Jobseeker: I think they keep rejecting my application because of my nationality, what do you think?
Me: Hmm. No, I don’t think so all right! Send me your cv and let me have a look at what you have been sending out.
CV arrives and in a nutshell, it was not representative enough.
The profile summary was barely understandable; it appeared to be a string of fancy English words that made it difficult to comprehend. Also, the cv was not well adapted and it was obvious that the candidate had put in very little effort.
Now Let’s talk a little bit about the elephant in the room.
I can honestly empathize with people who seem to believe that the colour of their skin or their nationality might be the reason for all the rejections they get because I was once there. At some point in my job search journey, I was indeed experiencing a tsunami of rejections and I was like wait a minute! maybe just maybe, this is the reason why these companies keep rejecting my applications. Well, the good thing was that the person I expressed this concern to refused to allow me to entertain that thought so I struck it off the list. I am also asking you to please do the same.
Now I am not going to act like an ostrich with my head in the sand but I personally believe that companies who follow that colour/nationality hiring ideology are in the minority particularly now that companies world over are being very intentional about their DE&I efforts + recent studies predict that companies with diverse workforces would outperform non-diverse workforces.
Think of it this way, value is pretty much like money in a sense. Money has no skin colour and it is very fluid. Money can flow across continents and can make a case for itself irrespective of where it stands. The question always is, how much money are we talking about. Invariably, the amount of money would always determine the kind of doors that would be opened.
Think of value in that sense; basically, your job/your future job allows/will allow you to channel your value in a particular direction. The question always is, how much value are we talking about. You know your value more than anyone else, so take some time to self-reflect and you might be pleasantly surprised at what you might find.
Finally, like money, value can be wasted (unutilized), saved up (close to stagnant, no significant increase ) or re-invested (to generate more value). What are you doing with your value?
God’s speed!
