How to Skip from Sharing the Country’S Unemployed Workforce After Graduation: Career Advices Beyond “Follow Your Passion”

For decades, earning a college degree was seen as a direct pathway to career success. Today, that pathway has become far less predictable.

In the Philippines, every year, college graduates make up a growing share of the unemployed workforce. Data cited by economist Cielito Habito in “When Skills Don’t Match Jobs” highlights a growing disconnect between educational attainment and labor market demands.

Statistics during June 2025 showed more than half of unemployed Filipinos (50.4%), had attended college, with 38.2% holding college degrees. While the country’s total number of unemployed workers fell from 2.39 million to 1.95 million during the same period, the number of unemployed college-educated Filipinos actually increased by around 100,000 compared to the year before.

Confidence among young professionals is also said to be declining globally. According to LinkedIn’s Workforce Confidence research on Gen Z job prospects, younger workers report lower confidence in finding and keeping jobs as technology and workplace expectations continue to evolve.

The challenge facing today’s graduates is beyond simply getting a degree. It is learning how to remain valuable in a workforce defined by rapid change.

How do you remain valuable in the workforce?

This was the focus of Enderun Colleges’ annual Founders’ Talk, where graduating seniors from the Class of 2026 engaged in a candid discussion with Enderun Lead Founder Jack Tuason and Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Danny Perez on what it takes to build a meaningful and enduring career.

One of the evening’s most striking messages challenged the most repeated pieces of career advice: “follow your passion.”

While passion is often celebrated as the key to career fulfillment, many career experts have begun questioning whether it remains sufficient in today’s workplace. In the Forbes article “Why Passion Alone Isn’t Enough”, leadership expert Diane Hamilton argues that passion without adaptability and skill development can limit long-term growth in an increasingly dynamic labor market.

Tuason echoed this perspective, encouraging students to focus less on chasing a single passion and more on identifying the strengths they can continuously develop over time.

For Perez, another critical differentiator is execution. 

As competition increases and employers sift through hundreds of applications online, technical knowledge alone is no longer enough. Reliability, accountability, and the ability to consistently deliver results often determine who earns opportunities and who gets overlooked.

These qualities are becoming increasingly important for employers. Graduate employability and workplace readiness in the Philippines sees communication skills, problem-solving abilities, adaptability, and continuous learning as among the competencies most valued by organizations today.

For The Graduating Class of 2026, The Message is Clear

A tradition that looks beyond graduation. During the annual Founders’ Talk, Enderun Lead Founder Jack Tuason and Co-founder and COO Danny Perez engaged the graduating Class of 2026 in a thoughtful conversation about leadership, purpose, and building careers that stand the test of time. The evening concluded with a toast to the graduates and the future they are about to shape.

In a world where technology, industries, and even entire professions can change within a few years, career success is no longer defined by finding a perfect passion. It is built through continuous learning, resilience, meaningful relationships, and the ability to consistently create value wherever opportunities emerge.

As graduates prepare to enter one of the most competitive and rapidly evolving job markets in recent memory, the most valuable advantage may not be knowing exactly where their careers will lead, but developing the mindset and skills to thrive wherever the future takes them.

For Enderun’s newest graduates, the annual Founders’ Talk served as more than a graduation tradition. It was a reflection on what it takes to build a career that lasts, not just through expertise, commitment to “always grow.”