JOB HUNTING

Rekiat Adedoja Gbadegesin


The right introduction to this article beats me, say because I dont have experience in talking about my challenges. Also, I do not have much experience in job seeking, so, I may not be the right person to write this. Lately, I've been involved in conversations with beautiful young minds on how they intend to explore the world of landing a dream job, how they hope to get their dreams achieved, how they want to earn big and live big. At this point I start to wonder if I'm also a young mind, to be honest I havent thought that wide about jobs. I always thought I lost it when I heard of how a friend applied for ten jobs within a week, it reminded me that I have never been interviewed for a job, or a college application.

It started to annoy me when I realized, I don't even know any site that advertise jobs or internships for supposed budding minds like me.

So this morning, I swallowed all my embarrassment and decided to stop being a privileged bitch, I opened my web browser and typed in search keywords for "job seeking". I was bombarded with lots of sites that advertise jobs and I was wowed...so I have just being existing in this world. I saw a whole lot of job applications,that even match the course I studied. I was so excited, I opened the first I saw. The impatient me did not even read the job description I just skipped to the requirements and I was glad when I saw the class of grade required, course of study, and I started to see myself working as an HR manager in that company until I saw three to four years experience and my nerves slowed to like 18km/h from 120km/h. I know, I am not that naive, I know how experience matters in job seeking. I just thought, where would I have gotten that much experience from or let me say how would I have gotten that experience.

Let's do a brief flash back to my past. I attended primary school in my hometown and after 6years in primary school I proceeded into secondary school, spending most of my mid term and end of term breaks in my cousin's house playing with dolls and sand. After secondary school I did not secure admission into my dream school so, I waited to hate that school for a whole year. While I was waiting, my mom opened an outfit shop, I became the executive manager of the shop in charge of sales, marketing, networking and general upkeep of the shop (cool job right?). While doing this I doubled as a shop keeper for two neighboring shops one that we call "business center" in Nigeria or "Cafe" but what I do majorly is to help out in photocopying and printing documents when the shop owner is not around. The other shop was an hairdresser's shop who needed someone to gist with and I was always ready to do that because talking is like my destined job. Sometimes I help out in braiding and fixing weaves and to be honest, it was always fun. At that time I felt so old and dull because all my school mates got admitted to one school or the other, I was like maybe I would never go to a college after all, I started amassing all sorts of skills, I delved into writing out song lyrics most especially Beyonce's and Rihanna's, sometimes I write about life and romance, of which I never had one. I also went into custom shoe making and bag construction and after a while I mastered the basics of african prints shoes and bag.

The next year I applied into another University and my score in jamb was so low I gave up immediately. When I least expected I gained admission and I got a course I never thought  of studying. To be honest I lost all zeal to actually study ever since I got rejected in previous admissions (my first major heart break). The only thing I wanted to do was to just go to school.

My years in school surprised me because I was amazingly serious with studies and I came out quite fine and let's not forget my breaks in school were spent at home attending parties and sleeping like a log of wood. I don't blame myself, I always come home looking ragged out, tattered and exhausted so I needed that much rest.

After school, I got tired of attending parties and I wanted to have experience of working. My friends mom got me a teaching job and I took all classes and like five subjects because it is a budding school, it was exciting at first since this was my first real job but as time went by it became overwhelming, although the cuteness of my pupils kept me going, they made me laugh all the time. I had to quit the job so early when I got listed for the youth service Corp and today I cannot even wait to finish this service and get a good job (PS: the youth service is not a service it is youth usage)

In essence, I want to understand how to gather experience for good jobs, I realised a lot of us play the blame game by saying the government is not providing enough avenue for youth to get job, I think we should reverse and look at how much we add value to ourselves. How many times have  I volounteered in a community project, did I go for any academic position in school, did I start an organization or a business, did I fight for a cause and it became so effective. Most importantly, how much value did I add to the education I was privileged to have. I thought for long and I want to make a change.

You just read my story and you must have noticed I am in need of good advice on how to be a better job candidate. I am sure you must have noticed my strengths and weaknesses as well. Drop your comments or send me a DM on the following social media channels

IG - @_ashabi.i

Twitter- @rekiah_adedoja

Facebook - Rekiat Adedoja Gbadegesin

Thanks for taking time out to read this, catch you sometimes later, before, or after I get a good job