Hello.
Did anyone get a text invitation to a kpmg aptitude test this thursday?

AjanleKoko:

Somehow I don't know how I missed this. Apologies, bro. I'm not sure I can help, as I seem to have loads of people in the same category on my hands, and no joy yet. Things are a bit tight.

Well, that's a different career entirely. They are more into finance and consulting/advisory services, not engineering.
Maybe it would help if you told us what your personal interests were. Then we can provide some reasonable advice

@ Ajanlekoko
My personal interests would be ICT and telecoms. I took the ccna exam early this year, and I'll soon start preparing for the ccnp. I heard that kpmg does some consulting work for telecom firms, I dont know if that would require them to hire and train people with expertise in that area

@ Ajanlekoko et al
Im interested in the ICT industry, and I am presently jobhunting (just finished NYSC). A friend of mine who is a former staff of kpmg advised me to apply there. I went to their website and I saw stuff like Tax, Advisory etc, and I was wondering, what's an engineer got to do with all this? So here's the question: do you know anything about the role someone like me (an electronic engineer leaning towards ICT) would have in a consulting firm like kpmg.
thx, and looking forward to your reply.

@ Ajanle

Sorry. I just saw your reply now. Thanks for the insight. I'll consider it.

@ Salihu

your post was good and full of common sense. thx for the info!

@ Ajanlekoko,

I asked you a question earlier, and you did not reply. Here it is again, in case you missed it.

goodboybad:

@ Ajanle

in a reply to another poster, you said that the voice track was a good option when considering CCNA, I was thinking about the security track. Which to you think is more important and relevant to Nigeria. I was thinking that data security would be uppermost on most telco firms priority list, and even for other industries that rely heavily on the telco industry (ie banking).
What do you think?

@ Ajanle

in a reply to another poster, you said that the voice track was a good option when considering CCNA, I was thinking about the security track. Which to you think is more important and relevant to Nigeria. I was thinking that data security would be uppermost on most telco firms priority list, and even for other industries that rely heavily on the telco industry (ie banking).
What do you think?

Cant really confirm that gist. Somebody also told me that it is likely that the first batch will get all the good jobs. however, there is also an upside if you are posted to a place you dont like( maybe like one remote village. they posted my friend to one place in jigawa that to get there, you had to ride a donkey for 2 hours, nobody there understood english), it will be easier to get a rejection letter and hustle for a better job (maybe in the capital).
I think it has advantages and disadvantages.
I doubt if they will post the two streams at the same time. That will mean that B1 will be jobless, hanging around for up to a month while they wait for us to finish camp. It doesnt sound likely. Just my opinion sha.

I dont know which criteria was used. I was put in B2, my sister in B1. Was a little sad at first until someone told me that B2 and B1 would be discharged at the same time. In essence that means that B2 members will serve for 11 months, that was when my sadness changed to joy, lol!

Is that when camp opens, or when the previous batch B ends?

I grew up listening to and watching Thriller, Smooth Criminal, Black or White, Bad etc. I know most of M.J.'s songs word for word, and Moonwalker was one of my favourite movies as a kid.

I think M.J. was a great part of my life and many other people's lives.

To me, the world is a little darker, a brilliant star has been extinguished.



Farewell to the Thriller!

a flame consists of both energy and matter
energy in the form of light and heat
matter in the form of hot gases which are the result of the combustion/oxidation process.
The combination of light, heat and the hot gasses result in the flame.

What do you guys think of the Digital Bridge Institute? Does it provide practical, hands on telecoms training, or is it another institution that dishes out theories. Is it a viable path for someone interested in the field?

This argument is begining to remind me of arguments I used to have when I was a kid, My father will beat your father
Its sad to see that most of us have refused to grow up.

@ Shesi
There is a book I am reading about Singapore, that was written by thier one guy who was thier prime minister for 30 years.
When they gained thier independence, they were in the same position as most African countries were (In fact worse because they had no mineral resources, or even land). But because of the vision of thier leadership, by the time the book was written, the per Capita income of Singapore was higher than that of thier colonial masters Britain.

One thing struck me in the book. The guy said that in the early day of his office, he was driving near a primary school and he saw primary school children running home after the school had closed, and the thing that came to his mind was what policies he was pursuing that would guarantee jobs for all those childred when they graduated from University.

