As employers and organisations continue to grapple with the challenge of recruiting the right talents with its attendant socio-economic implications on the nation, human resource experts insist there is the need to revisit the issue of a faulty education system that has failed to equip university graduates with the right skills suited for today’s work environment.
Arguing from an organisational perspective, experts in the world of work believe that organisations hire people to perform specific tasks that help them achieve their business goals.
They say that in today’s ever competitive world of employment, it is routine for employers to recruit candidates that parade not just certificates that bear first class or second class upper division, but candidates with the right working skills that can contribute to the development of the company.
Experts further disclose that much more than anything else, employers today want their recruits to be competent technically in their chosen field. They also want them to come out of school well equipped with complementary life skills such as problem-solving, reflective and critical thinking ability, interpersonal and teaming skills, effective communication, organising skills and ability to translate ideas to action.
However, with the growing unemployment rate in the country and employment companies finding it difficult to get the right candidates as a result of poor quality of graduates from our tertiary institutions, CEOs and human resource organisations are worried for the future of the workforce if this issue is not resolved soon.
Often employers of labour have complained about the lack of relevant skills by the so-called graduates from the country’s institutions of higher learning. Some institutions running post-graduate programmes have also introduced internal examinations to test the aptitude of the graduates before admission, a move which human resource practitioners have said points to the doubt that exists about the quality of the degree certificates obtained from the tertiary institutions.
Taking a holistic view of the situation as it concerns the shortfall of employable graduates in the country today, Ayodele Jaiyesimi, head, Human Capital Development, First Bank Nigeria, says the situation has really assumed a worrying dimension.
According to her, “There is a dearth of skilled manpower. Employers hardly find graduates today who have the basics; most of the times we do a basic aptitude test to get people in and you find out that you can’t even get 10 percent of them that will pass appropriately. So, when we are talking of skills, it is a huge problem for us in the banking industry.”
With this widening skill lacuna between industry demands and quality of the nation’s graduates, the human resource practitioner is of the view that there is much work to be done. “I feel we need to be committed to working together to lift up standards in the country,” she says.
Citing the efforts of her organisation towards this fight, she reveals that First Bank has a corporate university so that from the entry level, candidates employed undergo series of courses that will train them to fit into the standard of the company irrespective of what they might have studied in the university.
Abraham Laleye, CEO, Robins Begg Consulting Limited, while reacting to the issue pointed out that human capital development is bedevilled by the neglect of the present and past governments regarding promises to the citizens in the area of investment in education, promises that have remained largely undelivered on account of primitive expressions of greed by the political elite.
Laleye notes that the universities should work more closely with the industries, try to understand their needs, have a forum where there could be an exchange of ideas as to the challenges the industries are facing and how they can develop a proper curriculum to address these challenges.
Apparently disenchanted with the poor quality of university graduates, he says that a country like the USA has strategically provided for the needs that would become very predominant in the next 50 years for professionals and has made strategic moves to fill the gap, wondering why Nigeria should not follow suit.
The problem of skill gap, he says, is increasingly becoming a multi-faceted one, noting that organisations are looking for certain skills to help their business improve.
The employment consultant further notes that if organisations are serious about getting the right talents, there are lots of processes they have to go through. “They need to understand that talent requires skills to be able to ensure that it has perfected the art of doing what you want them to do,” he says.
“When organisations try to recruit people to function in a particular department, what I discover is that they focus a whole lot of attention on people’s qualification and experience, which are quite important, but they need to understand that qualification and experience cannot substitute for attitude and talent.”
Emmanuel Imevbore, group CEO of CEED International Company, on his part, blames the situation on the education system that fails to tailor learning to employment realities.
Imevbore is worried that the academic contents in the country’s institutions often do not address the real needs of the society.
“Academically, the Nigerian degree is not worthless because it is the basis of determination of students’ ability to think, it is also relevant for admission into institutions of higher learning abroad, but in practical relevance it is worth little. Often, academic contents are not relevant to the needs of the society, especially to the employers. Graduates from these institutions are usually theoretically baked but half-baked for the business/practical world,” he says.
In order to solve the problem and raise the competiveness and relevance of Nigerian graduates, Imevbore suggests that a steady upgrade of university curriculum is required to meet the needs of the ever-changing world of today.
KELECHI EWUZIE
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