It’s graduation time, with lots of new degrees pouring into the already flooded Kenyan employment market. As you know, your bachelor’s degree is pretty much useless if you didn’t do a technical degree in accounting, medicine, pharmacy, nursing, mathematics, or actuarial science.
You don’t have an employable skill yet. The only thing that a 4-year degree offer to most students is a small break in their life to do a few drugs, hook-up around, and accumulating some student debts that they will spend the next 10 years repaying. And I am not being negative.
There’s nothing substantial they are learning from these campuses. I can say this confidently because I am a graduate, have worked with graduates, and have friends who are graduates in technical fields like computer science who could not do much with a computer after graduating. They had to resort to Udemy to up-skill their technical abilities.
A graduate relying on their bachelor’s in whatever degree is going to sleep hungry for a long time unless he wakes up and learns some monetizable skill he can use to put food on the table.
If you were smart, you learned an employable skill on campus like sales, or graphic design, writing, tax consultancy, make up, nail tech, plumbing, coding etc that you can use to start making money asap. Or that you used to make money while in college. Otherwise, you are in for a rough ride on the rugged road of unemployment.
Even if you secure employment, job security is a thing of the past. Unless you are employed by the govt, most private companies tend to retrench or lay off to cut costs a lot. I have worked for a big corp in Kenya, and I know what I am talking about. Let me take you through my journey.
When I finished campus in 2014, I started doing some online writing. I was writing essays for foreign students, personal statements that help students gain entry into competitive programs in reputable universities. And boy, I was very good at it. I have helped many students across the world get an A plus many times.
Even recently, I would help my friends doing masters in business schools in Europe do assignments, and they would pay me. They passed with flying colors and graduated. I am very sharp when I am focused.
After doing that I briefly got employed at our national airline for 6 months in my line of studies, since I studied information science, I could get a job in a technical field. I worked in their engineering department as a technical records officer. So, I met airline engineers earning $2k a month with degrees from the Philippines and the UK. Not a lot if you ask me.
After the airline’s short contract, where I was only getting 45k Kenyan shillings a month and no other benefits, I went back to writing. My friends who were writing were making that on a good day. I wrote for over 9 months before getting a job in an ad firm as a proof-reader. The biggest ad firm in the country at the time; they have been struggling of late.
You can see how fast I get jobs in a bad market, and you might think I am lucky. Far from it. I didn’t use my parents connections to get any of these jobs either. I got the ad firm because I had been auditioning for commercial ads for a long time, and I was in a WhatsApp casting group for talent.
I saw someone post that an agency is looking for a proof-reader, and I decided to reach out to them. They took 2 months to schedule me for an interview. I don’t think they wanted to hire me, but I kept reminding them to hit me up for a practical interview. When they finally reached out to schedule me for an interview, I went in, and they didn’t talk much.
I was with another lady, and I guess other candidates had done their practical interviews. I was given a financial statement to proofread; it was a walkover for a guy like me who had been writing for years and editing using Grammarly. I knew I was getting that job; there is no way I was going to fail that interview. I don’t fail written tests; I blow competition out of the water like nonsense.
I performed so well in that job that when I left, my boss was so heartbroken. I won’t go into details of why I left, but I was really good at it because I had been writing for so long, and it is the things I learned while writing that helped me get good. Not my degree as such.
The only downside is that it was a 50k job and I was doing 70 hours a week, sleeping in the office, working. Advertising firms are cool places to work in, but the hours and politics will eat the lifeblood out of you.
I went back to writing as usual; that is what I know best. I wrote a lot for people and companies, and my words have changed lives and sold many products across the globe.
So, the secret is in tangible skills, not your 101-communication skills class. I studied communication skills on campus, but when I left campus and picked up a dating course in communication, it is like I had never studied communication. It was a big eye-opener on some basic errors I was making in communication. Even while in college, I would check out a few YouTube videos on dating and communication, and I could tell the college education is not giving me much. They don’t teach frame control in comm skills. They don’t teach how to negotiate a better salary, arbitration, or deal-making. And you are coming out here to hustle with a weak frame. You are dead meat.
The reason TVET graduates from our local polytechnics who did electrical wiring or plumbing or bakery will never go hungry while a political science graduate will live off debts for a long time is because TVETs give you skills that you can start using asap. You leave the graduation ground and hit the ground asp.
If you studied landscape architecture, you start mowing lawns and pruning flower beds for guys in Karen and Muthaiga. If you did plumbing, you can start laying the pipe (pun intended). Actually, my friends who studied social science degrees went back to study construction or wiring in TVETs after graduation.
It is only in Kenya or Africa that we look down upon these blue-collar jobs. And yet these cities we live in and these amenities we enjoy, the sanitation and washrooms are all possible due to the hard-working masons, plumbers and electricians.
I once met an electrician from the Netherlands who was traveling and just living right, so it is a rewarding career.
If you were to study a skill like baking, you can start baking us good pastries and cookies; forget about the weed cookies you were eating at campus house parties.
If you want to master baking and start making us rooftop videos like the roaming chef or other TikToks chefs, there is a cool baking and food college opening up with good boarding facilities and trainers. If you like the kitchen and like using your hands, you can enrol your kid brother or sister for one year of intense training.
You might think baking and cooking are natural skills and you don’t need to do much about it. Well, just because a skill is natural does not mean it is efficient, you still got to learn it to reach elite level. Even walking is natural, but people have to be taught how to catwalk or walk like a model. Communication is natural, but people have to be taught how to write emails or make presentations.
A 1 year or even 2 years of training is not a lot for a skill that will get you paid for the rest of your life. You can start your outside catering business and make a few millions with these courses. You can learn how to make your own beer brand with our beverage courses.
If you think baking or cooking is easy, well, when was the last time you ate a good chapati or bread? It’s been centuries. As a bachelor living alone, I have never baked anything in my house for years, or even fried chapati. I would want to, but I lack the skill set.
You see, baking, unlike cooking, is a very precise skill set. If you were told to put two and a half spoonful of sugar and you only put two minus the half, you will come up with some things even a dog will not eat. So go learn some baking. The contact is right there on the poster.
The college is located in Gilgil, a very quiet, serene town with lots of reputable institutions and military barracks, so no one will bother you. It is pretty safe.
They also have courses in plumbing and electrical wiring. They can turn you into Mr. Fix it in 18 to 24 months.
Pour Conclure
Your degree is pretty much useless; your receptionist can do some basic accounting duties.
Your manager probably has some sales skills. Your lawyer can farm or run a dairy farm.
Your gym instructor is also a nutritionist or a martial arts expert. Your nurse can write a sales page for a health product.
Your grade 7 kid might be a chess grandmaster with 2000 Elo who performs in contests. Your guy or chick might be a makeup artist or a professional dancer. Your favourite hooker might be a good stripper and a part-time dating coach or a sex expert.
Okay, some of those are exaggerated, but you get the gist. You need multiple skills. All those big corps I worked for, none of them are doing well, they have laid a lot of people I knew who thought they were safe with employment. They had to go and do other things with their lives. So always up-skill.
Here’s a guide I wrote for another blog on how to get a job, step by step. Or side hustle tips.
Onwards and Upwards,
Slade!
