Summary
The present work tries to be a recommendation for the university student and the professional in administration through the description of the labor panorama that predominates in Mexico. It is an invitation to the reader not to lower their guard and be attentive to the need to be different through innovation and creativity.
Being different: a must to succeed
introduction
This text contains information on the labor context in Mexico of recent graduates and management professionals and the need to be different to be successful. The main obstacles for entrepreneurs are listed and statistical data are pointed out that support the need to be creative and innovative.
II. Background
Currently the labor competition forces the university student of specialization in administration or even of any degree to acquire more and more specific knowledge, to prepare as a professional in different branches or even to have work experience. According to a survey carried out by Trabajando.com of 2,500 professionals, 32% of those surveyed assured that they found their job opportunity when they left their career in less than six months. Of the same respondent, 21% stated that they found a job within a period of six to twelve months, the same percentage being those who found their first job after the year. It was also revealed that 47% of the respondents associate the lack of employment opportunity with the lack of experience (Vargas, CNN Expansión 2012).These data alarms us about the reality that recent graduates of the bachelor's degrees live, this implies that if the student does not have experience, they must have at least some characteristic that makes them preferable to another candidate.
Recruiters are stricter every day in the selection of human capital, the recruitment procedure has undergone modifications according to the direction of the company in order to have more filters for evaluating knowledge, skills or attitudes. There is also talk of companies that take the time to verify that the data provided by the candidate for the vacancy is reliable. This limits the practices that professionals previously exercised when entering a job, such as the alteration of curricular information. Even each day the assessments to check knowledge are expanded according to the requirements for the position, for example checking the command of a foreign language.
International trade has influenced the development of job profiles for companies in these sectors; therefore, learning a foreign language is already an advantage in obtaining a job. Mexico is one of the countries with intense tourist activity; therefore, the tourism services and promotion offered by some states such as Quintana Roo, Oaxaca, Yucatán and among others is significant. In 2013, approximately 27.3 million visitors were received in Mexico. (Olson 2014) However, despite the fact that Mexico receives numerous visitors, the importance of learning a language is declining.According to EF Education First in its third edition of 2013 of the English Proficiency Index, it estimates that Mexico is one of the 4 countries in Latin America that have a low score in this index. (Forbes 2013)
The problem of the professional in administration is that although there are numerous specialties in this area or that there are many vacancies for administrators, the reality is that these vacancies are usually filled by highly trained personnel. According to the National Association of Universities and Institutions of Higher Education (ANUIES) in Mexico there are about 41 saturated degrees, that is, there is a significant lack of employment due to the growing number of professionals trained in these areas. It is also stated that the degrees with the greatest demand are: Accounting, Administration, Law, Communication, Political Science, Education and Pedagogy, Psychology, Tourism, Design and Medicine (Vargas 2012)
In Mexico, the degree in business administration is one of the courses most offered by public universities, the three models of universities in Mexico maintain as an educational offer some degree related to administration: Technological Institutes, Technological Universities and the most recent model that are the Polytechnic University. Additionally, private universities offer the same career or specialties of the administrative branch. These data are worrisome for the student in administration since if the university decides to join the labor area after completing the degree, it is likely that they will find themselves in a saturated work environment; Thus,You will have to knock on the human resources offices door to door to find a job that even if it is not well paid or according to university study you will have to accept it.
According to data from the Labor Observatory of the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare (STPS), in the second quarter of 2013 there were around 740 thousand 668 professionals in business administration. (Flores 2014) These data indicate that in Mexico administrators are the professionals who have the greatest colleagues, that is, it is the career with the greatest job competition. The same study by the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare (STPS) indicates that 60% of administration graduates work in jobs other than the area in which they graduated. (Flowers 2014)
III. Development
Based on the above information we can deduce that in Mexico being a business administrator with the same qualities, skills, knowledge and attitudes is risking entering a world of work where the probability of not finding a job is increasingly high. The future graduate in administration or the current business administrator cannot relax and think that the university degree will open the doors of companies and offer him the desired salary from his first month.
The above data reinforces the recommendation to be an administrator different from other professionals, with greater skills and greater specialization. The administration student should not be given the task of imitating the same characteristics of his future colleagues or should not be an identical product of today's universities. The business administrator must be a professional different from his colleagues with a competitive job advantage.
