When an accident occurs, as a first respondent, you should not rush to help the victims. It is a saying of wisdom. It is a composed relaxed person who is able to make correct analytical judgment. It is important as the first respondent to approach the scene of accident calmly. Likewise, the career ladder has similar guidelines.
Caroline*, an ambitious graduate secured employment in January and was placed on probation for three months. Her career plan indicated she wanted to be a branch manager in six months and after securing a commendable network of business, set up a consultancy office by the close of the year. These are the core virtues of a planner and represent personal career aspirations! Caroline is not alone in this race. Welcome to the world of university graduates that are in pursuit for immediate professional gratification. This is an era filled by a generation that understands no virtue by the name patience. The generation is full of potential candidates that know what they want in life and ‘what it takes’ to achieve ones desires. The crop of graduates want to cruise at any speed on the career path to achieve every aspect of life that could redefine their worth and competence.
In major cities globally, traffic jams have increased that question the city’s planning efficiency and its past preparedness to accommodate population growth. Time is money and there is no one who wants to be held up in traffic jams. The generation is cursing at the many hold-ups that could mean loss of business if they cannot beat time to deliver services or get to interview offices in time.
Every member of the current graduates wants to get to their academic destinations before anyone else does. It is an ingredient of competitive markets and desire to monopolize the market before competitors get a clue of the opportunity! The counselors often inform their audience, “We all cannot fit in the same careers and lifestyles”. What do they imply? Other analytical counselors pose a question, “If you come late, when the ladder of the career is full, where were you when others were being recruited?” It is this statement “where were you…” that makes the graduates plan career paths that question the criteria for fulfilling their set duties and responsibilities.
For the passengers, everyone wants to get into commuter vehicles before the rest hence they step on others feet as they push their way in. the current crop of graduates want to get promotion before they are settled in their offices or get their orientations. They plan their way out even before they report on their work station for the first time. Where things are not working as per ethical standards, they are ready and prepared to bribe their way either by cash or in kind. They call this ‘breaking the barriers on your career path’. Patience is no longer embraced. ‘Patience will make me a person who stands on the right way and get crushed by those who are cruising very fast!” Jane* put it. The generation nullifies those who use the right route as backward. Short cuts seem the ‘digital thing’ as everything in the digital age is a function of a short cut. The generation does not give credit to the word experience or expertise. An amateur swimmer who boasted he could win championships drowned as he practiced fast styles in a shoulder deep swimming pool. He just got exhausted. In Romeo and Juliet, Friar Lawrence informs Romeo, ‘They fall that run fast’. He was against haste.
Society today is awash with people who believe, a minute wasted is never recovered in one’s lifetime and that it’s better to hit the iron while it’s still hot. Yes, there is nobody who denies. One is only able to shape his life when he has the best opportunity to. Some words of wisdom have been misinterpreted like work hard when the sun shines for darkness is soon going to take over.
The song by Sam James, “Crush bones when you still have strong teeth for a time is coming when you will be toothless” gives graduates a momentum to try all they could to get to the peak and say, “Oh yes, I am at the apex; at the top of my career.” They have been trained to be ‘go-getters’, people who could follow a beeline into the hive of their ambitions.The school of thought that graduates are trained on encourage them, “to get to the top, you must not start low.” They are told it is possible to climb a tree from the top (while there, you will have time to learn its structure) and graduates buy this idea. Graduates believe everything is possible. Ask anyone who has been to a mathematics class and they would tell you that its possible to prove anything even by contradiction like 0 multiplied by say 5 is not equal to zero given that 0 is not a zero itself! No wonder the book, “how to lie with statistics’ has a basis on contradiction theory. This has made graduates to jostle for positions at the top when they can hardly hold their bodies up there. Can they balance themselves to the demands and challenges of controlling a mass of employees when they can barely manage their own personal lives? Have company setups become family or a relative’s properties for graduates to have power and an upper hand over other employees – for the seasoned employees to do the right thing without being supervised and let graduates learn from what they are doing? The end justifies the means, we claim and understand. With this new philosophy, the term career path does not apply since in reality there is no career path to follow! Who has ever seen a successful person without a history of challenges and how he might have overcome them? Successful people have a story of triumph. Where is the story of achievements that the graduates may write up as a thesis for a master’s program or doctorate program? They simply want to dash.
At a time when pressure is very high to get meaningful jobs (everybody expects a graduate to participate in community projects either by advice or monetary) the staff turnovers in companies has become very high. Or is it because many graduates are doing jobs far related to their degree course?How would the graduate feel if they lived Simon Makonde’s story? (He was born on Monday. He studied on Tuesday, Married on Wednesday, educated his kids on Thursday. He got cancer on Friday and died on Saturday and was buried on Sunday after a long conflict on where he was to be buried since there were other women who came out to say he was married to them and had born kids with him too). This is a symbolic life spanning many decades.
The above parallel has a meaning to the path of career growth graduates miss when they opt to jump the queue and step on career development paths as graduates step on ethics that should be practiced intentionally. The employer needs a responsible person who can identify weak areas and prioritize on immediate solutions and not a learner who has to use benefit of doubt to steer a company into uncharted waters of its corporate growth. There is shared feeling among those seeking employment that they can succeed even without experience. The truth is that every job has its own description. It requires veterans who know how to navigate into it without seeking approval from another person. What graduates need to ask themselves is, “How should they get that experience?”Anyone joining the job market and wants to succeed must be ready to go on internship or lowly paying jobs to be seasoned or even work as a volunteer with the aim of learning the ropes of a career path. There are thousands of unemployed graduates out there blaming every other person, except themselves, for the lack of jobs. Many feel that with certain level of education, they cannot accept certain jobs that they consider lowly to their academic profile. Such people then languish doing nothing, as they want to catch up with the ladder from the top. Ask those who are not learned and they will say, “Jobs are so many, we only lack education!”
This desire for immediate satisfaction has grown a perfect lawn for the seed of corruption to germinate. Since they want to get there faster, they oil the ‘listening ears’ of many superiors without knowing the right to be fired at a short notice is within their discretion or if the greased senior fellow reports to other personnel, they both could risk sack without benefits if one commits a crime that the company policies are against. Are those who bribe going to have another goddess of authority to be loyal to and not stick to their job description? With this act, many have compromised systems of their values. The society sets high expectations and standards for graduates that leave them more frustrated especially when life seems not to deliver what they want fast. As Caroline indicates in her footnote of her career plan, ‘I hope to be a millionaire by the age of thirty, otherwise, there should be counseling and guidance setups to attend to frustrations that people like me would have then.” Great ambitions that should be supported by a developed strategic plan that supports visions and ethical mission statement
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