Why your uncle who promised you a job after graduation now refuses to pick your calls

Every now and then, you hear of a Nigerian youth who is mad at their uncle/parent’s friend/elder brother’s friend because they promised to hook them up with job opportunities after graduation, and have now gone into hiding. Most young people do not know what to make of these broken promises, and have become bitter. Now I do not know you, and I do not know your uncle, but I know one very strong reason why your uncle is dodging your calls.

He doesn’t know what YOU want.

I know many undergrads (and I did this as well), who during the congratulatory graduation chats answered the question of “Now, what kind of job are you looking for?” with “Any kind of job will do.” This kind of answer confuses even the most well-meaning of people. Any job could be a blue-collar job like facility management, or an administrative position, or a personal assistant, or an executive. It could also be in any industry – and there are myriads of industries. It could be a full-time job, and it could be a part-time job as you may have plans to run a post-graduate degree or a significant enterprise alongside your work.

Your uncle will surely back away in fear that he might waste his goodwill in helping you secure an interview that you do not show up for because “This is not the industry I am interested in”. Or that you may report him to your parents out of offense that he set you up for a job interview for a role you believe is beneath your standards. And here is the biggest issue with “Any work will do”…it simply gives the brain no place to start. Your uncle is most likely not an undergraduate recruiter and thus has no clue what your expectations are for the job market. Trust me – three years in any workplace, and you will have lost touch with the career expectations (salary, progression opportunities, etc) of an average fresh undergraduate. So where does your poor uncle (who is probably 5-10 years in) want to start from?

Dear Nigerian graduate, your uncle is not a professional recruiter. Help him to help you by being clear about what you want. Have your pitch ready at all times, and let everyone around you (parents, dog, pastor, neighbors) know who you are and what you want. Even the most shady of uncles will remember your pitch when the hour arises, if it is crystal clear and it fits into a need.

Is your low self-confidence getting in the way of securing a good job?

When preparing to search for a job, the popular advice follows the line of searching the dailies for job opportunities, fine-tuning your CV so it stands out, preparing to answer the most popular interview questions, and selecting the sharpest-looking outfits. However, these tasks do not cover the most important task of all: working on your self-confidence.

How secure are you in your abilities? Do you believe you have the qualifications to be the best candidate for the job, or are you convinced the company will be doing you a huge, undeserved favour by offering you the job?

Growing up in Nigeria, majority of us had our confidence chipped away at every stage of our growing up. We were called silly for our ideas, told our plans were not good enough, had every unique idea or suggestion questioned or talked down, or shamed for going with our beliefs. Some of us came from backgrounds where no one expected anything good to come out of us: our parents told us we were mistakes, our teachers spared no opportunity to let us know how empty our brains were, our older ones laughed at every misstep we made, and our peers pointed out every physical or behavioural flaw they could find. No matter how tough-skinned one is, these kinds of experiences will erode one’s sense of capability over time, and a person that has all the competence will freeze when given the opportunity to demonstrate, believing they are not good enough.

This low self-confidence is very detrimental during the job search period, as if not handled will cause loss of attractive job opportunities, or make one settle for a career that is less than one’s capabilities. When you have low self-confidence, you will clam up and stutter in interviews at questions you know the perfect answer to, display more nervousness than is beneficial to you, and find yourself begging for a job that your employer should ideally be begging you to accept based on your level of competence.

So, if you have recognised you have low self-confidence, what can you do about it, and how can you prevent it from getting in the way of a good career?

First of all, tackle the issue at its root. The first step in solving any problem is acknowledging its existence. Admit that you are lacking in self-confidence, and that you need to correct this issue so it does not hamper your career efforts. View this as a serious concern, so that you can muster the energy to take the action steps to resolve it.

Secondly, you must align yourself to the right thinking on your purpose in life. No matter what the circumstances of your background or life are, you must realise that you have greatness in you. All of humans do – we were made in the image and likeness of God. Not only that, we were given the mandate to have dominion – to be fruitful, multiply, replenish the earth and subdue it. You are powerful, more powerful beyond your wildest imaginations. And you can do anything you set your mind to. You have been programmed from birth with the same capabilities that men and women who built empires, developed extraordinary inventions, designed life-changing technologies and shaped the course of history. And there is no stopping you. No matter what the world has said and is saying about you, you can make it. Spend time reading about the histories of the greats – Thomas Edison, Helen Keller, Abraham Lincoln, Colonel (founder of KFC), George Washington Carver, and a host of others that arose from humble, belittling backgrounds and circumstances to become people of renown in our world today.

