Embracing Non-traditional Jobs in Brunei
In 2021, Mavensdotlive’s founder and chief learning officer, Goh Chai Li (CL), joined Progresif and the Ministry of Education’s ‘Progresif for School’ – a career discovery workshop for secondary schools. Typically, ‘career discoveries’ would begin with asking the students their strengths and interests, find out what job in the public or private sector that can fulfill both aspects and then tell the students how they can academically carve out a path to reach their goals.
However, in bearing with Mavensdotlive’s identity of modernization, CL wanted to emphasize on aspects that are rarely touched upon, especially in Brunei and especially at schools. And that is the topic of today’s mini-blog: Non-traditional jobs.
What is a Non-traditional Job and what counts as one?
Like the name states, a non-traditional job is an occupation that is not common within a particular culture or society. With that said, it is a relative term: a non-traditional job here could be common elsewhere etc. For e.g. being an athlete is most likely considered a non-traditional job in Brunei but in the western world, it most definitely is.
During this workshop, CL learned that for some students, they already know what they want to be. But a lot of the problem is that resources are not readily available at school; the role they want is usually unprecedented so the path is not necessarily visible (or in their heads, attainable). Take for example, a student that wants to be a Youtuber – a more than valid occupation to aspire to. In a Bruneian context, already all sorts of obstacles would start to pop up: cultural pushback, overwhelming uncertainty, financial insecurity, fear of failure, lack of reference (person or case study) and etc.
These reasons are very valid but they’re not good enough reasons to stop one from trying. What you can do is to try pursuing them as a side gig and see how it goes from there. If it’s attainable, maybe consider giving it your all and if it isn’t? that’s okay, you can fall back to something more traditional and stable and try something new.
All of this is to drive home the point that we’re trying to make: non-traditional jobs should be embraced and pursued because Brunei is changing and more importantly, there will be great demand for it. Here are some non-traditional jobs that we think will gain (or is gaining) momentum: runner, Influencer, E-sports, social media manager, Youtuber, Instagram-based entrepreneur, videographer and many more. Do let us know what non-traditional job that you think is gaining or will gain momentum in Brunei!
