Finding My Place: A Tenure Worth Celebrating

Logged in at 8:00 PM and clocked out at 5:00 AM the next day. The night life has been my schedule for almost a decade of working. It's tiring for sure, as the difference between sleeping at night and during the day is on a whole different level. There's nothing I can do about it since this is my work.

Company emails aren't something I check regularly. I usually scan them, especially if they relate to payroll and incentives, but for other stuff, I just keep them unread. That was until my lead messaged me, congratulating me for my hard work. At first, I didn’t know why, but when she mentioned checking my email, I saw it was about my tenure with the company.

If you're in the Business Process Outsourcing industry in the Philippines, a regular employee will typically stay for at least six months to two years. Beyond that, the employee is either already in a management position or just an exception. The turnover rate is so high that rampant hiring is a constant.

I remember my first job in this industry, where I only lasted for more than a year. I think I was part of batch 40 in training at the time, but by the time I left, they were already at batch 50-something, as some employees only stayed for a few weeks. The account was notoriously tough since it was a telephone company process, but the experience gained was something that could be used for personal growth.

A joke within the industry says that if you survive a telco account, any account outside that line of business will feel like a walk in the park.

Since I was tired of taking phone calls, I longed for an account where I could just send emails or instant messages. My friend, @serene-hime, was working at my current company at the time and mentioned they were looking for an external hire to fill the role of an Accounts Receivables Analyst specializing in reconciliation. Since I believed I had the skillset, I applied for the job along with April. Unfortunately, we didn’t get the job because someone had already been hired prior to our application.

That sucked, but that’s life.

Since I really wanted to work for their company, I said I would reapply once the cooling period ended (three months). A few days later, I received a text message from recruitment asking if I was available for an interview. I said yes, and after the interview, I got hired. It turned out that the person hired before me got a better offer from a competitor and left without prior notice.

It was a blessing in disguise. I got hired and trained for a few months before entering the production environment. True to the premise, the majority of my work involves account reconciliation and research, which is what I do daily.

It’s challenging, but there’s joy in resolving every item, especially the ones that have been aging in the books for more than a year.

The work is stable for now, and as some of my teammates have said, the only thing that would push them to leave is if we were obliged to return to the office. So far, there’s no notice about that, and we pray it won’t happen.