We’re doing a series of “What Have You Learned” in one of my bloggers group this month and for this week, it’s all about the things you’ve learned from your work, from your job or jobs you’ve had and your career in general.
My job, years back, had been as Recruitment Officer. Not exactly a well-faceted HR Personnel as I’ve only ever handled recruitment, but I’ve been to various companies, servicing different industries, hopping from one company to the next, facilitating clerical to managerial jobs, until I took a sudden turn, landed on an administrative, secretarial job. It wasn’t structurally lower in the organizational level compared to a Recruitment Officer – I was a Secretary to the President of a Hospital or the Hospital Administrator – but it wasn’t exactly an ascent in my career ladder either. It wasn’t in the plan but the salary had to come somewhere in the bigger picture. And so, it became the beginning of my career path going south as I moved on from one “wide of the mark” jobs to the next, but it was also the catalyst that led me to the job that had truly made me happy.
I was going from one company to another, always finding something to complain about. I stubbornly pretended that I was doing, what in my mind, was a way to further my career. I just had to transfer to a better company that offers better salary, more opportunity for growth, the perfect culture that’d give the perfect balance for everything, a perfect company. But in truth, there is no perfect company. There never was and there never will be.
If there was something I’ve learned from my unceasing search of a perfect company doing the perfect thing I like doing, it is that no matter how you search for happiness in this world, you will never find it unless you look inside yourself. I think this applies not only to life in general, but also to the choice of career and the “perfect” job.
In my case, I had found my happiness in teaching. For the first time in my career life, I felt that I was doing something really worthwhile. Something more important. Something bigger than filling urgent manpower need in a company. I was helping people. It definitely feels better helping a 50-year old non-English speaking woman say “how are you?” in English than turning down an applicant for a job I know he needed.
The funny thing is that I had never thought of becoming a Teacher. More funny is that I was on a Staff level. I wasn’t important in the company, I was just one of the hundreds of Teachers they have. I wasn’t in my “ideal” sort of company. I don’t have the kind of desk that feeds the ego. Nor do I have the perfect working area with perhaps the perfect view from the window. I have to go back to what was the going rate for the job than the higher figure I could have demanded given my previous salary.
And yet I found myself, a night person, waking up at 3:30 in the morning everyday. Not because of the pay, not because of a report I have to finish or a management meeting that I have to attend, but because my students would be waiting for me. Because Kim Hye Soo would be in an English program and needs me to correct some speech she made. It’s because little Lee Jong Myung would be telling me about his weekend spent picking apples or the latest going-ons with his friends. And I was happy. I felt contented.
And so, if I have to sum up what I have learned from jobs that I’ve had, it’s that your title position isn’t everything. It doesn’t matter if you belong in the top 500 fortune companies or that you’re commanding a high annual salary. What matters most is whether you are happy with what you are doing. The fulfilling kind of happiness, not because you have the greatest responsibility in the company, but because you feel that you have greater responsibility to other people. Not to better your own position and status, but to better that of others.
