It Is Incumbent for The Youth to Add on Their Skill Set to Stand a Chance of Fitting in The Job Market
By Peter Karisa Mwamburi
I am standing at the Super Metro bus station behind a tall guy in a navy-blue suit, with dusty black shoes, and a well-combed hair as I wait to board the Kikuyu Route matatu headed to my lonely crib in Kinoo. On one hand, he is holding a brown A4 envelope, and an office bag is hanging on the other shoulder. He looks so frustrated because this is the third time he’s been cursing over the phone, “Walai hii Kenya…hadi nikawashow nilipata 1st class manze…but ni kama watu wa CPA walipata…eeeh hata yule boy wa data analysis…fstyshdhjsjk” and the rest I can’t hear it because cars are hooting all over. From what I can tell, he’s from a job interview, but things didn’t go as expected. The biggest question in my head is, is it this bad? And if yes, where did we get it wrong?
The World Bank says the number of youths with advanced education yet unemployed stood at 9% of the total labor market in Kenya as of 2021, while the entire unemployment rate for Kenya is at 5.68% as of 2023. Surprisingly, the adult literacy rate rose to 83% in 2022. Social media is full of Kenya’s first-class honors graduates lamenting their lack of jobs, while some have resolved to work in a car wash, hoping one day a God-sent journalist will feature them in their 7 O’clock news and get noticed by some CEO somewhere.
Every year, tertiary institutions release tens of thousands of graduates into the job market, all thinking they are finally ready to start chasing the bag. Recently, an electrical engineering graduate from the University of Nairobi, Bill Clinton Muguai, who got an A plain of 83 points in KCSE and a first-class honor in his degree, posted online that the system had failed him and that he was going to start a YouTube channel and hope to scoop some dollars out of it, because he could not find a job, not even an unpaid internship. What happened to education being the key to success? Were the locks changed, or are we opening on the wrong door? Or perhaps someone locked us from the inside, who knows!
A recent study by the Federation of Kenya Employers (FKE) published by TIFA Research in 2018 said that only 12% of the graduates were ready for the entry positions, while 66% crumbled in ignorance with employers being forced to re-train them up to six times spending about Ksh.20,000 to Ksh.100,000 on each. A large percentage of recent graduates do not have the hands-on skills required to deliver on tasks in most companies. You pick a graduate in economics with a second-class upper division, tell them to create pivot charts in Excel, and guess who is about to see the 8th wonder of the world? The curriculum, as the report implied, is baking students halfway. Well, they know how to define an entrepreneur, solve complex calculus, and once in a while drop some “woraa” accents they picked from a “Game of Thrones” series. You sit them in an office, tell them to create a PowerPoint from Excel, and the next minute, you will hear them whispering, “Hey, SIRI, do you know how I can create a PowerPoint? Coz dude, guess what, my boss needs it ASAP” or typing on Google “How to this… How to that”. Sadly, the distinction between a Form Four dropout and a university graduate is almost negligible, except for the extra certificate and four years of experience in copying assignments, you know what I mean.
How, then, do we bridge this gap? While the government is trying to revamp the education curriculum, hopping from 7-6-3 to 8-4-4, and now Competent Based Curriculum (CBC), trying to build on talents and skills, there is a need to look at how the content is delivered and who delivers it. Many institutions have their follow-up ending at the tutor level, and the rest is up to the teacher to decide, but forget that not all teachers want to be in a classroom. Some wanted to be in these big companies but got rejections after several attempts or did not possess the skills needed in the corporate world, and I’m not talking about papers here.
They are neither motivated nor passionate about teaching and often tend to exacerbate the content intended [by shallow teaching]on the course outline (“They will not understand this one…this is not commonly tested“). They care less if the students understand and whether they teach a complete course content. After all, they still have a pay slip at the end of the month, don’t they? They attend a lecture or two and excuse themselves for a month to attend conferences abroad. During examinations, they grab a past paper, lift questions, and send them in as assessments, dropping their famous repugnant cliché, “A teacher only gives you 25%…”. Why do you think your engineering lecturer is not an engineer at Ken-Gen or your B. Com lecturer is not an auditor at PwC or Deloitte, yet he knows twice as much knowledge?
What happened to B plain being the minimum entry requirement to university? As shown in Figure 1, the unemployment rates in Kenya started shooting after 2016. Do you know what happened during that year? That is when we had our very able Matiangi as the Cabinet Secretary for Education. That is when students in the whole country failed with only 141 A’s, and now our universities never had enough students to teach ‘Animal Husbandry’. The government had to compromise on the standards and lower them to C+. But why? Are we supposed to advocate for quality or quantity?
| Data Source: Word Bank |
Figure 1: Unemployment Rates in Kenya
There is more that is needed to do well in the job industry beyond papers, especially with the limited job opportunities and growing supply of labor. Professional and soft skills are what bring a difference between those with successful careers and those still tarmacking. That CPA that you despise or that data analysis software you see as irrelevant is what will distinguish you from your next opponent in an interview. You all have degrees in commerce or human resources; how do you expect a manager at PwC or Deloitte to tell who is better? This is what is called market signaling. Managers are now shifting interview questions to what else one can offer, and this explains why the recruitment process has become robust and takes longer than before to hire, with several stages (including aptitude tests and group interviews) to filter out who deserves the job.
Information asymmetry, majorly because of the places we come from, poses a big threat to the current society, especially in the employment sector. Those of us from Nyalgunga Constituency were told to do driving after high school while our agemates in Runda were doing CPA and Power BI before joining campus. While we spent hours in cybers trying to select ‘marketable’ courses, our friends in Lavington knew which courses to pursue and where and what was needed to be employable. Even knowing where to work is a challenge to the ‘village champions’ who came to Nairobi because of school. Do you think I knew Boston Consulting Group (BCG) or McKinsey before Campus? I’m sure even my area chief doesn’t know it to date, and you think it’s my fault for struggling to be hired; I mean, where do I even send my CV? I can barely speak fluent English; you expect me to answer, “Describe a time when you were bewildered or perplexed by the antics your comrade fabricated in a group, and what decisive actions you took to address the situation.” in an interview? Come on, guys!!!
It is incumbent for the youth to add on their skill set to stand a chance of fitting in the job market. Enrollment in professional courses and self-taught online courses, as well as creating social networks, are some of the ways to help prepare for the crowded labor market. Companies, at times, rely on referrals to hire. Whilst the government should try to create more jobs and an enabling environment for entrepreneurship, it is the responsibility of the tertiary institutions to ensure graduates are well prepared for the market by embracing practical skills in the curriculum, doing a thorough follow up on lecturers’ deliverables, link students to industry experts, and incorporating some of these required courses in the training. A half-baked standalone degree is not sufficient to make our graduates competitive. We need more, more than just degrees, we need real world skills.
Peter Karisa is a writer and an economic consultant at the World Bank Group, currently serving at Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
Email Address: karypeters2018@gmail.com
