Agencies and employers say more needs to be done to prepare graduates for the job market

Agencies and employers say more needs to be done to prepare graduates for the job market

On the day of Nigeria’s 55th anniversary of independence, Jobberman — one of the largest online job boards in the country — offered applicants the opportunity to make an appointment for free career counselling at its headquarters in downtown Lagos. The idea was to help some of the thousands of Nigerians who use the site to prepare better for their careers, something Opeyemi Awoyemi, one of its three co-founders, says many of the country’s universities do not successfully do. “What we realised, is unemployment is not the big issue,” Mr Awoyemi says. “The bigger issue is unemployability.” Opeyemi Awoyemi: Improving the workforce is vital to his business — to ensure employers advertise jobs Tens of thousands of Nigerians finish their undergraduate education each year, with nearly 183,000 graduating in 2010-2011, the most recent year statistics were available from the National Universities Commission. But Mr Awoyemi says many leave university without the internship experience and help from guidance counsellors that would prepare them for their careers. Students are taught simply how to memorise facts and pass exams. “I would have left not being competent for the job market,” says Mr Awoyemi of his education in computer science at Obafemi Awolowo University in the country’s south-west. The universities are not serving entrepreneurs particularly well either, says Adenike Adeyemi, executive director of the Fate Foundation, which trains university graduates in how to start and run successful businesses. “They’re not well prepared,” says Ms Adeyemi of the graduates they train. “There are a lot of them that do not do the research. There [are] a lot of assumptions.” The privately-funded foundation, established by Fola Adeola, the former chief executive of Nigeria’s Guaranty Trust Bank, has trained about 3,400 Nigerians in programmes lasting three to four months on entrepreneurship, and thousands more in shorter workshops. The glut of unemployed graduates in Nigeria has led some companies to adopt unorthodox hiring strategies, says Mr. Awoyemi. “Some employers . . . want to know the grades in your high school, so they can see raw talent,” he says. Others forsake graduates who studied only in Nigeria for those who continued their education abroad. Large companies in the private sector have reacted to the skills gap among the graduates they hire by investing in a retraining programme for new employees, says Ani Bassey-Eyo, co-founder of Axiom Learning Solutions, an education consultancy based in Lagos. “The skills are not there,” he says of many of Nigeria’s students. “You bring someone in and you have to spend nine months to train up those skills.” Six years after Jobberman started, Mr Awoyemi says the company is now investing in ways to help employers weed through candidates, and help candidates know their own skills better. With the average job posting attracting between 100 and 150 applicants, the company has started having jobseekers answer “yes” and “no” questions tailored to determine if they are eligible for the position they are applying for.

 

https://www.ft.com/content/0009d5d4-78b5-11e5-933d-efcdc3c11c89

A university don, Oladapo Walker, has expressed concern that Nigerian universities do not prepare their graduates “for what they will meet in the real world”.

Read more at: https://www.vanguardngr.com/2018/03/nigerian-varsities-dont-prepare-graduates-real-world-prof-walker/

A university don, Oladapo Walker, has expressed concern that Nigerian universities do not prepare their graduates “for what they will meet in the real world”.

Read more at: https://www.vanguardngr.com/2018/03/nigerian-varsities-dont-prepare-graduates-real-world-prof-walker/