"Jehovah Jireh, The Lord Our Provider"
Part IV) The journey to finding a job
It has been a long tough journey for Kelv to find a job that he really wanted. The long 4mths of torture in being my own personal South African Maid, putting up with all of my requests of doing this & that in the house as well as entertaining every single person that has visited us in Singapore. Golly Gosh he has been more than what I could ask for. Couldn't have done it without all his help...
Of course it has not been easy for Kelv during the 4mths from a successful banker to a SA maid. Looking back, Kelv had to go through this journey for God to do some amazing things in his life The biggest thing that God had to deal with Him was his pride. Yes every man has pride after all God's created men to provide, to be the head of the house. So when you are stripped of all these things that men finds as their identity, you kind go down into this blackhole of hopelessness, rejection, self condemnation. Praise God that He taught Kelv well about humility & surrendering and he learned it very well. About learning to trust Him when things seemed hopeless. About learning to surrender when all you want to do is fly to achieve and accomplish with your own strength.
What an awesome journey it has been. When Kelv started to look for work in his industry, it was very tough. Some rejections, some discontentment which lead to dead ends after another. There was the rounds and rounds of interviews that my poor hubby had to go via public transport wearing his stylish suits in the unbearable humidity & heat... If you knew Kelv in the Melbourne days, you would know that God really gave him a humble pie through this experience. Everything that he had in Melbourne was stripped from him in Singapore. He.. had to learn to not use his own strength but to depend a hundred and ten times on God.
On the 3rd month of unemployment, Hope finally came knocking on his door. One of the headhunter who tried unsuccessfully to match him to banking jobs suggested to him that he would make such a good headhunter in a HR firm recruiting for finance & banking esp since a lot of HR mgrs have no knowledge of finance at all while Kelv does! plus the lifestyle & bonus scheme is very similar to what he did in Commercial Banking. So Kelv decided to apply for all the top firms in HR. Immediately less than 24hrs later, all the big guys gave him a call. Morgan McKinley, Robert Half, Robert Walters, HR1, you name it.
3wks later, the final 2 that Kelv had de-selected came down to the two Roberts. 'Which one would it be?', He asked God.Yesterday, both firms had made an offer to him. 1) Robert Half, an American Company & world's largest Banking Recruitment firm offers a higher pay & high earning potential, is self performance based but with a very bad working culture of which his future boss is extremely arrogant who thinks he is top gun. 2) Robert Walters, a very well established UK firm with head offices all over the world including Melbourne - offers a slightly lower pay, is team performance based & has an excellent work culture where all the senior managers absolutely love Kelv! It was really a hard decision to make.
So last night, as Kelv was confused as to which job to take, I prayed over him for God to direct him: To give Kelv the spirt of discernment & for God to close doors while showing him so clearly which one not to pursue.The next day (today) literally at the last second - God showed up.When Kelv told me what had happened, I was totally flabbergasted, in awe of God answering yet another one of our prayers.
Basically at around 5pm, he finally made the call to Robert Half ready to tell his intentions to his direct boss that he would be joining the firm. Before Kelv said this, he decided to reiterate the verbal agreement on the remuneration package. To his horror, the guy replied 'no, sorry we can't offer you that much. No one in the department earns that much. We can only do this.. '. Kelv couldn't believe what he was hearing. In 2 out of the 3 interviews with RH, they had always agreed on the remuneration & it was only until when Kelv was nearly about to accept the offer that they completely did a 180'! Even though he was in disbelief at what was being spoken on the phone by Robert Half, nevertheless Kelv knew in his spirit that God was closing the door for him and this time it was loud & clear.
Kelv then closed the door on RH & immediately rang up Robert Walters to accept their offer.Everyone at RW was so ecstatic to hear the news that Kelv had joined as they had been waiting for his answer since the start of the week.Once again, this entire fiasco was absolutely not a concidence but a God incident. We prayed. We trusted. We relied on Him and true enough He showed up in the nick of time. God is Good.
I now look at Kelv's face filled with so much joy, thanksgiving & positive outlook for his new career move as a headhunter for Sales & Trading division in Robert Walters. He's like a little kid so happy to start school again. In fact, he was so excited that he told RW that he wants to start immediately being this coming Monday!
I couldn't help but smiled when he said, 'the first thing I'm going to do with my pay is to hire a maid! ;)'
