The Bumpy Career is the Philippines’ premier blog on interning and job hunting for Gen Z.
It’s the place to get inspiration, no-bullshit guides, and tools for college kids who want to take their careers seriously.
You’re googling for career advice here in the Philippines. You want to know about internships in Manila, or how the application process goes for most companies in BGC. You go through dozens of search word combinations, but nothing’s useful.
If you’re lucky and the site is from the Philippines, the article’s <1000 words and you have a feeling you’ve read it before. From one of those generic American career sites. You know, the ones Google showed you 3 hours ago?
I know all this, because I found the same thing out the hard way in 2015. By googling over 100+ combinations of keywords, combing through 100+ pages of Google, and skimming over a 1000+ articles. Then coming to the conclusion that they were all so unhelpful to me. A Filipino college student who would start her career in Manila.
Nobody laid out any useful step-by-step advice for Filipino job seekers. Nobody had tips from actual internships done here in Manila. Everything seemed eerily the same as American advice, which I knew wouldn’t work here because we have a different society. We’re in Asia. All those articles fell under the “conventional wisdom” type.
So, to solve that lack of info, I ended up building The Bumpy Career.
What is The Bumpy Career?
In my 4.5 years at college, I (aka Justine) did 4 internships and got 18 job offers well over the average salary before I turned 22. Or even graduated.
Through research, trial, and error, I figured out how to quickly navigate the Philippines’ career scene and self-improve exponentially using small tweaks taken from my reading list. All while my grades stayed at a solid C+. (I graduated with a 2.7/4.)
I did all this at a faster, but much less labor-intensive pace compared to my peers.
And now I want to share how I did that with you.
Justine in June 2018
My hair looks different every few months though.
The Bumpy Career is the place where I share the details of all my job hunting experiments while I was a college student. And my career experiments now as a fresh grad at my 1st job. And my fumbles and failures all throughout.
Specifically, I detail how to make better-than-average and most-definitely-tailored-for-the-Philippines resumes, cover letters, and interview practice cheatsheets. While answering in-depth any question you have about interning or job hunting. (That you turned into TBC’s Anonymous Question Counter.)
The Bumpy Career is where I also share :
others’ career stories in the Philippines and showcase their successes in designing a better career for themselves with a little help from TBC,
the behind-the-scenes action of my digital products, where I tell you step-by-step how I did a specific part of the job hunt, and
my opinions on Gen Z’s career problems, like on how broken the job application system is and how can we redesign it better
Through my writing, I hope you realize that you don’t have to go off for a year of bumming around in the name of ~finding yourself~. You can start right now. You just have to take actionable steps forward.
I want to make this clear. I’m not telling you that there’s 1 specific career path to follow.
You can do whatever you want, like join a social entrep, found a startup, or serve in the government. Or be like me, and join corporate with your eyes wide open. (Which I’m telling you now doesn’t mean you’re a sell out. I’ll tell you how to grapple with that somewhere on the site someday. Remind me somehow.)
Your career and whatever elusive dream job you’ve set your sights on is your choice, and The Bumpy Career’s here to help. We’ll help you get closer to your ideal career, even if you don’t have any ideas or plans for it yet.
Hey, didn’t you used to be called The Border Collective?
Yes, yes we were. If you’re ever curious about why that’s the name, just ask me~ Or maybe I’ll write it down someday.
So why’s it called The Bumpy Career?
Because I learned firsthand that though we can try to make the journey as smooth as possible, that even if we do the “right” things all the time, inevitably, the journey will be bumpy. Our careers won’t be smooth sailing. Especially in this day and age.
It’s up to us to weather the storms. Navigate a “better” course, lean into it, and sail off for whatever adventure’s awaiting us.
It will get bumpier and bumpier as you go along. And that’s okay. I hope that through TBC I pass down my maps to you, so you know there’s someone who tried to help you face it all.