Thats vision, which is what we lack in general in Africa. From the big man to the small man, we do not care about whatever legacy we will leave. Almost every leader in Nigeria, from the Students Union Government Legislators up to the President. there is no vision for the future. As a result, most of the poorest countries in the world are African nations,
Meanwhile tiny Singapore that was worse than us during thier independence (they had no mineral resources), is now many times more successful than us.
Any time I think of it, it discourages me. Instead of trying to work our way out of this mess, we are busy fighting among ourselves. If it is not Igbo vs. Yoruba vs. Hausa or Christian vs Muslim, it is Nigeria vs. Ghana vs. South Africa.
I can only hope for a better future. the present leaves too much to be desired.

As for any more ridiculous posts, dont worry, they will soon wake up from sleep.

@ Shesi
Its all good. i tend to really dislike generalizations, and both sides of every argument tend to be guilty of it. (My brother, I was suprised when I saw one poster saying that Nigeria supplied power to Ghana. I nearly fell off my seat with laughter)

@ Deji
Nigeria does not hold the moral high ground here. As much as we have tried to do good, we have also done a lot of evil, both to ourselves and to others. And in most people's minds, the evil you do to them will always overshadow whatever good you do.

As far as I am concerned, Ghanaians are not devils and Nigerians are not angels. We are all humans with all our strengths and weakness. simple. The sooner we understand that, the faster we will learn to work together.

@ Shesi
You are doing no favours to your fellow Ghanaians by comming here and insulting everyone here. The fact that there are ignorant posters here with invalid arguments does not mean that you must be insulting in order to get your point across. You have some valid points, but nobody will notice those points because of the insultive words you have used.

Let me get something across to you:

Ghana and Nigeria are not equals by any means. In many places, Nigeria excels, and in many places likewise, Ghana excels.

You tried to discount Nigeria's population, that does not make sense. It is a great weakness, but also a very great strength. E.g. mtn is the leading telecoms outfit on the continent solely because of the Nigerian population. Mtn is present in more than 10 countries, but Nigeria accounts for 1/4 of its profits. It was second to voda until it entered the Nigerian market.

If Ghanaian goods have free access to the Nigerian market, it will improve the lot of Ghanaian businesses. You cannot gainsay that. This is simply because of our population.

Secondly, Nigeria is richer in resources than Ghana. No matter how you put it, Nigeria makes much more money than Ghana. That is why we could afford to (stupidly)dash the paris club $12 billion dollars. Ghana cannot afford to do that.

Thirdly, Nigerians are very enterprising. That is the only way to survive in Nigeria. If you depend on government in nigeria, you own don finish. As a result, we can survive and thrive in the harshest places.

However, Ghana has its own areas where it excels.

First and foremost, resource management. Ghana does not have as much resources as Nigeria, but they know how to manage what they have and make the most of it. That is why you guys can have power supply for long periods, and why, after sinking $12 billion into the power sector, we got nothing.

Secondly, Ghana is a much friendlier place to do business than in Nigeria. The corruption is not as endemic as it is in Nigeria, and that is why some Multinational Corps are moving to do business there

Thirdly, Ghana's democracy is stronger than Nigeria's democracy, and is a beacon to all other democracies is black africa.

Thus I maintain what I said before, Nigeria has a lot to learn from Ghana. But you guys also have a lot to gain from us.

See, I have gotten my point across without insulting you.

~Lady~:

It is not up to the government to determine whether YOU will go to the polytechnic, it is entirely up to you. If you know that employers aren't looking at HND holders then don't go to a polytechnic. The government can't do everything for us.

lolol please stop bitching. Step up your game. If you can't handle it then let someone else handle it. By the way it is the same way around the world. Imagine having classes monday thru friday and then having to leave school to go for a one week interview, and that's just round one of the interviews. You get to miss one week of school and your professors will not cut you any slack and you need to pass that class to graduate so you can work in that place.

You don't need a consulting firm to get you a job, get off your arse and job hunt on your own.

The only way they can check your competency right now as a fresh graduate is through your certificate.

This post has absolutely nothing to do with the government. It is not the governments job to get you a job, that is entirely your responsibility not theirs. Nothing you posted has anything to do with the govt.

Get over it and find a job, it is your responsibility not the govts.

Lady, thank you very much.

