How Relevant are you?

The corporate world, as we term it, is a different domain with its own rules and practices. A world that calls the prepared minds. Many have wished to partake of the complexities it presents, and snatch a piece of the cake it offers but their unpreparedness have prohibited them. The question still remains “How Prepared are you?”

This is the question Human Resources Managers (HRMs) who serve as gatekeepers of various corporate entities have asked in the past and are asking presently. This question is to be answered by all and sundry who want to be candidates for employment on the job market and in corporate entities. Many times, this question hit many ‘graduates’ of the various academic level from the second cycle to the tertiary. It is the dream of every graduate to land the most lucrative job. The frequent job seeker plays with the prospect of landing their dream job with the corner office, annual paid leave, monthly fuel and feeding allowances and paid trip to the Bahamas. Fantasies of seeing one’s self dressed in suit or customized company apparel flashes through ever graduate as the end of the final year approaches.

There is a common narrative from HRMs that, most graduates in our part of the world are never prepared to enter into the job market by the time they are done with their undergraduate studies. Many lack what is currently called the 21^st Century Skills, which seems to be the basic skills for employability now and the foreseeable future.

The tertiary education is set up to build and equip students giving them the necessary requirements and skills for a chosen career path. For some tertiary institutions, students can take up non-scoring courses that can add and broaden their scope of knowledge. All these are opportunities are given to students to acquire multidisciplinary skills to better and enhance themselves for the job market.

Many graduates however echo similar sentiment, which is “we were not taught enough in school”.

Students are given tremendous opportunity to develop many skills outside of the classroom, through internships, field trips, conferences and seminars. There are many Non-Profitable Organisations, Development and Advocacy organisations in many tertiary institutions who organise educational programs freely for students. These programs aim at equipping students with skills and requirements needed for becoming relevant in the job market. However, many students do not show a interest in these programs.

A recently held webinar held in KNUST by Women in Science Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (WiSTEMGh) in collaboration with the Kumasi Innovation Hub on the theme: Becoming relevant in the Job market garnered a meagre average of 70 attendants a day throughout the program.

The problem lies in the student’s inability to recognize that which is relevant in their career path. Their failure to grab the learning opportunities to make them stand out is causing them to lose out in the job market.

To the seeker, the secret lies in your capability to seize the gauntlet and fight to remain relevant in this age.