Business competition encourages companies to innovate their products or services due to the fear that the most latent competition will end up capturing the only loyal customers of the companies. But if companies need to be more productive, innovative, creative and of quality it is reasonable that human capital should have the same qualities.
To be successful, companies can count on a competitive advantage, whether in cost, differentiation or segmentation. These are the most common advantages from the marketing approach, and there may be more according to the author's approach. These consist of focusing on reducing costs to keep prices low by guaranteeing profits, they can innovate their products, offer greater service or sell added value to attract the attention of their customers. Finally, companies can also focus their service on a group of people with similar objectives. Just as companies have advantages, the business administrator must also have unique qualities, because these qualities will be decisive in the selection of the organization's personnel.
However, the apathy and disappointment of the administration students has led them to stop focusing on change to end up being "simple administrators" with theoretical bases that they continue and pursue with the desire to memorize and finish the degree being the same imitation as the colleague in administration. Therefore, both public and private universities should focus on not creating graduates with the same abilities, with the same knowledge or the same domain areas, but rather be the motivators for each student to decide to find new approaches in administration, grow professionally or even the students themselves question the new management models. However, the attentive invitation of teachers will not make the university great but the work between educational institutions,teachers and students will promote the growth not only professional but also of the country.
In the business world there are entrepreneurs who have positioned their brand and who have enough resources to continue implementing new creative strategies such as expanding their business to a new market niche, introducing a new line of products, investment in more advertising among other strategies. But in that same world there are also entrepreneurs who do not always have the resources available to implement their ideas, there are talented young people who have creative ideas about new markets and new products that they cannot create in the absence of financial capital.
Mexico is currently a country where eight out of ten Mexican students intend to undertake before starting a formal job in an organization. (Vargas 2013) However, the problems that arise are the financing of the project and the credit problems in case of making contracts with financial institutions. This is a second problem that Mexican entrepreneurs must face; therefore, the entrepreneur must not only be creative to formulate a business idea but also to make decisions or be creative in financing his company.
While an entrepreneur decides to launch his new idea, another in the same place or at the other end has decided to close his business. All this has occurred due to many factors from the administrative, legal, marketing or financial courts. According to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography through the National Survey of Occupation and Employment during the first quarter of 2013 in Mexico around 117, 393 entrepreneurs were unemployed or suffered the closure of their businesses. (De la Rosa 2013). These indicators increase the need to be different in order to be successful, new businesses have the need to offer new products in order to focus customer attention on innovation and creativity.
Companies that sell phones do not wait for the end of the year to offer a new model or edition of their products, it is likely that the research and development department is constantly working to launch the same products with new features and be able to unseat your competition. Innovation is also a way of being different. According to Pablo Slough, president of Google in Mexico, national microenterprises have an average life of two years due to their slow innovation process. (Castillo and Yee 2014)
Being different today is not an option, it is an obligation, it is necessary only if you want to be successful. Companies do not offer the same products year after year, they do not sell the same idea in each product, so the future administrator should not do the same with their title.
How to be different?
The difference lies in the qualities that make one management professional different from another. The student can achieve this by analyzing administrative models, questioning the management approaches, providing new business models and the climax would be undertaking. The universities that offer degrees in administration and the government that promotes them do not want the student to end up working for another employer, but rather to create their own source of employment and also create new sources for other specialties.
If the student has the idea of being an entrepreneur, he will meet the first obstacle in the business world. What business idea is profitable? What is the best idea to undertake? The answer can easily be found if the entrepreneur really is. The administration student should not memorize concepts or declaim theories but rather apply them. The theories in administration are the basis of any business administrator, its function lies in the different approaches that writers on the subject have made on this discipline. The management approaches are an example of being different, the theories created during the industrial revolution are the result of different approaches, from scientific, classical or humanist theory among others.
The degree in administration has the task of being different through the creation of business ideas, updating knowledge or the foray into the study of new areas of administration such as studying masters or doctorates.
IV. conclusion
Finally, the reader of this text has the decision to be different or to dedicate himself to imitating business models or to be a copy of the closest colleague. If we are free to think, act, and be different, why have we decided to be the same copy as our classmate, colleague or teacher? Successful entrepreneurs did not fold their arms hoping for success but decided to be different, innovative, and creative.
References consulted
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