College days are finally over. I have been unleashed on an unsuspecting world with barely a cushion of a reasonably well-to-do family.  In an earlier day and age, all my efforts would have been focused on finding a job particularly at a multinational.  How times have changed.  Today, is a jobchanger’s paradise.  Like a grasshopper, he flits from succulent morsel to morsel keeping aside some part for a rainy day.  (That analogy is incorrect in India where rains in the winter are termed ‘unseasonal’. But along with language we have adopted the English idiom too.  So you get wallflowers in India though none can survive for more than a few hours.)

 There was a time when jobs were for life – particularly in Japan where employees used to take so much pride in their company’s products that they couldn’t tolerate a dusty, say, Nissan.  Out would come his nice, clean handkerchief — and wipe the cobwebs off the vehicle. In India, Maruti never developed such a culture though not from want of trying.

 Even today, jobs are practically for life in India but sector after sector is falling victim to the scourge of attrition, particularly the sectors in which there is enough scope and enough jobs. In business process outsourcing, for instance, some companies have been known to register 100 per cent turnover in a year which, on the face of it, would mean that an entirely new team is in charge of operations at the end of the year. Actually, it doesn’t quite work out that way. The only constant is the Five Founders and Dog which only means that people have left more than once in a period of 365 days. Far less than gaining brownie points from the top management for their ability to retain people, their HR department wins the kudos for their ability to attract people.

 For the individual jobseeker concerned, it comes with a join-on bonus and other perks to boot. The same sort of thing would be available to the employee after a few years on the job. The fact that he has resigned if only for a few hours seems to add 10-fold to his experience.

 As expected the entire job scenario has changed in this new culture. Earlier people had to pay to get a job. Now, there is a form of kickback to rejoin a company. In the newest sectors —  datamatics and retail, one requiring great skills and the other a positive frame of mind — high attrition is all the rage. This is what defines the new age. It doesn’t matter what you do as long as you do it in the NextGen style. So our diary of a young jobseeker will contain entries such as: “Met my new supervisor. Didn’t like his face. Put in my papers. Have to choose now between three other jobs. My former employers want me back. Jobs, jobs everywhere, and all the job boards did shrink; Jobs, jobs everywhere, and not an employee did blink.”
 

My parents’ generation doesn’t quite understand it. They were used to a scarcity of jobs, and what was available was poorly paid. How did the world change so soon? There aren’t so many new jobs, so that can’t be an answer.

The world population hasn’t decreased remarkably either. Automation hasn’t yet replaced human beings so Modern Times is not an allegory or, as Mrs. Malaprop would have it, the alligator Sheridan used in his 1775 play The Rivals. He might as well have used crocodile.

CASH ON THE NAIL

• High-paying fun jobs
• Air Traffic Controller
• Astronomer
• Art Director
• Midwife
• Agent
• Funeral Service 
• Manager
• Animator
• Postmaster and Mail 
• Superintendent
• Forester
• Archivist

Source: Forbes