Hello Nairalanders

Some human resources managers and other pundits in related fields have been peddling the idea of 'unemployability' to save and help Nigerian graduates.

One of them once said during a lecture that 'the problem of nigerian graduates is not the prevalence of unemployment that has pervaded the country's economy, but unemployability'

Inasmuch as it is crystal clear that unemployment is prevalent in our country, we should not give this as an exclusive excuse. It is important for us to focus on what we can change id est 'employability'. We can only complain about the high rate of unemployment, only our leader can change the staus quo.

So my question is how can a graduate be an employeable one?

Dis question weak me o




Kai. U dont mean it,i hv made it. First to comment,life na by turn

Fortifying oneself with the required soft and technical skills needed for an employment.
End of Discussion!!!
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I knw dat i wil gt dere 1day.... 3rd 2 comment

Chai 4th 2 comment...

dont get the concept tho

Space reserved......

Who wan comment? Mai giv am dis space?

I have attempted to address this issue at several for a, either while speaking to a small group of people or with individuals. I quite appreciate the numerous challenges the average Nigerian student must encounter in order to become a 'graduate'. W

Mtchewwww space going 4 10box... Who nid am?

Wait, y did dis make f.p??

2bad even me self is a victim lord have mercy

Ur ideas gives u job, u complain abt lack of job cos u lack ideas, remember Talent beats hardwork wen hardwork refuse 2 work hard.

I think the grduate should learn how to speak English even when he or she doesn't have anything upstairs according to popular demand on Nairaland.

Landlord! Landlord!! Landlord!!! Come c I don reach front page now keep your promise by reducing my house rent.

.

The truth is that there is no job in this God forsaken cesspit of a country called Nigeria

Okay

Hmmm

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Nigerian gradutes should learn to speak good english ist, and shd knw dere arnt commentin 2 a post on NL wen writing formal letters 2 me for employment. Itz called formal letter for christ sake,I keep seein all sort of lame abbreviations

Nice question! In a simple format,don't expect anyone to give u a fruitful idea/concept bt rather look/study your environ or vicinity and tap that opportunity of any bzness dat is lack and start with little investment, then watch d returns within 3months.howeva, try n develop a concept with prayer before u start thinking on d issue of capital. Best of luck!

For someone to be employable in naija one must acquire the necessary skills, depending on the profession one is into. Computer know-how is also a plus...and so on. Above all, ur connections often do the magic.. Get a short note from the presidency or a senator and u r in!

The banks these days employ science students, they r able to do so becuase they have a standard training processes. The simple problem in nigeria is that people are unemployeable cus there are no jobs. If there were job everyone will fit in somewhere.

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Because nigerian graduates arent smart. They cram and make good grades, but in the long run they arent smart, and they only think within the box.


Lastly, they are very lazy.

-Pick ur passion as a career.

-Start pursuing your passion as from 100lvl .(If it is Web design download Dreamweaver ,if it is HR join you department or a club,cause in organising events.If u wnt to do music join the choir group)

-Dont pursue 'first class' unless u wnt to b a lecturer

-If you know something share(It will help you grow your network fast e.g Linkedin and twitter)

-Pick a mentor(An expert inthe field who u can visist for advice)

- Get a role model(Someone that has made it in the field.E.g Steve Jobs for those who want to be marketers)

- Take professional certifications( e.g PRINCE2 if you know how to manage ppl and u want to be a project Manager

***BEFORE ALL OF THE ABOVE ,PUT GOD FIRST***

I beg to differ that there is a thousand and one opportunities!
The problem is sincerity in the management process.
For instance, the standard for teaching-learning process set by UNESCO is 40 students/pupils to 1 teacher. But you will hardly see a public school meeting this criteria except for the 'focus school'.
In virtually all MDAs this is the prevailing case.
In the private sector, the nig govt had paid deaf ears to the goings-on there. Imagine 80% of workers in the MNCs are casual labours and this companies are turning home billions of dollars as profit. Until patriotism is prioritized, employment crisis will continue to worsen while they tagged nig graduates "unemployable".

I have attempted to address this issue at several fora, either while speaking to a small group of people or with individuals. I quite appreciate the numerous challenges the average Nigerian student must encounter in order to become a 'graduate'. We can go on and enumerate all the good reasons why we end up not being as good as we should be post graduation and honestly, we could succeed at justifying same.

But the key reason why a lot of people do not have jobs is not necessarily because there are few employment opportunities, but rather because we have a severe dearth of top quality talents, who are fit for the positions we seek to resource.

The key challenge is that our graduates are not good enough. As trivial as it may sound, the basic qualities an employer would like to see in a potential future hire are lacking. For instance, how do you cope with a graduate who can barely construct a sentence in English without fundamental grammatical errors, either verbally or in a written form.

The attitude is equally very poor, devoid of any inner sense of desire to achieve, cannot go the extra mile either to acquire knowledge or to get things done. There is too much focus on 'making money 'without laying the right foundation. Decision making and thought process are very shallow or completely lacking. Our graduates are too impatient to think things through and make use of available data in a sound manner to make good judgments. Asking some of our graduates to even attempt to provide novel solutions requiring some level of abstraction is asking for too much.

My dear you must understand that becoming a graduate is just the first step. You need to constantly improve yourself and be versatile to enable you convince an employer that you are 'job fit' otherwise getting that 'dream job' may end up being a mirage. There are so many other factors to consider example market forces. You must know that people don't just look for who they will give jobs. Businesses hire 'human resources' to enable them deliver a niche service to the market. So basically it is the market that determines what products and services they prefer and what they are willing to pay for them. Correspondingly, businesses emerge to fill the gap and in the process equally goes to the market to seek for the talents and resources that will enable them remain in that business and if possible be the leader. So you need to ask yourself the question: Do I have a skill that the market is ready to pay premium for?

The market is not just interested in paying for certificates but for skill. Trust me if you are good enough and you have 'sellable' skills, the market will find you and surely they will buy you. But you must demonstrate that you are better than the average candidate because in the final analysis, it is a competition or if you will, a game and only the best emerges as winner. I 'll stop for now.

How do we make our graduates empolyable

UNIVERSITIES: Should find out the problems corporations, businesses and governments face, and train students accordingly.
GOVERNMENT: Should stop our reliance on imports, and should foster the creation of more industries.
STUDENTS: Should seek opportunities to practicalise their knowledge. For example, political science students should help run the Student Union elections, engineering students should spend time at a roadside mechanics workshop, building students should spend time at construction sites, medical students should spend time in rural hospitals and so on.....so that they can gain skills they won't gain in university!