I distinctly remember the final semester of my formal education. I simply could not wait to get out of school and jump straight into a whole new world of work and paychecks.
The thought of being able to earn my keep, to buy things for the people dear to me or to simply save up for all the expenses typically associated with growing up excited me. Just to clarify, I was not referring to expenses of the marital kind but rather that of travel, food and football memorabilia.
I was so enthused about joining the workforce not because I was a laggard in class. By the time I graduated from University, I had somewhat navigated the tricky switch from the oft-falsely-thought-of glamorous Media industry to the number-crunching world of Business and bottom-lines.
However, I was also partly weary from the last five semesters of having to mug and complete assignments in order to keep up and improve my GPA.
I remember deliberately placing a particularly large “full-stop” at the end of my final sentence to mark the end of my final paper in the final semester of what I promised myself would be the final course of my academic life.
The joy and relief, I must add, was unparalleled. It was as if the years of mugging, striving and achieving those pigeon-hole grades were released off of me, and buried in those circular motions of my favourite blue Pilot G-2 (Extra Fine) pen.
As I stepped out of the examination hall into the bright, sun-bathed foyer of the University, my mind which was now running on adrenaline was later faced with a new thought – what next?
Terence holding an ‘omg’ sign.
Although I knew what was next, I quickly realised that getting there would not be so easy. It was May of 2009, I was part of the cohort of wide-eyed graduates seeking to enter the workforce after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. In the typical layman’s (pun intended) term, it was the climax of the subprime mortgage crisis.
To put this into perspective, the bankruptcy triggered a 5% one-day decline in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which was then the largest since the 9-11 attacks in America.
The fall-out and ripple effect of this mega-event sent financial and economic tsunamis globally, putting a halt to hiring, coupled with many corporate knee-jerks decisions.
Terence surfing on choppy waters – how he felt graduating in the economic crisis was like.
This somewhat left me (and my batch of graduands globally) high and dry. Ironically, and rather cruelly, high on enthusiasm but dry on job openings.
To prevent a whole host of jobless young minds from roaming the streets, the Singapore Government had to step in and put in place several job-boosting initiatives and programmes, subsidising our wages, which were already measly due to the global crisis.
It was possibly the worst time to graduate – expectations and enthusiasm quickly turned into uncertainty and despair.
And so, I deeply empathise with the graduating cohorts of 2020 and 2021. While my cohort faced a lack of job opportunities owing to a global financial crisis, theirs would be no different due to the global pandemic of COVID-19.
While one day, we may all hopefully look back and laugh, thinking “How many of us can say we graduated at the height of a global crisis?”, it is in the here and now that the repercussions of one global crisis are truly felt – Job cuts, tightened purse strings, reduced corporate budgets and hiring.
Not many of us have had the privilege of having a family business to seek temporary shelter under, or the rub of the green in being hired before you even graduated. Mind you, my coursemate found himself in that situation although I note that his grades were inferior to mine, but that is a story for another day.
So, I did what I guessed many of my batchmates did – dig deep and plough the hiring websites of the corporates I was keen on, speak to anyone and everyone in my network in hope of finding or landing something, get your name and CV out in the market and in the minds of the hiring managers (they would have to hire after all, at some point), and when something somewhat suitable and/ or interesting came along, take it up.
I would like to leave two pieces of advice for the graduating cohort this year. Firstly, don’t be choosy; this is not the time to be nitpicking. In any case, there would be many years ahead to change or alter your working career or the corporates you put on your CV.
Look up and have hope in difficult times.
Secondly, take heart. There is hope at the end of the storm or the proverbial pot of gold on the other side of the rainbow.
Tough times don’t last, tough people do. And so, I take heart in that. While my formal academic education may have ended all too soon, the rough and bumpy introduction into the corporate world stood me in good stead for the years that followed.
