17 February 2024
Coming to a new country can be a challenge especially when you already made something of yourself in your own homeland or any other nation for that matter. You were already a “somebody” there. Whether you came to the UK straight from the Philippines or from e.g. the Middle East or elsewhere, you built a career and you would wish to carry it on. However, if you are not in the medical profession, you typically find that with the different education system and unfamiliar ways of job hunting unique to this part of the world, you feel lost. So, you just accept whatever job is available and hope that along the way, your desired profession will find you again.
There is nothing wrong with that route. And sometimes, to be fair, you do eventually get to land on whatever profession you wanted in the first place. But it takes longer, and it could be excruciating being in a job that is not right for you.
“Is it really that difficult?” you ask. It can be. But continuing in the UK the career that you built elsewhere is far from impossible.
First of all, we Filipinos are mostly educated people, especially the ones who had the gumption to venture out of the mother country for greener pastures. Some even have Ph.D.s and Masters degrees. Most are high school educated at the least. Person to person, Filipinos can stand next to any nationality and come up equally or even better educated. We put so much importance on education that it’s embedded in our DNA.
Secondly, we are an industrious people. Service-oriented. We are known for being hard-working. In so many countries, it’s the Filipinos who are trusted and relied upon by companies and organisations. We can do this as well in the UK. And we are doing it.
And finally, we come from a God-fearing nation and integrity is inculcated into us from a very young age. We have the proclivity to always do the right thing which is rooted from our fear ofdivine retribution if our integrity gets tested and we fail.
We have everything going for us, but why do we sometimes find it difficult to establish our chosen profession in the UK? I can think of three things that pose as barriers:
One, mastery of the English language. Any average Filipino can speak a considerable level of English. However, when we are in a professional environment, we tend to fold in the face of natural-born English speakers because we keep mentally monitoring our grammar. We have a fear of getting our “tenses” wrong and sounding ridiculous. There is also the issue of accents. We know English, and we can speak English but we sometimes do not understand “their” English. As our success in the UK is mostly anchored on our ability to communicate , it’s important that we get this right from the get-go.
Two, lack of confidence. The language barrier plays a big role in this one. If you get that sorted, this particular battle can be easily won as well. However, the lack of mastery of the English language is not only the reason why many Filipinos have low self-confidence. This can be traced back to our country’s long history of colonisation. We were conditioned to have instant reverence for foreigners. Any white male or female visiting the Philippines is automatically addressed as Sir or Ma’am. This may have been applicable hundreds of years ago when most of our country was not educated and we were under the mercy of foreign powers. But not anymore. We are coming from a sovereign nation, rich in culture and tradition. And as I said in the beginning, we are an educated people. We are not inferior to anyone. Having this realisation can help us become more assertive in business and professional circles. Our ideas and opinions are as valid as others. If we have something to say, we say it with confidence.
Finally, number three, is the notion that we cannot compete because our education system is so different from the UK system. Yes, they are different, but if you are educated in the Philippines, you can be perceived as educated everywhere else in the world. But only if you place yourself well. Your CV should highlight not only your education and professional experience but also all your transferable skills that are applicable here in the UK. You also have to invest in upskilling and reskilling yourself. Take international certification courses related to your profession. They have to be recognised globally, especially in the UK.
Grace Callister is the Executive Director of iQuBETS Asia and is based in Brighton, England and the Head of Human Resources at Oxford International College Brighton.
iQuBETS Asia is a consultancy and certification company, the sole representative of both the American Certification Institute, USA and the International Purchasing and Supply Chain Institute (IPSCMI), USA in South East Asia. Now we are starting in the UK, and we’d like to begin helping our kababayan with upskilling themselves and obtaining the right credentials to practice their chosen professions in the UK.