The Perfect Employee

During our introductory skills sessions we taught students the difference between hard and soft skills. We divided the students into groups and gave them a drawing of a perfect employee. Their task was to think of as many hard and soft skills as possible (e.g. good team player, trustworthy, flexible, adaptable, IT literate).

Students from The Mwalimu Nyerere Memorial Academy presenting to the class

We then got the students to think about how and where they can gain these types of skills. We taught the students that you can gain soft skills anywhere from playing football with your local team to joining your church or community group. We encouraged students to actively look for and join student clubs, sports teams etc so that they could add interests to their CV's to make them look unique/interesting and most importantly stand out from the crowd. It also got them to think about what skills and activities they could add to their CV's which they may not have thought of previously.

Similarly to the UK there are many university graduates in Tanzania but very few employment opportunities. Most jobs are looking for candidates who have 5+ years experience. Therefore, we explained to the students that best way to become 'employable' is to gain as much experience as they can through work experience, internships and volunteering. This could be as simple as helping to serve customers at a relatives shop or helping with water service in their local community.