Next, dedicate yourself to a daily action plan to cure yourself of low self-esteem. There are different action plans that might be time-based e.g a 10-day action plan or a 21-day action plan, or may just involve imbibing a new set of habits. But these plans always include the following:

• self-affirmation: words have power – the power to break and the power to heal. Utilize the same power that reduced your self-confidence to where it is today, to restore it. Get a set of positive self-affirmation quotes and repeat them daily. Here are some examples (many are available online):
  I love my life: I choose joy, love and freedom.
  I master new skills with ease and perfection: I attain mastery in every area I set my mind to learn in
  I fully accept my self and know that I am worthy of great things in life
  Mistakes and setbacks are stepping stones to my success, because I learn from them
  I easily find solutions to challenges and roadblocks, and move past them quickly
  I feel successful in my life right now, even as I work towards future success.
  I love meeting strangers, and approach them with boldness and enthusiasm
• taking inventory of your accomplishments: sometimes, the reason why we forget how able we are, is that we simply lost sight of our abilities. Make a list of your accomplishments. Do not focus only on the big ones like graduating from school, but note times also when you helped a younger one or a peer accomplish something, or the part you played towards a larger goal. Study this list from time to time to remind yourself of how much you can accomplish, if you set your mind to it.
• learning to celebrate yourself: there are few things that boost one’s self-confidence such as hearing the words “well done!” or “great job!”. If no one will congratulate you, congratulate yourself. Celebrate your victories, small and great. Reward yourself – no matter how little – when you accomplish a task that you have been working on
• setting some small stretch goals: our self-confidence is bolstered when we accomplish goals that we felt were too high for us as a point in time. So get into the habit of ‘accomplishing’. This can be seemingly little things like washing all the cars or dishes around you within a short period of time, or reorganising your personal space, or it could be something as significant as volunteering at a major event, or completing a workout plan. Start small, and keep going, but make achievements a regular feature of your life, so that your personal mantra can shift from “I can’t” to “I can”

Also, surround yourself with positivity. While you are working to build your self-confidence, cut off all flows of the kind of talk that created the problem in the first place. Avoid certain social gatherings where need be, and break off certain contacts as the need arises. Where you cannot avoid direct contact, make engagement minimal, and replenish your soul after such contact with self-affirmation.

Keep building your self-confidence till you are convinced you can do absolutely anything. Let it shape how you describe yourself and your abilities. Move from saying “I think I can” to “I know I can”, and watch how the world makes space for your to demonstrate who you truly are.

Navigating the Nigerian job market: Part II

“Man, know thyself” – Socrates

The crucial first step in navigating the Nigerian job market (or any other job market in particular) is to know yourself.

The first question you need to answer, partly because you are going to get asked this a hundred times on your job search, and partly because its answer will determine where your job search is directed, is “Who are you?”

And really, Who are You? Stop to reflect on the question for a moment. This is not a request for your name or your area of study or expertise (even though these form part of any basic introductory pitch about yourself that you will give). The following questions help to expand on the “Who are you” query:

• what are you passionate about? what gets you out of bed in the morning?
• what makes you glad? what makes you sad? what makes you mad?
• what is the one core value you have? If in this moment in your life you were asked to drop everything, everyone, and hold on to just one thing, what will that be?

You might be wondering if this self-discovery journey is actually necessary. I thought you were trying to help me here, CareerChic? I need a job abeg, just drop the phone numbers of the Oil and Gas HR people you know (lol). But, not so fast. This step is really important.  And here’s my little analysis explaining why:

Globally, the average life span is 70.5 years. In Nigeria, it is 55 years.

The average age we start work is 25 years, and the retirement age is 65 years.

In short, each one of us will spend about 40 years in the workplace.

This amounts to 57% of our lives spent at work – and this is based on the global life span average.

Think about it.

You can get a job that pays the bills, but if you are going to spend close to two-thirds of your life involved in something, should it not be aligned to your life’s purpose? Shouldn’t it be something that makes you want to get out of bed, that gives you the satisfaction that you are delivering on the very thing you were brought on earth to do? Another reason why this question must urgently be answered before you commence the job search exercise, is because of the way we have been raised in these climes. In an environment where career paths are drummed into children’s ears before they reach the age they are able to critically think for themselves, surprise awakenings in the mid-thirties or forties on how far one’s current life is from their desired one are not uncommon. Believe me, you do not want to be that middle-aged person that wistfully muses “I would have been a sportsman, but my parents never allowed me”. This is a too common tragedy of our times, please do not allow this to happen to you.

The next part will explore ways we can get closer to answering the “Who are you” question, and after that we’ll jump into the job search proper. Stay tuned!