The world of work – Finding the job you want

The world of work – Finding the job you want

Know your art – You do not have to know it all in a particular field but you certainly need to own it. You need to carve a niche for yourself as the go to person for information and advice. How do you do that? Read, read and read some more. Whichever area of endeavor you settle on, there is a wealth of information out there in the field for you to explore. Gain experience in the field. Volunteer if you have to just to gain knowledge and experience in the field. You do not want to be that person who cannot speak to an issue when confronted with a question. Get well versed with emerging trends in the field. If budgets were done manually in the past, there are matrices for that now.  

Get the degree to back the talk – In the informal sector, it is easy to get by or be recommended for a job without a fancy degree. Back in the day, a lot of priority was given to experience rather than a degree. Today, when you get to the Ministries, everyone has a degree while others are working towards a second Masters. Times have changed. If you remain content with an O level, someone with relatively less experience but with the requisite educational background might just be placed ahead of you. Knowing your art does matter, but it means nothing if you will not even get shortlisted because you did not make the cut in the first place. 

Rolling stone effect – I call this the rolling stone effect because I worked with a colleague and we used this term a lot on colleagues who never seemed to make up their minds and seemed to be doing quite a number of things at once without having any clear results to show for anything. To be the perfect professional, you need to have the tendency of a rolling stone. This should only be done after you have mastered your art. This is the time to allow your mind to wonder from time to time to other areas. For instance, if you are an account’s person, it does not hurt to start reading a bit on philosophy and politics. Get involved in a little bit of everything. What this does for you is that it keeps registering in your knowledge repository and you never know when you might need a particular information that will catapult you to the next level. 

Make Straight A’s – There is a book that says that Straight A’s never made anybody rich. That is true but not making them certainly diminishes your chances. By straight A’s, I mean good grades. In simple terms, if you do not make good grades, you do not get into a good secondary school and if you do not get into a good secondary school, chances of you getting into a good university are even slimmer. Give yourself a fighting chance by acing the things you can control and leaving the ones you cannot control. 

Acquire employable skills – In this fast paced and competitive world, how do you make sure that you stand out from the thousands of applicants chasing after the same jobs? You can do that by acquiring skills that set you apart and give you an edge. From basic technical skills such as typing, and computer skills through to soft skills such as presentation, interviewing and negotiation skills; these competencies will not only help you acquire a job, but will help you thrive once employed. I have met many graduates who cannot even put together a decent CV or PowerPoint presentation despite having had straight As in school. By all means get the As, but ensure that you acquire skills and competencies which are valuable in the “market place”.

Have a second or third International language – I get a lot of frown with this point. Where the world is headed, you need to stand out in order to be outstanding. Your language skills is what will differentiate you from the next best candidate. Anglophones usually have the misfortune of having everyone around them speaking their language therefore, there isn’t the need to learn a second. Amongst the United Nations languages, most Anglophones would learn French as a second language. The challenge is that, learning French as a second language for Anglophones is not the easiest of ventures. Fundamentally, English and French do not belong to the same language family. One is from the Germanic family whilst the other is a Romance language. You might fail a couple of times.  Don’t give up. If all else fails, French is not the only other International language. There is Arabic, Spanish and Chinese. 

Network, network, network – What do you do if you are looking for job? Ask a friend to ask a friend. Look within your network to find out if there are any job openings within their organizations, or that they have heard of. Majority of companies will hire someone based on a recommendation from someone they trust. Therefore be sure to inform friends, relatives, members of the same church or group you belong to about your search for a job. However, bear in mind that people will usually not recommend someone they cannot vouch for.  Therefore before you approach the big man in your neighborhood or whom you go to church with for a job offer, ask yourself, ‘what image have I been portraying to him and the general public?’ ‘Can he attest to my ability to perform the job, I am looking for?’ 

Send out that application – In my many travels, I have met jobseekers who while they say they are looking for employment, have not even submitted one application. They are waiting for someone to hold their hands and walk them into a job. While knowing a big man/big woman who can help you get a job helps, or some people get miraculous jobs they were not even looking for, this accounts for a very small percentage of successful jobseekers. In the real world, you have to apply, and apply, and keep on applying while following the afore-mentioned steps until you get the job that you want. Remember, you do not get what you deserve, you get what you fight for.

Je ne sais quoi – This is French for ‘I don’t know what’. It is used to express a phenomenon that is difficult to explain. Some call it the act of God, the intervention of the Holy Spirit, luck, destiny, divine intervention etc. Call it what you want, but you need it. Hiring managers meet some candidates and they just like them. They meet others and write them off before they have had the chance to open their mouths. You need that extra ‘humph’. If you don’t have it, pray for some.

Empty the Basket - Stress Management

Empty the basket – Stress Management

I never quite mastered how to stay in the moment. For some of us who pride ourselves in multitasking, being in more than one place at a time becomes a common phenomenon. There is a tendency to overwork oneself without one knowing. We develop a high tolerance to stress. The next thing we know, we forget how to relax and the body forgets how to shut down and sleep.