It is very easy for people to complain and blame every other thing, rather than blaming themselves.
Is it the employer's fault ig I opted for (of did'nt study hard for) a polytechnic, rather than a University?
Or is it government's fault that even though I entered a University I did not graduate with first class or 2.1?
Do I want somebody to employ me for a job that requires a Bsc when I have a Hnd or vice versa?

It is really stupid. The main cause of our problem is and always will be ourselves! We did not study hard in secondary school, then we blame JAMB. We did not study well in University, then we blame Employers and Government.

Nonsense. If we work hard, nobody can take what is ours (See-est thou a man diligent in his work? He shall stand before kings, not mere mortals)

(Case in point. My class rep, when he was in secondary school, he was not serious. As a result, he needed to combine WAEC and NECO to enter school. In university, his eyes opened, and he sat up and started working hard. By the time we were in final year, he was giving us, his own classmates, tutorials, and was the best graduating student with our class with a CGPA of 4.73, All becuase he worked hard).

Work hard, stop complaining, and forget about government and other people. They were not creted just to help you.

nawa o. Person dey find hypertension.

I think we Nigerians have a lot to learn from Ghana. Thier GDP may be a fraction of ours, but thier per Capita is much higher. This means that a person with the same qualification will likely earn more in Ghana than in Nigeria. Thier democracy is more stable and less corrupt than ours, and so is thier private sector. They have just been cursed with crude oil, but I hope they learn from our mistakes.
As an African, I am dismayed by the ill feeling between Nigerian and Ghanaians. I wish we could streamline our trade laws and partner more effectively with them.
The fact that most of our trade and communications occur with non-African countries is what keeps us weak and divided. If we had more links with each other we would be stronger.
I really hope we are able to reconcile our differences.

My hapiness is that a good number of women who have responded to this post do not believe that MOST men treat their wives as slaves. The person who posted this should realise that one bad experience with a man does not mean that all men are bad.

@Chuck Bass, dont worry, with time, you'll become more mature.

I dont rate Toshiba highly. Almost all the Toshiba's I have come across seem to develop problems later on. (In fact, there are two spoilt toshiba's in my house at the moment)

ACER is O.K. (There are three ACER's in my house at the moment, and they are not giving thier owners much problems)

However, the only one I can vouch for from experience is compaq. My Compaq has been faithfully serving me for two years and counting. In fact there was one time that there was a power surge. The toshiba(brand new) what was connected to the same outlet as my compaq (which was 1 1/2 years at that time) was destroyed, not just the power pack, but the laptop too. The owner wanted to die.
The only thing that happened to my compaq was that some smoke came out of the power pack. But the power pack did not spoil, it is still serving me today.
A month later, the same thing happened (that was when I started mistrusting toshiba). This time, the toshiba's power pack was destroyed, but my nothing happened to my own.

I think HP is also good, they just bought compaq, and I know many people that have HPs with no complaints so far.

Dont know much about Dell so I wont comment on that

As for Sony, the only one I know about is now having battery problems, despite being only about 1 year old.

So my recommendation to you is to go for either Compaq, HP or at worst, ACER.

type 'Logic Gates' in google and follow the resulting links.

For the next batch, camp starts on the 14 of July. Its on their website.

AjanleKoko:

At all o. Pure electronics is very relevant. We just don't do it at that level here, i.e. we don't manufacture any components here.
As per designing electronic circuits, DSP, microelectronics and all that stuff, I'm saying you may not get to do much of that in Nigeria.
In those days when we had Philips assembling stuff in Nigeria, it would have been a very good place for engineers with strong bias for microelectronics. Nowadays, unless you go abroad sha, you can't get that kind of exp in naija.

If you're lucky enough to find a good job in top-tier manufacturing (NB Plc, Guiness, NBC, Cadbury,etc), those are good places, for industrial control electronics, which is also an area that is good for electrical engineers. That was what I planned to do earlier, after my masters, and I actually got a job at some point with Delta Glass Ughelli, but I opted for an IT job instead, cos I wanted to stay in Lagos. IT was in the course of doing IT that I got into telecoms.

You'll notice I'm not really talking about oil and gas. Primarily I don't know much about the way they operate in either upstream or downstream, but I doubt engineers get any serious hands-on in those environments. Maybe oyb can enlighten.

