Seeking A Job According To Circumstance

University graduates are normally thought to be unemployed after leaving school, which means employment is always a burning issue and a problem for people who make their way in the world for the first time.

In America, after graduating from a college, if the students can’t seek a job, they will get unemployment benefits from the government or they can borrow money from them for taking an upper course to get jobs easier. The repayment will be taken away gradually from their salary after getting job. If they still can’t find a job, they still receive the unemployment benefits until they find a job.

Nowadays in some countries, the human resources supply is surpassing its demand which leads to the fact that rate of students who can’t find a job is increasing. In these cases, some of the parents keep the attitude of blaming their children: “Other people are so busy with their work while you are quite free. How can you get a job if hanging about at home the whole day?” The unemployed usually receive glacial behavior from relatives and most of the people in society. Unemployment makes people feel distressed, inferiority complex. They think that they are not qualified to find a job.

 

In fact, not because they themselves don’t want to get job, they just couldn’t find out a suitable job in which they can promote their strong points. Especially, the well-educated people who are never out of the studying environment to put themselves into a practical trial, so it’s difficult for them to face the fierce competition and complicated relation in society. Those kinds of people normally aren’t firm enough to adapt to the new environment and are consequently unemployed.

 

A story about employment goes like this. A student had graduated from university 3 years ago, but still couldn’t find any jobs.  Then his parents came and asked me how to solve his problem. I said: “He is strong enough to take a job as a carpenter, a mason or other manual labors…” His parents don’t accept the idea then put a cross-question to me: “How could he do such those things while he has already graduated from university!” I replied: “So, some people have erroneous conceptions of this matter. I’ve known an American lawyer’s son who couldn’t find out a job after graduating from university. At last, he decided to learn woodwork  and he had put most of his effort to learn. As a result, he became a teacher in the school of carpentry, especially training the highly qualified students of carpentry. Since then, he has not only got a stable job, high income but also earned respect from others.”

Most people tend  to find a the job related to their major , but in fact I saw many people have to accept the job offer that is out of their area of expertise. There was a student who studied law but after graduation he worked as a postal worker. I was surprised and ask him: “Why don’t you get job related to the law?” He said: “It’s not easy to find a job related to my major. Furthermore, the Post service industry needs more workers and I am successful after applying for it.” This is really good and the newly graduated students shouldn’t be too picky about selecting jobs related to their majors. Instead, they should find a job first; then they can consider which is the most suitable one if they manage to find more than two jobs.

On the Buddhism’s perspective, this is called “according with circumstances”. Everything is caused by conditions; when the conditions are ripe enough, whatever we do goes smoothly. On the contrary, we will get the failure. Therefore, it’s important for parents and teachers in leading their children and students to get the right insight into a job seeking according to the spirit of “causes and conditions” and “causes and effects”. This will help students take right views under the pressure of life and intense competition environment nowadays.