A couple of years ago, I was buried in work and did not realize that it was way past closing time. A colleague called me from home to ask if I had seen the headlines and I said I was still at the office. He chuckled and said, you cannot expect to complete everything today Anita, there will still be more to be done tomorrow. I looked up from ‘my to do list’ and realized that I had accomplished what I needed to for the next 3 days. I smiled and told myself that it had been a good day so I would come in a bit later to the office the following day.  The next day I was at the office early the same time and I spent the rest of my morning going over the work I had done the night before to be sure that I had dotted all I’s and crossed all Ts. When that was completed, I passed by a colleague’s office who was swamped with work because she had just returned from vacation and offered to help her out before my meeting later that afternoon. The day pretty much went the same way as the previous days with me always having a lot to do and very little time to rest. Some people enjoy the fact that they have a high tolerance to stress as if it is a good thing. Truth is, the more tolerant you become to stress, the less likely it is that you will notice that you are stressed and will need to take a break and eventually what started as fatigue turns into something serious and on some occasions fatal.

None of this really registered until I found myself in a situation where I had overworked myself, I had lost a few pounds but I kept telling myself that I will rest when on vacation. However, I used the most part of my vacation to treat illness. Just when I was recuperating, I had to return to work. Then I realized that I was always making plans to rest and postponing pleasure. So what does this all mean? We spend the most part of our youth in grueling jobs having very little time for ourselves or for our families.

Stop! Listen! Will some of the things you are fretting about matter 10 years from now? Probably not. And hey, no one is indispensable too. If you drop dead, your employers will have a heartfelt tribute read at your wake and then the following day employ someone else to take your place. Life is short, cliché, I know. But you never realize just how short it is until you attend the funeral of your age mate and realize it could just have easily been you. Learn to take a break from work and things that stress you out.

Read a book, see a movie, call up an old friend, make it home on time to eat dinner with the family, take up swimming or exercise, pick up a new healthy habit, learn a new language (not French of course, that is a whole new kind of stress; just kidding) or like me, blog or learn a musical instrument. If you are someone like me who gets serious with everything please do not venture into learning an instrument, we do not want something which was meant to be fun turn out with you being more stressed because you could not play a tune in F key. But by all means do something for you. Find a way to relax and develop a low tolerance for stress. As much as you make a to do list for work or school, have a to do list for fun things you can do as well. Today I tried hopping on one leg in my living room. Silly I know but if you have had the night I had of not getting much sleep because I was warding off mosquitoes and still had to wake in time to fetch water before the power cut, you will do silly things too.

If you feel the need to critique this article, please take a pause and realize I am also de-stressing 😃😃. I would love to hear your views about your stressful moments and how you managed that stress. 

Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict: who do we blame?

Armed conflict situations have posed a number of challenges to the world. In a patriarchal international system where the decision making process is the privy of a few and where war is seen as a means of establishing power and influence over other states; peace and interdependence is seen as a weakness. In armed conflict situations, there are a number of fatalities like death, torture and slavery. Some armed conflicts have seen grave destructions like arbitrary exterminations of an entire race such as the Jewish Holocaust.

Women face a worse fate in armed conflict situation due to the issue of rape as a weapon of war, sexual slavery as well as forced prostitution. In some cases, women are forced into marriages with rebel leaders and become spoils of war for the victorious. The effect of war on women is peculiar given that women face the gruesome consequences of war just like men do but in addition to all these, they face challenges that have to do with gender inequalities, discrimination and abuse. Women also face humiliation, loss of dignity and dehumanization which characterizes sexual violence. The irony of rape as a weapon of war is that it is not even to punish the victims, but rather to punish the men that those women belong to. In the African setting where more often than not a woman either belongs to her father or her husband, raping her is an embarrassment to her family.

One would think that given how explicit the law that regulates armed conflict is and the numerous Conventions and human rights laws in place to protect civilians in armed conflict situations, warring parties would exercise some restraint. But no! If anything at all, the situation seems to worsen with ensuing conflicts. And so I ask, who do we blame and who do we hold responsible for the inability of International Law to protect women in armed conflict situations. Has justice been served when few people are punished under the principle of holding accountable the ones most responsible? What does it mean to a young Tutsi girl who was gang-raped by nameless rebels to know that ‘Akayesu’ has been jailed or that because of that judgement, rape as a weapon of war constitutes genocide? This only makes sense to the academicians, politicians and perhaps human rights activists. Then again, if we cannot control and effectively punish sexual violence in peace times, how do we hope to control it in war?

The root cause of sexual violence in armed conflict is the seething power relations and gender inequalities that pertain in peace times. If we can change beliefs that women are second class human beings who deserve to be treated with indignity and adopt a culture where every human being’s fundamental human rights are respected at all times, then perhaps we can find a piece of our humanity to say no to sexual violence in conflicts where the worst form of human nature is on display.