Plight Of Job Seekers

By Lawrence Amaku

Hunting for a job could be strenuous Unemployment can be defined as a condition in which one is willing and competent to work but does not have a paid work, or a situation whereby one is out of work. Perhaps, one may be misled into thinking that the recent reforms in the banking sector that had opened windows of employment opportunities to all graduates irrespective of their disciplines.

But far from it, the situation, especially, in this sector of the economy, tends to have ironically aggravated the plights of the Nigerian graduate job seekers who are the worst hit by it. The reason is not far-fetched, as it is ostensibly one of the highest paying sectors of the economy with about the most lucrative opening. Thus, graduates with a desire to acquire a comfortable livelihood for themselves now throng the sector, falling head over heels for jobs there. Consequently, employers in this sector, cognizant of this, now make a meal out of the situation and masterfully exploit the multitude of helpless, hopeless and hapless graduates. These faces of exploitation range from the dehumanisation of graduates with poor conduct of aptitude tests and interviews, bias for female applicants with the motive to commodify them.

Obviously, an event that took place at the University of Lagos campus in November last year was a climax of the brutish treatment meted out to Nigerian graduate job seekers by banks and points to the fact that they are the worst violators of their rights and dignity. It was a test conducted by a new generation bank (name withheld) in which a multitude of candidates invited and uninvited obviously overstretched the logistics put on ground by the organisers. Unable to control the large crowd of candidates owing to improper organisation, they thought it wise to commit the atrocity of firing tear gas in order to disperse them from the venue. This act by all reasonable standards amounts to reducing the country’s products of the ivory towers to a mere mob. How pitiable! Eventually, the aptitude test, which had in its attendance candidates from within Lagos and its neighbouring states, was cancelled.

As if that was not enough, the answer scripts of the bank test held in some other venues nationwide were thrown into the trash bins due to what the organisers referred to as the general “uncivilised” conducts of the candidates at the test venues. Although this bank and many other banks like it may contend that the task of controlling the invasion of aptitude test venues by gate crashers or of sieving them out is always a Herculean one for them and that they can do very little or nothing to determine the number of attendants due to the presence of uninvited ones, the fact remains that with the proper logistics in place they can contain the situation.

Furthermore, some banks delight in the underemployment or exploitation of graduates with lower certificates. An old generation bank that prides itself as having the largest bank network has a reputation for employing Ordinary National Diploma Holders (not the ones on industrial training) to work on contract for a meagre salary with the risk of being sacked at any given time. This same bank finds it too dear to call or send text messages or even e-mail to candidates short-listed for interview, but rather pastes their names at the various branches for those who care or would take the pain to go there to check them.

That hardly anything works on merit, especially in the area of recruitment of workers or personnel or graduates for services in Nigeria is no news. What may be news is the way employers in this sector tantalise graduate job seekers by taking them up to the second or even third interview stage in the course of recruitment, only to abandon them with that ominous cliché, “we will get in touch with you later”. But beneath this seeming lofty intention lies a tendency to nepotism and godfatherism — the man-know-man syndrome in the Nigerian official transaction. At other times, they may arrange an interview with a candidate over a very far distance only to frustrate him eventually. Since the reforms in the banking sector three years ago, banks have made clear the kind of employees they gun for, especially at the entry stage. Their taste is usually young dynamic youths, especially pretty ladies (not necessarily intelligent) who can entice or seduce customers to buy their services with their natural endowments. Their age benchmark ranges from 25 to 27 years.

Speaking on this issue to Saturday Tribune, Azubike, a graduate job seeker and Economics graduate, analyses the situation in economic terms saying , “when too many buyers are chasing free goods there will be an upsurge in price and it will definitely result in the ill-treatment of buyers by sellers. Thus, when too many unemployed graduates chase a job as it is the case in the banking sector it may result in all manners of exploitation such as poor salary packages, shabby treatment of job seekers, among others. “He however regrets the tendency of employers to exploit job seekers and implores them to be considerate as they have once found themselves in their situation. Another respondent, Charles, a postgraduate student, also decried the practice of employers inviting far more than the needed number of applicants aside gate crashers that usually far outnumber the invitees to aptitude tests for a few job vacancies without making adequate provision for the exercise, thereby resulting in the overcrowding of centres. In furtherance of this, he suggests that aptitude test venues should be decentralised nationwide so as to decongest them and save job seekers the pains of travelling over far distances for the exercise.

However, speaking on the conditions of anonymity, a Human Resources personnel in a fast growing bank in Ibadan sees the situation in a different light. He opined that employers, especially those in the banking sector, should not be held responsible for the unsavoury experiences that these youths face in a bid to break into the Nigerian labour market. According to him, “employers of labour give as many graduate job seekers as possible a fair chance of competing for vacancies, however few of the openings, including sometimes the uninvited ones and even at times indiscriminately of the nature of their qualifications (HND holders or degree holders), their discipline, or class of degree, except when stated otherwise. He likened the situation to the university admission examination conducted by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) where over a million students jostle for less than 100,000 admission vacancies in universities scattered all over the federation.

Thus, irregularities are bound to arise under such a circumstance. Furthermore, he debunked the claim that job aptitude tests and interviews are charade or mere formality that does not provide a yardstick for selecting qualified and competent candidates, noting that nepotism and godfatherism do not play a role in the recruitment process as it will recoil at any company or organisation that does so.