How employable are you?

The number of Kenyans who are graduating from universities and technical colleges is not equal to the number of available job vacancies in the market.

According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Kenya has one of the highest unemployment rates in the East African region.

This means that while you may hold a degree with all the required job qualifications, you are likely to tarmac for miles and miles without achieving any job success.

When this happens, the most common fallback plan is to rant that there are not enough job opportunities or that jobs are going to undeserving individuals.

However, there is a question you may want to ask yourself before you fly off the handle: How employable are you?

The skills mismatch

Employers in Kenya have oftentimes singled out the lack of adequate skills in the job applications they get.

For example, a survey conducted by the Federation of Kenya Employers (FKE) in December 2017 showed that 70 per cent of entry-level employees need a skills refresher course to deliver at the workplace.

Providing this training costs employers an average of Sh. 20,000 per candidate.

In a tough economy, not many employers will want to spend money training new employees to get the job done. Most will prefer to headhunt the skilled.

You can take short online courses to boost your skills basket, attend practical training, and volunteer your services.

Apart from technical knowledge and aptitude, you must also guard your soft skills such as character and morals in check. No employer wants an employee who is loaded with bad social etiquette.

Experience vs Achievements

Some professionals keep being headhunted while others cannot manage being shortlisted for a job interview.

Those who are constantly headhunted from their current positions have a track of tangible achievements on their resume. They have good figures to back them up.

On the opposite extreme, says Ken Munyua, a practitioner at People Centric, a human resource recruitment firm based in Nairobi, those who never get shortlisted have job descriptions in bold on their resume instead of achievements.

READ: 6 things to do in your 20s to avoid regrets in your 30s and 40s

Tangible achievements are not written as quickly as ABC. They come from extra efforts that an employee puts into their job description.

“This means that you must endeavour to add value and achieve beyond the targets set for you by your employer,” says Munyua.

This is why employers don’t call you back after a job application

The same CV

You will communicate to employers that you are unemployable if you keep sending the same resume to hundreds of job vacancies.

“By doing this, you may very well be filing tens of the same CV for tens of vacancies, some of which you are either overqualified or underqualified to apply,” says Munyua.

Remember that employers increasingly prefer to recruit through human resource recruitment agencies and firms.

Lower jobs

In Kenya, job advertisements for positions such as supermarket cashiers and loaders have at times attracted thousands of university graduates.

Due to desperation, many have had to apply and settle for lower jobs that are beneath their education or skill set.

While you may consider it proper to take any job while you look for a better option, settling for a lower job may be rendering you unemployable.

“Settling for a lower job may impact your psychology and earning potential negatively for the next 10 years even if the job is only temporary or being done for a short period,” says Scott Bellows, a leadership and entrepreneurship trainer and author.

One of the most common results of high qualifications in lower jobs is low productivity due to employees working in positions they have zero passion for.

“An employer will prefer not to hire a laid-off executive for an entry-level job because their resume says they are too overqualified for such a position. Instead of making an application, you ought to step back and regroup,” says Liz Ryan, a human resource expert and the author of Reinvention Roadmap: Break the Rules to get the Job You Want and Career You Deserve.

Personal responsibility

How you take care of your responsibilities can determine whether you are employable. Ms Ryan says employers target people who handle their responsibilities in and outside their careers.

“Character is paramount in determining who gets the job and who doesn’t. The non-business experiences show it that candidate lists or their potential employer,” she says.