The doctrine of job experience has become hot cake in the contemporary job search or market. Every organisation wants a level of experience before you can get ‘married’ to them.
The burning question that invades my young mind when I take a cursory look and indeed do a deeper introspection of this charter is; “IS EXPERIENCE EXCELLENCE?”
In as much as am not oblivious of the fact that it is a requirement for any job opening, I strongly think it poses a very harsh challenge to young and upcoming fresh graduates like myself from the walls of our tertiary institutions who virtually have no experience about the job market.
How then can we cope with this proposition? What are we expected to do then if the current ‘charter’ cannot and will not absorb us? Should we take our degrees to our various homes and stare at them or sleep over them under our pillows?
For decades, if not centuries, students in basic and high schools have been told that tertiary education degree is the foremost option (if not the only option) for getting a high-paying, fulfilling and sustaining job.
The new twist of having a level of experience has whip up a worrying passion, making life after school frustrating and unbearable. Tertiary education alone does not meet the “minimum requirement”, what a world!
From the little I know everything has a beginning and there is always a starting point. How then do I get experience if I don’t start from somewhere (with you)? Who should hire me get the experience if you will not offer me that initiative? I shudder to think that human beings are born with experience. Experience should therefore not make a difference in hiring an individual for a job.
The interest should be to hire people who are a good fit with the expected culture of a particular job or work environment because irrespective of age, everyone comes with a set of values and behaviour.
The argument is made that the increasing number of job seekers has necessitated the ‘charter’ of experience which makes an individual standout from the others.
The individual with experience is therefore said to be up to scratch and hence the best candidate. This argument is not tenable because excellence is not enmeshed in experience but comes with passion, dedication, non-dereliction of duty and above all commitment to one’s job.
Again, it is assumed that ‘experienced’ hired has nothing to learn and ‘inexperienced’ hired has so much to learn. However, they seem to forget that whether ‘experienced’ or ‘inexperienced’ it is a transition and both have to overcome years of acculturation which if you ask me, it is still the same thing.
Experienced and inexperienced, young, and old should all be mentored and trained in skills, attitudes and knowledge and beliefs that will make them adapt and successful in the new environment.
It is clear that this so-called experienced is perceived to be job ready and at least capable to some extent of being able to get the job done. The question now will be; is this status achieved in a vacuum?
Time has come for a developing country like Ghana to do something about this to empower and build the capacity of young graduates to make them marketable and employable as possible.
My heart bleeds for mother Ghana if we should fold our hands and take the back sit to see an association christened UN EMPLOYED GRADUATES, it’s embarrassing to say the least. Something must be done!
I humbly think the government, the private and the public sectors and our various educational institutions must put their heads together to address, the lack of skills and employment opportunities to make a difference in the lives of many frustrated graduates by putting them on a pedestal of efficient career pattern.
Again, for our current ‘charter’ I think that organisations should take a big step in collaborating with institutions to assist students to gain valuable experience while still studying to enter the world of work with ease.
Finally, we can emulate the initiative of Boston city campus and Boston College by setting up the ‘EXPERIENCE IT PROGRAMME’ to help students gain on the job experience either while they are still studying or at the end of their studies through arrangements with selected corporations.
This set the tone for a debate on this worrisome issue, what we need is SKILLS SET not EXPERIENCE, I may be wrong, but the discourse has to continue.
