ARE YOU LOOKING FOR A JOB?
The event at the last Nigeria Immigration Service
recruitment exercise drives home the sad reality that the army of unemployed in
the country is growing by the day. It is so sad that a routine recruitment
exercise ends in fatalities due to poor crowd control. We are sitting on a
ticking time bomb which may blow up on our faces if more jobs are not created.
While the government can do much more in ameliorating the situation, the fact
is that the government alone cannot create a job for every youth that graduates
from a higher institution.
The government has a key role to play in helping
create new jobs, but there are so many jobs the government can create directly.
Vacancies in government departments and agencies are fixed, and cannot grow
each year in proportion to the fresh army of graduates being pumped into the
marketplace. Coupled with the fact that our recurrent expenditure exceeds
capital expenditure by a ratio of three to one, those waiting for government’s
stimulus package to create jobs may have a very long wait.
It is only the private sector that can create jobs
on a sustainable basis. The challenge arises when entrepreneurs behave as
employees, looking for jobs or sitting on jobs meant for employees. Hence jobs
are not created at the required scale with more people chasing fewer jobs.
Employment Mindset
The reality is that our educational system produces
employees, turning entrepreneurs into employees. Parents set the stage by
asking their children to get good grades so that they can get good job rather
than build good companies. Students are pitted on one against the other; competing
rather than collaborating. An army of hopefuls are churned out each year, armed
with resumes and hunting for existing vacancies.
The word ‘applicant’ does not occur once in the
Bible. I would like to know if it occurs in the Koran or other holy books. During
the agrarian age, our forefathers were all entrepreneurs. The size of their
work force depended on the number of children each man had. With the advent of
the industrial age, farms became mechanized and people moved to the city in
search of jobs. Sadly, many are still in the industrial age mentally although
the World Wide Web ushered in the information age in the early nineties. They
finish school and become applicants, looking for jobs.
Today, the future belongs to entrepreneurs. Jobs are
no longer secure and your employer can only guarantee your job when the going
is good. If profit dips, you may find yourself without a job the next day.
If you have an employee mindset, someone telling you
to hire yourself sounds like Latin. All you will come up with are – what
business can I go into? Where do I get the money to start? If you are not
street-smart and have not started anything while in school, thinking of
starting one now will seem like mission impossible. However, it is not too late
to change your mind set. It is a choice between waiting endlessly for a job, or
taking your destiny into your hands and going for your dream. The interesting
thing in life is that whether you think you can, or think you can’t, you are
correct. There is no one right answer. You write the outcome you want. It still
comes back to choice.
BY Usiere Uko
