Akindele Afolabi
Getting a job is neither about walking the street in pity and expecting someone to show mercy and give you a job, nor is it about just sending your resume around, applying to all the job vacancies because you studied a similar course, or you made a good grade or you think you can do the job. It is also not just by updating your LinkedIn profile, connecting with potential recruiters or harassing people with your in-mails.
Many people may have hindered themselves from creating job opportunities and may have failed to maximise the opportunities that have been presented to them.
The earth was created with a charge on man by the Creator to work out the resources he has deposited in it in a form usable for man’s consumption and to bring glory to the Creator. At the beginning of creation, God made available all the resources (especially his brain) that man would need to execute the assignment given to him, with the expectation by the Creator that man would use his initiative to combine these raw materials and make the world a liveable place for all.
Everyone on this earth has a mandate which is to tend and keep the garden in which the creator has placed us. This mandate that is expressed through our work has many implications.
Firstly, it implies that you have a panoramic commission to keep and tend the ‘garden’, that is, you have a mandate to work and this is not just about you.
It also implies that you need to find out how you are to keep this garden through what you do on a daily basis.
It implies that you are accountable not just to your supervisor but also a superior boss who is the Creator. It calls for faithfulness in tendering this garden when you have discovered yours and it is when you are faithful in doing this that you get fulfilled.
A number of us may never have seen our world of work from this perspective, perhaps we had never given it a thought or we think the Creator has no role to play in this and hence, it is ‘my own business’. To be in alignment with this thought pattern is to set yourself up for a frustrated lifestyle.
When we don’t reckon with this truth, we experience the following;
- Do a job we are not meant for
- Do a job for a wrong motive
- Have a wrong attitudinal disposition to our jobs and submit our career progress to an external factor
- Not given to continuous personal development and self- improvement initiatives
- Dissatisfied with our job
The big problem is that we keep looking for solution to these challenges, albeit, in a cyclical motion taking us nowhere in particular but around the same experience. We change jobs and in few months we begin to feel we are in a wrong job. It is because we have not addressed the core issue before jumping to another job.
The sense of purpose that underlies our search for job is the determining factor and we must never lose this.
Nature responds to tenacity of purpose and puts all it energy behind a man or woman that is approaching the world of work with it. Sense of purpose is always accompanied by the law of attraction and this is what creates opportunity for many.
Sense of purpose is however not enough, the level of preparedness to maximise opportunities is another force that works in favour of a job seeker. The level of preparation was the singular characteristic that made some people wise and others foolish (Parable of the ten virgins). Your level of preparation in getting the type of job you want can never be sacrificed for anything.
Your inability to get a job is not for the scarcity of jobs, but a function for the largest part of your level of preparedness to get a job and the effort you put into getting the job.
When you combine a sense of purpose driven by an assignment beyond you with a level of preparation you would have increased your chances of getting a job significantly.