer is paid lower than administrative workers. He told me that he even started applying to financial positions because he had some experience there while the salary is higher than an entry – level engineers. My acquaintance felt that his engineering skills were underdeveloped yet but he wishes employers wouldn’t mind training him in order to increase his capabilities and to add something to the company, yet the technologies used by these engineering companies were so esoteric and the processes are too alien that the only way to acquire the skills needed by the engineering companies is to get hired by them, yet they require job candidates three to five years of professional experience just to give them a hiring chance. That’s when he realizes that engineering companies want to find people who already can do the job rather than find inexperienced engineer who had the potential to do the job well after intensive training.

After hearing his experiences on job hunting for engineering work (mind you, he’s an actual electronics engineer), I felt bad to him and the next generation of engineers who will be struggling to find a job that is close to what they have studied in the university in the future because employers aren’t willing to train upcoming engineers to their irrational belief that they will resign after few years after spending that much money and resources on training them but what these employers didn’t realize that the needs of their employees change after got older and more experienced. I could understand him because I’m an engineering graduate too!

A salary of Php 17 000 per month might be enough for college graduates who doesn’t have that much responsibilities like having a girlfriend (or boyfriend), having a family of his own or needs to send money to his parents in their provinces (he is free!) but they quickly realize that the kind of salary they receive wouldn’t be sustainable in the long run. As he gets older and more experienced in life he will naturally seek professions that offer higher pay because of his growing responsibilities and his different priorities in life. Now having his own family, supporting himself and his parents to make themselves afloat and maintaining his skills and capabilities by attending seminars and trainings, resignation from his company is inevitable and the instinct of seeking greener pastures kicks in. This will make the employers having mixed to negative critical reactions to his departure, saying that they have trained them with the hopes of staying with them for the long term. Now these employers are thinking that they might waste their time and resources on training somebody only to resign for higher pay by their competitors which wouldn’t train him and now ready to hit the ground running.

For the intervening years they no longer interested in hiring inexperienced people and now go after experienced people who needs very minimal training to be accustomed to their new line of work. The companies are no longer interested in unleashing the latent potential of people and now out there looking for people who can do the job immediately. Probably the human resource managers adopted the CEO’s hiring strategy which is summarized as “Why should we train people if the competitors can do it for us for free?”

Now we get entry – level jobs that require at least three years of experience with the salary befitting to a junior employee and companies expect them to be with them for longer with that dismal pay. Who wants a salary of Php 15 000 per month when your responsibilities in real life are getting bigger as years goes by? A salary of Php 15 000 per month with the responsibilities bordering on difficult roles just won’t cut it. With modern entry – level jobs that asks for too much responsibilities and experiences while simultaneously pay in peanuts, ordinary high school and college graduates would have no fighting chance in the job market and the only people employers are interested with would be those who already got a job, much like those customers won't stop at a restaurant if all its tables are empty but will wait 45 minutes for a table if there's a line out the door. Just take a look of a typical job posting aimed for people with engineering backgrounds.

FPGA’s are quite expensive and are useless by themselves and the only entities that used them can be found on the engineering companies where their full potential can be realized! And where do we get trained for this “ASIC verification environment”? The softwares they used are so alien that an average person would have trouble understanding them and sometimes they are proprietary that only those who are employed in a company can use them.

Also take a look of this another job posting aimed for engineering graduates:

They’re basically looking for people who can take a senior role with the salary of juniors!

No wonder there is too much wasted potential among youth and young professionals who ended up working on the wrong jobs because the employers aren’t willing to recognize potential in people and the people themselves who thinks they are worthless ended up taking jobs that will waste their potential and becoming the thing most government fears: lost engineers, talented individuals and professionals who will uplift the nation from its shambles. The employers must consider their employees whom they trained and now resigned as their best creation and an asset because at least they happily resigned. Former employees’ very good word – of – mouth about your firm is much better than companies bragging themselves on their websites how awesome they were. Companies should extend gratitude to their resigning employees and consider them not a loss but as someone who is ready to take on much mature roles. Companies must be rejoiced that they have become a part of his life and wishes him the best. Good companies will support you all the way until your resignation because that’s what human – centered companies do. You’ll do everything to make his stay at your firm memorable and challenging by exposing him to different challenges, valuing his work – life balance, a duty to take care of him and giving him your support and expertise to explosively increase his professional arsenal until his last day at the office would come. He will then look back decades later and reminisce how great his experiences were at your firm and will thank you for what you’ve done to him. He will no longer see himself blindingly giving value to the company. I wish I will discover those kinds of firms. Companies don’t have to be that impersonal and faceless.

Sometimes, a wasted potential will drive someone to their extremes just to feel his true capabilities. A young man was an athlete in his youth and is active in Christian ministries. Few years later he was married to his childhood sweetheart and now had a child. They seemed both happy in their lives because they get to travel around even if his job is a ground service employee for a small airline company in the United States which pays minimum wage. He was an outgoing, friendly and well – liked by his coworkers, friends and his family that it is unthinkable that he will go rouge and commit suicide. Yet he stole a plane from his company, did aerial maneuvers while flying a commercial turboprop plane with no passengers onboard for an hour and later crashing in the forest where he died. At least during those hours he was a free man, he got to enjoy what he really want; to become a pilot and do amazing stunts on the plane in which he never had experienced flying with. Who would have thought that a lowly ground service employee without any experience in flying an aircraft can fly a plane properly? Even the CEO of the airline was impressed by his skills even if he never had experience in flying in aircraft before and was both saddened and curious how a ground service employee can fly a commercial plane on par with experienced pilots.

He was a wasted potential. He was a person with a lot of hopes and ambitions but he ended up working in minimum wage jobs as baggage handler, eating up his childlike hopes for years and getting hit by the harsh realities of life not achieving his own full potential. He was too relatable to all of us because we do have potential within ourselves yet we were never get the chance to show it or be recognized. We work on wrong jobs. We work in slightly above minimum wage jobs. We work on dead – end jobs with no hope of improvement. Sometimes we need outside forces to jolt us from this dead – end and companies are potentially the best institutions to recognize our potential.

As someone from the Youtube comment section succinctly states: “Dead-end jobs are no joke. After doing the same meaningless shit everyday for minimum wage, people start losing grip on life and go postal.”