Muhammad Furqan

CAUTION! The following article contains high level of ‘Sarcasm’ and reader may require aggressive therapy afterwards. Keep out of reach of children, especially the ones seeking admissions in universities this year.

The time is near when, if you get lucky enough to be shortlisted for a job interview, you may expect such questions;

“We understand you can tell us the time by your watch or smartphone but we require at least ‘World Time Association’ Time Telling certificate V 7.0.2 or equivalent”.

You may have a university degree in the required discipline where you spend thousands of dollars, but that’s not enough. Don’t get me wrong, you need the degree to qualify for a job but it’s just a prerequisite. Whatever you studied in the university is not relevant unless you spend thousands of dollars more, to get individual certifications of most of the major subjects of your degree. And don’t forget to pay to get certified from the company who has already sold millions of dollars of equipment or solution to your potential employer. And apart from your core competencies you must have expertise in all other trades. Like I was going through Job Description for a Telecommunication Engineer required by a company and it went like;

“Other than all off-the-shelf certifications of networking, project management, quality assurance, health & safety, first aid, successful candidates must have at least 6 years of experience in telecom sector including but not limited to; 24/7 Operations, deployment, planning and project & account management. Applicant should have hands on experience in Fiber communication, Satellite Communication, Microwave transmission Data Networks, Cloud Computing & Database administration. Candidate must have a successful track record of getting successful business leads and successful telco sales. You must be able to bring us clients, which we as a company haven’t thought of bringing in yet”.

Just imagine you get hired for this job, you must go to work wearing a suit with a huge suitcase having your laptop, spectrum analyzer, toolkit, 1^st aid kit, work boots and a helmet. It’s just like a hospital hiring a doctor with specialization in neurology, cardiology, surgery and pathology with extensive experience of patients record keeping, pharmacy and supplying the admitted patients with food at meal times. So, to get a job you must be Hulk having Loki’s brain wearing an Iron Man suit with Captain America’s shield in one hand and Thor’s hammer in the other.

Gone are the golden days of team work. If you see a job posting requiring a team player, than infer you have to be that team alone. Multitasking is an excellent thing but in such cases you have to perform multiple tasks of totally different specialties. Now you can stop wondering why the team of eleven players of Filed Hockey gets a single Gold Medal after winning the finals in Summer Olympics.

Remember the 90’s when we had all the different objects to perform special tasks like computer, video camera, phone, tape recorder, Photo camera, DVD player etc. Now they all are integrated in one easy to carry smartphone, which is seldom used for its core purpose to serve as a phone. You don’t buy a smartphone based on its performance as a phone rather it’s other attributes like camera, display, memory and applications. Likewise is the case with your job application, your degree is a must to apply for but they won’t weight your application which courses you took in your degree but the additional certificates matter more.

In the end it’s your journey as you are the one who owns The Ring. You have to be both Frodo and Samwise Gamgee at the same time. You have to overcome your fears and walk into Mordor. Once you throw the ring then ‘May be’ your recruiter (Gandalf in this case) send an Eagle (Job offer) to air lift and hand over you to your potential employer (Elves of course). Story doesn’t end here but a new chapter of constant struggle will begin. And there is no shortcut to happiness unless you get admissions in Performing Arts in university with Acting as major and take Politics as a career. And if you want to end up owning a matte black Lamborghini Aventador in shortest spam of time play GTA-V (not online).