What looking for work taught me about people
I found myself updating my résumé. Around me, I kept hearing the same stories. Fresh graduates spoke of sending hundreds of applications before receiving a single reply. Friends returning to work after raising children or caring for aging parents wondered whether the workplace had moved on without them. Even seasoned professionals admitted that looking for work no longer resembled what they remembered a decade ago.
So I decided to test today’s job market myself.
Finding a job is only half the battle
I subscribed to LinkedIn Premium, dusted off my CV, and let artificial intelligence (AI) refine it—not to embellish my experience but to translate years of work into language applicant tracking systems might recognize. Then I applied for leadership roles, some well outside my industry.
Within weeks, I was interviewing for senior management positions. Executive recruiters called, offered thoughtful feedback, and prepared me for conversations with their clients. Still, I knew my experience was not the norm. For the vast majority, the struggle to even get noticed points to a much wider economic reality.
To be clear, this is not where I announce that I’ve cracked the code to job hunting. As of writing, I’ve accumulated a respectable number of final boss interviews, encouraging conversations, and “We’ll get back to yous” followed by… radio silence. Consider it my serving of humble pie.
According to the Philippine Statistics Authority’s latest Labor Force Survey, 52.13 million Filipinos were in the labor force as of May 2026, translating to a participation rate of 63.8 percent. Unemployment stood at 4.8 percent, while 12.2 percent remained underemployed: working, but needing more hours or better pay.
Finding a job is only half the battle. Finding one that offers stability, growth, and a living wage is the real challenge. For many graduates, that uncertainty is their first introduction to adult life.
An interview that stayed with me
AI has become the convenient villain in conversations about hiring. Applicant tracking systems filter applications, identify keywords, and even coach candidates before interviews. Useful as these tools are, I came away convinced that the more interesting question begins after another human being enters the conversation.
One interview stayed with me. It was for the organizational development arm of a US-based nonprofit healthcare company. The interview panel included the president and vice president for human resources—both Caucasian executives based in the United States—the local operations head, and the local hiring manager.
We discussed leadership, organizational culture, and change management. Before the interview, I had outlined how I would spend my first few months: listening, understanding the culture, identifying opportunities, and earning trust before introducing change.
Toward the end, I was invited to ask a question. “I’ve shared how I hope to help your organization succeed. How will the organization help me succeed in this role?”
Across the grid of Zoom windows, I watched their reactions. The president paused, smiled, and answered first. The vice president for human resources followed. The local operations head explained how she envisioned supporting someone stepping into the role. The local hiring manager remained silent with a poker face.
Earlier, much of her questioning had centered on BPO terminologies and workflows—an industry where I had no direct experience. That struck me as odd because the organization’s US leadership had already explained they were intentionally looking beyond the traditional BPO talent pool. They wanted someone who could bring organizational development experience rather than simply reproduce familiar practices.
I left the interview thinking less about getting an offer and more about a contradiction baked into so many workplaces: companies say they want innovation, yet they hire for familiarity.
“Culture fit” in action
Industrial-organizational psychologists describe this tendency as affinity bias or similarity bias: our inclination to favor candidates whose backgrounds, schools, industries, or even vocabulary resemble ours.
It rarely feels like bias to the person exercising it. More often, it presents itself as sound judgment or “culture fit.”
We Filipinos like to think of ourselves as warm and relational, yet our workplaces can be viciously tribal. We gravitate toward familiar schools, industries, and circles. We say we are looking for the best candidate, but sometimes, we hire the most familiar one and miss out on true gems.
One of the brightest software engineers I know graduated from UP Mindanao. He started at a Cebu technology firm—earning a starting salary of P18,000 a month. When he later moved to a bank headquartered in BGC for almost triple the pay, rent and daily expenses quickly absorbed the increase. He also encountered office politics and a padrino culture.
It was infuriating to watch a fresh hire from an elite private university—brought in because his father was friends with an executive—spend much of the workday sleeping and playing mobile games at his desk while capable colleagues did the heavy lifting.
A year later, his biggest career break came from someone who remembered him. His former supervisor in Cebu had joined the Philippine office of a global technology company known for investing in learning, certifications, and internal mobility. When a position opened, he reached out.
It wasn’t just my friend’s technical skills that left an impression. It was his professionalism, initiative, and composure under pressure. My friend resigned from the bank and joined the company, where he has continued to grow. He never stopped investing in himself, and his proficiency in a foreign language eventually earned him a language premium.
The job market, then versus now
For fresh graduates, this may be the hardest part to believe. You cannot compete with someone who has spent five or 10 years building a career, and you shouldn’t have to.
Every experienced professional was once an applicant with an almost empty résumé. What you can build from your very first job is something that compounds over time: a reputation for being dependable, curious, prepared, and someone others genuinely want to work with again.
Several recent graduates even told me they would rather build careers through freelancing, virtual assistance, and remote consulting than pursue traditional corporate paths. High taxes, long commutes, rising living costs, and rigid office structures often fail to justify the trade-off when remote work offers flexibility and immediate income.
There are reasons for optimism. Government planners continue to project growth in digital services, healthcare, tourism, infrastructure, and renewable energy. Opportunities will emerge. The larger question is whether organizations will recognize talent wherever it comes from.
More to the person than the résumé
A résumé is a strange document. It compresses years of growth, mistakes, promotions, disappointments, reinventions, and hard-earned lessons into two pages, hoping a stranger can imagine the human being behind the bullet points. It tells where we have been, but says very little about how we earned trust, solved problems, recovered from failure, or became someone others would choose to work with again.
Looking back, I realize that my question at the interview was never really about that particular job. It was about every organization that says it wants fresh ideas, different perspectives, and innovation. How will you help people succeed once you hire them?
A hiring decision is not always a verdict on someone’s potential.
