Daily Times

Succeeding in securing a reasonable job that also resonates with your interests is an art. Given the amount of highly competent people pouring into the job market to find jobs, much of the success in job hunt depends on the proper information and right skills you carry.

Young people who have just graduated from national universities are not equipped properly to avail job opportunities at home or abroad.

There are almost 165 universities in both public and private sectors that are providing services and awarding degrees, but yet, there is an overabundance of youth that remains unemployed and makes its entry into the job hunt pool every year.

While there is no denying that the majority of our universities have offered quality of education and have been successful in producing post grads, there is a lack of proper counseling and guidance that can effectively help the young lot to secure reasonable jobs.

Unfortunately, the majority of job seekers in Pakistan is not aware of modern techniques which include a productive use of social media and marketing your skills on digital platforms. They lack the ability to communicate to present themselves to the employers.

The depression that results from unemployment is causing even more frustration. Despaired young people are compelled do the jobs which they first thought were never meant for them. But even that’s very unlikely; most of them remain unemployed.

Secondly, there is an education quality gap between the students of high standard universities of big cities and universities of local and remote areas. The graduates coming from remote area universities are not capable enough to compete with high profile university grads.

Depression that results from unemployment is causing even more frustration. Despaired young people are compelled do jobs which they first thought were never meant for them

This gap also needs to be lessened. Higher Education Commission really needs to arrange study tours for universities located in remote areas. More inter-university interacting activities can also reduce this gap.

All universities should arrange counseling sessions at the end of degrees. This can also be done by offering compulsory soft skill development courses in last semester in all degree programs. Students can learn new techniques of writing and communication skills, digital marketing, productive use of social media, personality development, career growth and selection, and modern technology tools for job hunt purposes.

Universities should also design and conduct relevant soft skill development seminars and discussions.

This can also help to improve writing and communication skills of youth and they will be enable to offer one course in last semester that how to enter in market and how to get ready to compete other job seeker at national and international level with the use of modern tools. No doubt there is huge gap in demand and supply in labor market but to avail limited job resources is need of the hour.

Attractive and international standard Resume is, in fact, first link between job seekers and employers. But unfortunately our youth is not trained and not capable enough to make to-the-point resume that can attract employers or head hunters to shortlist fresh grads for next stage of scrutiny in job hunt process.

There are lots of platforms that can be utilized for networking on social media. Developing good contact and maximum networking can also be very helpful for this purpose.

Sustainable Development Policy Institute also always engages youth at different levels. SDPI offers summer internships to interested senior students which enable them to work in different categories including research, publications and in other departments. This opportunity improves their writing skills for research and publications under the supervision of most senior research staff.

Rapporteuring of different sessions during annual sustainable development conference is another major opportunity for these senior students and for fresh graduates.

SDPI provides training to interested and registered university students to write long reports and press releases of all sessions. For this purpose SDPI arrange trainings of these rapporteurs and also guide them and review their write ups.

Later this grooming helps them to adjust in any available position with improved writing and communication skills. Another opportunity for students at SDPI is maximum discount in different categories of training at SDPI’s Centre for Learning and Development.

The writer is associated with sdpi.org

Published in Daily Times, February 23^rd 2018.