Real advise for Filipinos desperately praying for jobs

Joblessness is indeed a big problem in the Philippines. It is Third World labour supply on steroids — an exceedingly pathetic situation that sees the economic value of Filipino labour utterly flattened under the sheer weight of the vast numbers of warm bodies out on the streets in jeepney- and bus-loads looking for jobs. The fact that we have university-educated Filipinos working as bank clerks and and sales ladies in department stores is testament to the sad negative premium paid to Filipino labour by the country’s meagre job market.

Where there is desperation, we will always find Big Religion. And true enough, the Philippine Roman Catholic Church has seized this spring of desperation that is the Philippine Labour Market to expand its market for its goods and services…

Some people go to a priest to have their new house or car blessed. Others are happy enough if a priest blesses their rosaries.

But Msgr. Jose Clemente Ignacio has found a new breed of supplicants—people desperate for jobs who ask him to bless their resumés.

Ignacio finds nothing wrong with such requests, especially in a country where, according to the National Statistics Office, there are almost 3 million people without jobs as of last January, with 7.1 million others underemployed.

We can see here now the strategic shrewdness underpinning the Church’s stand against any form of artificial contraception and, consequently, the Reproductive Health (RH) Bill that seeks to make these more widely available to Filipinos. Without the excess abundance of warm human bodies that runaway Third World reproduction creates, there would be no demand and no market for the nebulous “services” of our venerable men-in-robes.

Such is the power of “services” whose value proposition to humanity revolves around promises of everything in death and nothing in life. So it escapes me how a very worldly aspiration like a decent livelihood (a term directly derived from the word life) can be one that a religious service such as “blessings” symbolised by sprinkling H20 on the blessee can see itself as possessing any authority over. But then leave it up to “theology” to come up with a convenient route to sidestep that hairy question…

But Ignacio also reminded those who sought God’s blessings that way that while prayers were bound to be answered, it would depend “on God how He would fulfill your prayers.”

“Sometimes there’s a better plan for us,” he said.

Legazpi Bishop Joel Baylon, head of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines’ Episcopal Commission on Youth also adds in his two cents on the matter…

“There’s no problem with such kind of an attitude,” Baylon said. “But there must also be perseverance on the part of the person because answers to prayers are not automatic.”

Baylon also said that God’s help could come in many forms.

“The help of the Lord is not limited to these material things,” he said.

With such small print caveating every little prayer received by the High Heavens, the poor sods in “this world” are probably better off investing their puny pesos on a lottery ticket instead of tossing it into the Church collection pan. Indeed, it’s a great thing being The Lord, isn’t it? You get a before-the-fact blanket excuse clause for every non-delivery of your “promises”.

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Come to Father Benign0 instead, guys and take some advice from me:

Junk Tagalog (not to mention your moronic jejemon-speak) and learn how to speak English the way Barack Obama and Queen Elizabeth speak it. Even better, learn to speak it the way Jon Ramon Aboitiz, Jaime Zobel de Ayala, and Edu Manzano do. You’ve got a better shot at learning to do that than making it into the handful of exclusive schools that most employers worth their salt limit their job candidate searches to.

Learn how to write using right grammar and spelling. Employers don’t look for Holy Water stains on a cover letter and resumé. They look at these documents and see a preview of what you might be worth to them. Bad grammar, bad spelling, and bad sentence construction spell only one thing: L-O-S-E-R.

Ask yourself this simple question: How serious am I about pursuing my dream job? If your answer is Very serious! then ask yourself these follow-up questions:

(a) What am I doing spending my leisure time watching shows like Willing Willie and these teleseryes and telenovelas?

(b) How different am I from the ten thousand-odd other schmoes out there I am competing with for this job?

(c) Why would the guy conducting the next interview I am going to hire me?

If the questions itemised in points (a), (b), and (c) are all new to you, dude, that’s a sign that you haven’t really been serious at all about getting yourself that dream job. You need to get off your arse (or your knees, as the case may be) and engage in some real market-value-adding stuff. Get out there and take charge of your life.