When it comes to the youth acquiring skills pertinent for the job market, who do we cast the responsibility to; is it the students, the schools, or is it a shared responsibility?
We’ve seen the many young people holding placards along major highways in the city, displaying their education status in order to get jobs. Why? Because it’s increasingly becoming tougher and tougher for graduates to get jobs and the move to hold up placards seems to get attention resulting in these people getting jobs. The unfortunate thing is most of these young people have the relevant years of college education, so why are we getting to the point of begging for jobs from the street?
Day after day, it’s becoming more and more evident that university degrees no longer guarantee gainful positions in the workplace. While it is true that owning a degree pays off in getting you an entry into the rapidly job market, job skills are worth much more in getting you that job.
Most employees have stated that graduates lack ‘real job’ experience, noting that most students lack basic skills like punctuality, the ability to work under pressure, critical thinking, creativity, teamwork and the list goes on.
The central question thus becomes: Can we blame the fact that the youth lack the necessary skills to elevate them in the work place on the Kenyan education system or should we blame it on the youth themselves who show a lack of interest within themselves?
As a young person, it is upon each of us to prioritize the growth of our individual skills. At the end of the day, you are your biggest asset and your skills should be a personal responsibility.
For us, the process of acquiring new skills day by day should be a forethought as opposed to an afterthought. Why? Because the work place dynamics are changing every day and in order to stay on top, you have to be on top of your game; which is essentially making sure that you as an employable young person, are ever ready for the corporate world.
Second, skill development should be a paramount part of university education. Organizations play a huge role in cultivating and encouraging the growth of these skills. As much as it is upon a young person to commit aside certain resources and time to learn certain skills every day, it is also upon the respective institutions to lead the way.
It is the mandate of institutions to instill programs that not only change the perception of skills to the youth – because most of them find skills to be boring and useless – but it is also their job to sharpen these skills and teach them how they can do it on their own.
This week, join us at the University of Nairobi’s Taifa Hall for the Skills Hunt Summit on the 21st of September from 8am to 5pm, as we go through the reasons why skills are the accelerator for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and why you as a young person should strive to pursue and sharpen these skills on a daily basis.