Just one thing: From posts I read on nairaland, it seems IT is being disdained as it looks like an all-comers affair. I think IT in itself is relative; it depends on the way you apply IT to your engineering discipline. To a large extent I have practised more as an engineer than a regular IT person, even though I did a lot of the IT certifications in the early days. Look at all the posts on AutoCAD; that's a software application that is used by someone (oyb) to differentiate himself in his field. I'll always recommend, if you don't have anything going for you as an elect engineer, IT is always a good skill to pick up. I myself never went to any formal IT training, everything I know I learned by myself and from other people along the way.
For me, having IT skills as an engineer will always give you the edge.

God bless you.
You have just spoken about a problem I was having. After missing the first batch of NYSC, I decided to do some studies in I.T. so as not to waste the time I had on my hands . My plan was to take the CCNA test before the next batch starts, and the CCNP test during my service year. However, after going through some of the posts on Nairaland I was discouraged, with most posters creating the impression that I.T. certifications were little more than 'glorified computer appreciation certications'. In fact, I was beginning to wonder whether I was wasting my time, and was slowly beginning to reduce the energy I was pouring into my preparation.
But what you said here makes sense, especially the last sentence. Thanks a lot for that, it was the encouragement I was (uncounsiously) looking for.

As for the pure electronics stuff, I think I'll keep it as a hobby because of my interest in it. I wont look to it as a career option as such, so that I wont get frustrated. But if I get the opportunity to pursue a career in it (in Nigeria, I have no desire to move out of Naija, except to further my education), I'll take it whole heartedly.

For now, it seems the career road is point towards I.T. or Telecoms.

Thanks y'all for the advice.
If I understand you guys, pure electronics is not relevant to Nigerian Industry. So I'll have to branch out into some other related field, hmmm, well, its not too surprising, I was already thinking in that direction.
@netotse, I'll be glad if you could list those sites you mentioned. thx.
Peace.

Hello guys.

I think this thread is a wonderful thing, and a big thank you to the person who started it, and to those who invested time in it to make it relevant (Ajanlekoko, oyb etc)

I graduated from UNN last year with a 2.1 in Electronic Engineering ( in UNN, you either do Electronic or Electrical Engineering, the two are not combined).
When I look back at my Uni years, one thing I really lacked was a mentor. Most times when I was studying some of my classmates would be like 'Wetin you dey jack this thing for? You think say you use am do anything for outside?'

Although I did not initially agree with them, I gradually slid into second gear, and by the time I was in final year, I was locked into 2.1

I was unable to go for NYSC 1st batch, and the dissappointment of watching my mates move on ahead of me jarred me into considering my career.

I have always wanted to be an engineer, and I chose electronic engineering, because as a kid I was fascinated with electronics. I cannot say how much electronic stuff I damaged, just because I wanted to look inside and find out how it worked

My problem is at this point I do not know which direction my career should take and what efforts I can make to push it along.
I love the concept of Microcontrollers, and how they can make a lot of things simple and elegant. I have an idea of programming - I thought myself VB, and I'm thinking of learning either CSharp or Java. And Im interested in robotics and DSPs. However I do not know how all of these are relevant to Nigeria. As a result I am thinking of branching into telecoms and I.T. I have started studying for CCNA.
I'm wondering if you guys have any advice to give me concerning where to focus on career wise.
I wonder if there is any other certification that may be important to me as an Electronic Engineer (not necessarily in the I.T./Telecoms field. could be any other field)

Question for OYB - I have always thought that AutoCad is irrelevant to electronic engineers. What do you think? Should I invest time in it? What do you think about MatLab? I know a something of Circuit Maker and Electronic Workbench.

thanks you guys.

I think this thread is a rare opportunity to interact with those who have been in the field, and may help fill the mentorship void that is present in many Undergrads and fresh grads.
Peace.

In this life giving up is not an option. what does your friend want to do? Give up and die? That is not an option.
Like kelly said, the minimum grade in oil companies is 2.2 I am certain that shell collects 2.2
In the meantime, let him improve himself. If he cannot afford a masters, can he afford a proffessional certification?
If possible, he should try an look for a low profile job that may be low paying so that he can work for a while and get experience, which is also important to employers.
There are far too many options for him to give up.

Hello everyone.
I'm planning on taking the CCNA exam, and I'm wondering if there is any test centre in Enugu State. I've checked online, but I've not gotten any results. Does anyone here know about any test centre in Enugu? If you do, please pass on the information. Thanks.