I’ve been sniffing through a lot of resume and interviewing job applicants the past several days. In this wave, there are a lot of nursing grads, call center agents and ex-OFW’s from Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Dubai.
I am apprehensive to accept former OFW’s. Our past experiences with them were not so good. To begin with, they were used to big money which we could not offer. They have a tendency to encourage other employees to go abroad too.
We all have an impression that all call center agents earn a lot of bucks. They don’t. Some are paid commissions without basic salary. Some get P9,000 a month. But on the average, those working for bigger companies get an average of P15,000 a month. Yes they do exhibit some conversational skills but after four sentences, their English disappear and their regional accents become obvious. I interviewed a very pretty young lady, she was dozing off right in front of me. I told her to just go home and sleep. She probably came straight from graveyard shift.
Some of the applicants are as young as 19 and majority are 21. Although we prefer those with some work exerience, I do not discriminate against new graduates. I try to look for some potential in them and give them a fighting chance. If no one will hire new graduates for lack of experience, then they will never find any job.
It’s so hard to train new employees. But those with long credentials could also be a trap. They also bring wth them the kalokohan they’ve learned and acquired from working outside. They bring-in with them a lot of negative traits which could contaminate the other good employees.
It’s hard to balance these things.
Another observation is that 100% of the young applicants have email addresses with such words as gorgeous, walking tall, man catcher, pretty, cool, lonely night, dude etc. Some even have two emails, yahoo and gmail. The older applicants, those who are 50 and above, do not indicate any.
I am hoping to find new employees who are competent and trustworthy.
