Mahmud Afimfiwey: The art of job hunting; How to get it right
In this and subsequent editions of the column, my attention will sway from the job-giver to the jobseeker. Even though I do not pretend that enough has been written on this subject, I think the jobseekers also owe this prestigious newspaper some space and some in-depth exposes that hold the hand of the jobseekers and guide them through a rather thin traffic of employment opportunities that break up from time to time.
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To arrive at an ambitious project such as this, I shall first go to college, graduate with a diploma, serve my nation for the full term the law requires of me, then hit the streets of Bolga, Tamale, Sunyani, Takoradi, Accra, etc. I will take my seat nervously in front of a job-giver and fail to impress the latter in my initial attempts at securing a job.
I shall fail again and again until I learn the hard truth: that job hunting is an art. From here, I will seek the help and coaching of persons who do this for a fee. By the time I walk out of that “plant”, I know that I do not have to present myself for screening for any job. I will know my way through the heavy traffic of other equally well-qualified jobseekers and master the art of safely short-circuiting the long hauls.
Getting experienced coaching
When I do not register any results after a long, vain search for employment using the traditional way, I will know when it is time to change over to non-traditional methods. I will then try my hands on unsolicited, mass mailing of CVs to companies in my locality.
When that yields limited results that do not meet my basest expectations, I will do something traditional but in a non-traditional manner: present myself to the job-giver company after I have thoroughly researched the company and understood the dynamics unique to their industry and the forces that shape their competition.
If luck still runs out of my desperate search and I plug no results, then I know that I have, maybe, the last resort that applies to jobseekers who can find cheap, almost free lodging not too far from the companies from which they are seeking those employment opportunities.
I will know by now that I need to choose four, five, six and even seven best companies, as per my ranking, in the industry that most appeals to me and work the miracle of meeting the talents manager, and if the enterprise is a startup, the CEO herself.
“I hold a prestigious degree from KNUST. My specialisation is in Food and Nutrition. After graduation, I was availed a special opportunity during the entire period of the National Service; I worked with the Ghana Standards Authority.
“I have a cumulated college-imposed industry experience of 11 months and another 163 hours of hands-on experience with some of the food brands in the country, from Papaye all the way to Joffel.
“I am offering myself to your company free of charge for three months. What you do with me after the elapse of this term is up to you. And you are free to show me the door if you feel I have no skills worth your consideration.”
Self-employment
By the time you talk to the fourth company, you may have become disillusioned by the talents managers’ lack of intelligence and sometimes clairvoyance to see through your uniquely brilliant idea and grant you entry into their offices.
When all these great initiatives fail to yield results, maybe you should conclude that you are too unlucky to work for someone. In other words, you are so lucky no one wants to hire you. But because you must survive, you have to create work for yourself; self-employment.
Self-employment is an area where too many authorities (some of them self-styled) have tried to coach newcomers and guide the first, frail, and often uncertain steps of youths desirous of starting their own businesses.
So popular has this subject become that it has lately awaken whole business schools from their hitherto lazy slumber and got them to rethink their curricula. Initially introducing the discipline as a non-scoring subject, the subject has travelled a relatively long journey in a comparatively short term. From being called self-employment, the term has metamorphosed to become entrepreneurship.
The terms do not have to confuse you and the varying scopes and nature of the discussions do not have to scare the little, modest entrepreneur out of you. The typical, western-styled case studies in the standard textbooks that Africa borrows online and from brick and mortar libraries will seem too unreal, overly exaggerated and even too sophisticated for someone your kind.
By the time this column is done with handling a jobseeker through the interview and ready to start the assignment of coaching the young ingenious few, I will gladly and variously call the tech-preneurs, church-preneurs, petty-trade-preneurs, agro-preneurs, renewable-energy-preneurs, and all the entrepreneurs in the making that the space allowed in this newspaper cannot contain, the candidate will be assisted to demystify this field of endeavour.
Tales from KIA
As soon as this is done, I shall start the self-employment quest from very modest businesses that do not even have certificates to commence business (as are required by the act), have no office space properly defined (as some crazy tradition requires), have no business plans (as are taught by the so-called business schools), have so little capital outlay that everyone except themselves know that they will crash, have no bank account and yet have already drawn production and sales graphs that point to the roof.
The column will not start by telling the tale of a certain man who disembarked at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) with a fortune as little as half a million dollars and who is selling his tech enterprise a decade after as a multimillion dollar business.
What you will read will be real stories of little ventures that just started in your neighborhood right in your presence a few scores of months ago and how such persons have found the initial challenges fun and how today, they least regret the actions they took.
The Makola shop attendant
So, mister reader fasten your seat belt. We are just about to take off. I promise you a fruitful flight as we journey through college, the National Service sacrifices, battle the frustrations of job hunting, master the art of getting noticed in a large army of other jobseekers, all the way to looking within ourselves for traits of the Captain in command at Unique conglomerate, the man behind Montran, the tech genius who birthed Apple and the legendary, generously weird man who stole coupons in order to use his school computer laboratories, Microsoft.
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I will not miss the romantic tales of meek, almost unlettered young women who entered Makola as shop attendants and are now petty-trade-preneurs with multiple outlets in the city of Accra.
It will be reasonably fun, practically educative, excitingly non-traditional and if the editor disallows it, I will find another platform. If I cannot find another one, I do not deserve your valuable attention every Tuesday of the week. — GB