Stop looking for jobs, let the jobs find you! With over a decade corporate experience, seven out of which I have being an entrepreneur, I have come across all sorts of job seekers, as well as “job beggars”. Over the years my greatest nightmare like many other employers or business owners/managers is recruitment, because each time I place a vacancy either for my organisation or on behalf of a client, I’m inundated with the amount of resumes I receive from people who have no business applying for that post in the first place. Secondly and sadly, the qualified candidates don’t even know how to package their CVs properly. Then thirdly, which is the most pathetic part of it all are the short listed who can’t defend their resumes and “beg” to be considered. Interestingly have found out that the “job beggars” all have one thing in common: Lack of Skills. Most of the so called “job beggars” are victims of our poor and highly theoretical educational system, those who Professor Pat Utomi referred to as “Certificated Illiterates”. But one simple fact applicants fail to understand is that an entrepreneur will never consider adding an extra Naira overhead to his already crazy cost of doing business if he or she does have an inevitable need for a particular skill set that will add value to his business. As a product of the same system, I can not but feel pity for those graduates who roam the streets and beg for jobs for no fault of theirs; most times I have turned my job interviews to career counselling sessions to advise graduates to really concentrate their efforts on acquiring practical skills instead of certificates and certifications. Part of the problem is that as a society we have placed too much premium on certificates at the expense of skills and technical know-how. And the school system does not build and produce skilled graduates but handicapped graduates who can’t help themselves in the job market nor contribute to the economy. In as much as I agree that we can’t all be entrepreneurs and that we need to create jobs for the unemployed youths, I am also aware that there are so many organisations out seeking talented youths to add value to their organisations and there are too many young graduates out seeking jobs just to get them out of unemployment and at least pay them the minimum wage. But the blunt and honest truth is that the unskilled guys look for jobs while jobs look for the skilled guys.
Posted on: Fri, 19 Jul 2013 07:52:53 +0000
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