Even if you’ve a degree, you may lose your job. Here’s why

Last Updated on 2016-09-23 , 6:10 pm

Since we were young, we’ve been told by many that as long as we study hard, get a degree and work hard, we’ll have secured a good future. We’ll have no worries about paying our bills or feeding our family, because a degree is everything, almost like a holy grail to a good life ahead.

That might be true many years ago, but the bad news is that the world is changing rapidly, so has our job security.

Let’s create a fictional Singaporean, Kimberly. Kimberly did what she was expected to do since she was young: she studied hard, got an accounting degree and thought that her future would be secured. She found a job in a SME, and worked hard every single day, putting long hours because that was expected of her.

Ten years passed and she was certain that her parents’ advice of “study hard for a better future” was true. But soon, the company’s sales declined due to competition from online shopping overseas. In order for the company to survive, the boss firstly decided to buy a software to handle its accounting. The software was so powerful that bookkeeping was done almost automatically—and Kimberly started to worry about her future.

One day, seeing that the company could simply use the software for day-to-day bookkeeping and could outsource its primary accounts to another company, effectively saving the company lots of money, they have no choice but to let go of Kimberly, if not they will have to close down. The retrenchment involved not just Kimberly, but several staff in the operations department.

How do you think Kimberly would feel? Angry. Depressed. Helpless.

She just lost her high-paying job, and it was not her fault—her performance was still good, she still worked long hours and she had a degree.

The truth is, the age-old saying of “get a degree and your future will be secured” might no longer be relevant now. Yes, a degree is a good stepping stone, polishing your interview with a golden touch, but that is that: if you don’t keep on improving yourself, if you don’t learn new skills, your degree now is just going to be a stepping stone.

You can’t cross the bridge of life by just stepping on a stone. You need to always step on new stones—you need many new stepping stones.

People are now reading e-books instead of print books, and if you are working for a publisher and do not learn more about e-book, you’re going to lose your job. People are buying things online instead of in brick-and-mortar shops, and if you’re working for a retail outlet and do not learn about ecommerce, you’re going to lose your job.

You may say anything about your fabulous degree, or your sacrifices for the company, but a company has to survive in order to feed you—so despite your “me, me and me” mentality, the harsh reality won’t give in.

Therefore, we have only one advice for you: don’t stop at the degree. Singapore has SkillsFuture for you to learn new things for free, paving even more stepping stones for you.

If you’re complacent, you’ll be replaced. Like what our labour chief said in this blog post that you should really take a read, only the fittest and fastest will survive. So start learning now.