Monday 27 July 2015

WHAT I  LEARNT FROM MY TWO MONTHS OF JOB HUNTING

The ultimate goal of every student is to graduate and earn a decent living. This could be through entrepreneurial exercise or working for an employer. I chose to tread the path of the latter, which many graduates will also choose (white collar job).
The first thing that will be sung to you once you start your service year is ‘there is no job in the country’. You will be amazed that people still get jobs on daily basis. The question you will be asking yourself will be ‘Are they not humans like myself?’ The most interesting part is that you maybe be better off academically when compared to them. Another interesting thing you will notice is that most of these people that got employment did not get it within the confine of their field of study.
What then is the secret for getting this job?

CLASS OF GRADUATION: Whatever it may take you, kindly make a second class upper in school. This will make your job hunting easier because most jobs in the country has second class upper and above as prerequisite.
AGE: Most graduate entry jobs require the candidate to be below 26 years. So you have to hurry your outstanding papers and graduate before you clock 25years as NYSC will take another one year.
INFORMATION: We are in the information age. Jobs are no longer advertised outside the gate of companies or on newspaper. The trend now is internet. You can visit the webpage of various organizations and look for openings or drop your curricula vitae so they will contact you when there are openings. Subscribing to various jobs and career sites like jobberman.com, ngcareers.com, 3wjobs.com and visiting sites like job section of nairaland.com will expose you to different openings all over the country.
MOBILITY AND LOCATION: Whoever that wants to get a job most be ready to travel at short notices to different screening centers that are far away from his/her base. From experience, the major screening centers for jobs are Lagos, Rivers (majorly Engineering firms), and Abuja. So you have to either relocate to Lagos or within short distances like Ogun state because of lower cost of living and its proximity to Lagos or get ready to spend lot of time on the road to and fro Lagos if you stay far away.
ANALYTICAL AND PROBLEM SOLVING SKILLS: Most companies have one belief in common, ‘schools do not teach students the skills needed in work place’, and so they are on the lookout for smart not intelligent candidates that they will train. The yardstick for selecting these smart candidates is by subjecting them to aptitude test. This test is psychometric test (not specific to any field). Hence, an engineering student will be competing with a candidate from life science and etc at the same level. One lovely thing about the scoring is that you are not competing to outscore the other candidate but to beat a prescribed baseline score. The downside is that this psychometric test is not taught in school. You have to study it yourself. It is advisable to buy GMAT during your service year and get conversant with it, work on your speed and accuracy and develop your abstract reasoning ability. This will make you ‘Aptitude Test Black Belt Holder’ and you will stand out in any aptitude test as all companies’ aptitude are virtually the same.
LITTLE EXPERIENCES AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS: Though companies advertise for graduate entry which does not require prior work experience, you will be asked about your little experiences and accomplishments. They love people that have shown innovations. You can volunteer to charity organization or Rotract club, etc so as to have the required little experience.
SOFT AND PEOPLES SKILL: It is a common scene to notice most guys that clubbed and socialized during their days in school land jobs easier than nerds. This is because they have developed these soft and peoples skills over the years. Soft and people skill is the ability to relate well with people (team player). Technical skill can easily be learnt but peoples skill takes a long time to develop. So, employers like those that already have them and can easily teach them technical skills
GOOD CURRICULA VITAE: Your curricula vitae gives the HR an overview of who you are. Ensure your curricula vitae has the right format. There are different samples on online that you can use as template to build yours.
PRAYER : Prayer is just essential to whatever we do because our physical world is determined by the invisible world. Pray to whatever you believe to guide and show you favour.
-Written and first posted on www.nairaland.com by Ezeh Robinson 

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