Getting a job after graduating from the University has never been easy based on my personal experience.
Although, I have heard stories of undergraduates being recruited ahead of graduation and known lucky persons who got employed easily due to one factor or the other, that was not my experience as far back as 1986 when I completed my national youth service.
I remember waiting for months before I got what I grudgingly accepted as my first job in a relatively unknown magazine I never imagine I could work for.
In my desperation to get a job, I responded to a tiny advert of a publishing company in the defunct Daily Times seeking to employ writers and found out it was that of one Contractor Magazine.
Although I was employed as a writer, I ended up serving as not just a writer but also as an advert executive, proofreader and the guy to send on errand for matters not in any way related with my editorial job.
However while on duty for the magazine, I ran into a classmate who was already a company executive while we were in school who gave me a note to a Public Relations Manager to help me get a better job.
I eventually met the PR Manager who had no job for me in his company but gave me a note to a deputy editor of the defunct Concord newspapers. Again there was no space to accommodate me in Concord though I was an intern in the newspaper house and had many publications, including front page stories to my credit.
The editor gave me another note to the Editor of The Punch who I did not meet during the first week – I went to the office every day.
The death of late elder statesman, Chief Obafemi Awolowo turned out to be an opportunity for me to get stories from his Apapa residence from from Ajegunle where I live to prove that I could write when I eventually met the editor.
After writing a few more stories, I got employed as Ogun State Correspondent and was sent to Abeokuta in May 1987, almost a year after completing my youth service.
My job seeking experience above is the story I usually tell job seekers who can’t understand why they find it difficult to a job early enough after their NYSC. Like I use to tell them, jobs have always been hard to get in the country.
It is not a recent development though I agree it’s tougher now with the bad economic situation and large number of graduates compared with in 1987.
While hoping that the situation will get better with policies that can ensure more employment opportunities, my counsel is that job seekers have to live with the harsh reality of the present times when too many people are chasing the few available jobs.
Before some of them start thinking that they are jinxed or are victims of one spiritual attack or the other, the truth is that there are not enough jobs to go round thousands of graduates of the many government and private universities who need employment.
I must have shocked some students of a Polytechnic when I told them that if their institution and many others don’t produce graduates for some years no one will miss them. However that is the sad truth of the situation we have on our hands as a country.
So what options are open to the job seekers? They have to keep trying and not get tired easily or too soon. They need to know that getting the few jobs available will be very competitive and therefore have to be the best if they have no ‘godfather’.
One difficult option they should keep in mind is that they may have to create new jobs themselves. They must be at their creative best at times like this and be ready to be their own boss to end their endless search for non existence job.
Good luck.
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