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How to Get Your Dream Job Despite Soaring Unemployment

For the past ten years I have been mentoring young people leaving school to join the world of work. I have taught in universities and also trained university lecturers in a score of universities in Uganda. Over those years I have learnt that schools severely fall short of preparing young professionals to successfully face the daunting challenge of managing the transition from school to the world of work. Without being helped to develop the appropriate soft skills, young graduates are left to gamble their career life as a game of chance unnecessarilly too long. Quite often, at a scandalously high price. Unquestionably, there is a vital missing digit in the package school offers. Like a phone caller with one digit missing in the dialling number, too many graduates end up in dire frustration and flounder.    

In its 2007 World Development Report, the World Bank made a revealing observation, which has all along been at the center of my concerns, as reflected in the two books I have published and the content of my seminars since 1997. Having carried out a global study, the World Bank couldn’t help but wonder: “…Why do university leavers go jobless for months or even years while businesses complain of lack of skilled workers?”

In other words, the World Bank’s observation points at the critical paradox of our time:   soaring unemployment, in the midst of lots of undone jobs! The world of work still has a lot of undone work, but it seems not to be able to find the right people to do it, even among university graduates! My purpose for this article is to help those leaving school and joining the world of work to develop appropriate strategies for escaping the same trap. Like I say in, After University, What Next? “Only fools rush in where fools have been”. Otherwise, the reason why the mouse trap stays in business is because of the continued failure of mice to understand how a mouse trap works, and therefore, how to avoid being killed.

There are too many jobs for you than you can ever take, though national statistics on unemployment paint a terribly gloomy picture. Official figures show that every year, over 400,000 job seekers join the labour market in Uganda. Out of these, 20,000 are fresh graduates from Uganda’s 28 universities alone. What makes matters worse, is the fact that only 8,000 new jobs are created per year. Overall national unemployment rate is 2.3%, but graduate unemployment stands at a scandalous 36%. But the good news behind these figures is that they only show the facts, they say nothing about the truth. Facts only show the surface, it is only by digging up the truth that you can discover the untold story that lies underneath – and that is where your unlimited job opportunities are.

Now, let’s analyze the underlying truth. First of all, if we are not creating enough jobs it means that businesses/organizations are not expanding. This in turn means that businesses are not thinking creatively enough, so they are not innovating. Hence, they are doing business as usual – no significant new value is added to necessitate expansion, which translates into creating more jobs. The big challenge is that the greatest job opportunities are usually disguised as problems and remain invisible to the average graduate. What makes matters worse is that even in the organization where your job opportunity is, there may be a “No Vacancy” notice at the entrance. Yes, they are also not aware that they have a vacancy in there.

So, this is your ultimate challenge. Your first job is not far from you, but can you see it? Do you have what it takes to go for it? Will you get it? In answering these questions, you may need to be reminded by the words of two great thinkers, both of whom I quote in my book, “After University, What Next?” The first is Mark Twain who said, “You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus”. In the same line of thinking, the philosopher Seneca also argued that “the greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach; but we shut our eyes, and like people in the dark, we fall foul upon the very thing we search for, without finding it.”    

Throughout the months of May and June I will be sharing some practical and specific tips for successful job hunting/creation. Below are some of the key insights I will discuss in greater depth:

Each week we will deal with one of these four tips in ample detail.

For personal guidance and/or comments in connection with the subject of this article, Or to get a readily printable version of this article, please contact the author personally on afteruniversity@hcdc.ug  

©Ambrose Kibuuka Mukiibi 2009