Human resources experts, who took turns to assess Nigeria’s job market in respect to the qualities employers, look out for in present day employees, have identified technological skills and ability to diversify into other fields as critical to becoming employment ready.
Speaking in Lagos on Thursday at the ACCA Annual Summit 2020 themed: ‘Become a Future-Ready Talent,’ Yemi Faseun, head, Human Resource of FBNQuest, said technology has created opportunities that can enable employees especially job seekers to enhance their careers through acquisition of new skills.
According to him, present generation of employees only need phone, connectivity, data and power bank to succeed and deliver on their responsibilities in workplace from wherever they are.
Jennifer Oyelade, chief executive officer of Transquisite Consulting, stated that diversifying ones experience without confining self in one career path, is very critical to securing employment in the job market.
“Job seekers need to carve a niche for themselves by undergoing short courses in field other than their primary specialisation in order to become professionals in other disciplines. You have to become what employers need by leveraging on new experiences to become competitive in the job market,” she advised.
She said that global thinking organisations want future ready employees and not the people they would need to invest in training, adding that this was where diversification of experiences becomes critical.
Tom Isibor, head, ACCA Nigeria, who pointed out that the summit was aimed at taking students through capability development towards enhancing their careers in line with the requirements of employers, stated that people are live in a very disruptive world, which makes it critical that finance professionals need to develop themselves to be relevant to present realities.
To him, the composition of panel was to bring to bear those skills organisations are looking for in employees and from their perspective, employers are only interested in what the employee can deliver to the organisation.
“The discussion of today has sent a big message to Nigeria’s education, which is the fact that employers are looking for talents that are ready and not for those they would invest in training. We need to look at where we want to go as a nation and where we are now to ensure that the platform we have today can take us to where we are going,” he stated.
On the ACCA advantage, Aderonke Adebule, business development manager for Lagos and West Region, who noted that the theme of the summit was decided on after a major research in 2019, said that the outcome of the research was the discovery of five major opportunities that are going to be relevant into the future.
“They include becoming a digital playmaker by understanding the world we are in today, understanding how emerging technology can shape the future while the second point is sustainability trail blazer, which is using performance management to effectively interpret information in an organisation and among others,” she said.
While describing ACCA as a global professional body that is looking to develop finance, she said that it is a standardised qualification that boosts employment globally because the certification is same in over 180 countries and it also has mutual recognition agreement with some institutions in Canada, Australia and New Zeeland.
AMAKA ANAGOR-EWUZIE
