Tips on getting a job in Nigeria

Top Ten Tips - Preparing Yourself For A Job Search
If it’s time for a career change or you’ve recently found yourself the victim of a lay-off or
firing, it’s now time to hunker down and start preparing to look for another job. Here are
things you should keep in mind before starting the search:
• Know Your Goals - What do you want to achieve from your job search? Is it a
higher salary? Position growth? New field? Write down your goals, and refer to
them often throughout your search.
• Lay Out A Strategy - Figure out how you’re going to tackle the job search,
especially if you’re searching while already employed. For more, see Top Ten
Tips - Job Searching While Employed.
• Prepare Your Resume - Now is the time to create a resume or update the one
you already have. .
• Get References Lined Up - Find at least three references who can attest to your
work ethic and talk about your skills and personality. Good references include
former bosses, former colleagues, clients and educators. If you’re currently
employed, avoid using a reference from your current company or one who might
let your boss know you’re on the prowl for a new job. Get phone numbers, e-mail
addresses and job titles/company.
• Take Care Of Your Online Identity - If you’re active in social networking,
photo album sites or online message boards, now is the time to make sure your
image is squeaky clean, just in case a potential employer Googles you.

• Buy Interview Clothes - If you’re applying to certain types of jobs, especially
white-collar ones, you’ll need a suit. If you don’t have one, buy one. Make sure it
fits property, and is altered and pressed. For more, see Ben Okoye”s Dressing For
Success - What To Wear On An Interview
• Brush Up On Interview Etiquette - Avoid any possible interview faux pas by
knowing the etiquette. For more, see Top Ten Tips - Preparing For A Job
Interview
.
• Network, Network, Network - You never know who’ll you meet. The guy you
shake hands with today may be your boss or partner tomorrow. For more, see Top
Ten Tips - Effective Networking
• Have A Back-Up Plan - Don’t just focus on applying to your dream job - apply
to others in case that job falls through, especially if you’re currently unemployed.
• Keep Busy - If you’re unemployed, it’s best to keep busy during the gap in your
employment. You want to show a prospective employer that you’re not a
Cheetos-popping slacker who sits in front of the television all day. Volunteer, get
a part time job, start a freelancing business or get a hobby - there’s so much you
can do to fill your time.
• Define Your Dream Job - It’s amazing how many people don’t actually know
much about their dream job. Know your dreams, and they will come true. A
dream job is beyond a job title. If your dream job is to attain certain job title, then
it’s very easy to have your lawyers create a shell corporation and list your name
as chief executive, general manager, or whatever. If it’s all about the money, then
you just need to win the lottery. Instead of considering titles or compensation, you
should define your dream job in terms of what you want to accomplish, what kind
of responsibilities you would like to have, and what kind of qualities you would
want in your team members. It might also be helpful to think about what kind of
sector you’re interested in working in: is it government, utilities, academic,
financial, non-profit, environmental, consulting, retail, service or something else?
It helps not to be too specific about which particular company or geographical
area you’re interested in. Building a dream career will likely involve multiple
employers, some hard times, and lots of relocation.
• Assess and Improve Your Training and Background - The first thing to do is
to understand how your current training and background relate to your dream job.
Typically, your dream would be somewhat connected to your background - but
even if that’s not the case, that’s OK. If you have all the training and experience
you need to get your dream job, just start applying. But if you’re like Tip Dude
back in his early 20s, you wouldn’t have all the experience you need. You should
assess your background realistically and identify gaps that you might be able to
fill. Do you need to go back to school? Do you need to find some training classes
to take in your spare time? Does your current employer offer training that would
move you in the direction you want to go? Are there some union sponsored
programs you can enroll in?
• Create An Action Plan - You should begin by plotting a path between your
current position and the dream. This might involve some training (Tip 2), but it
can also entail finding jobs that serve as ‘intermediary’ - a place for you to earn
some money while moving towards the field you’re interested in. Do you need to
get out of what you’re doing right now so that you can work in a job that is more
connected with your dream? If you need to get out, what would be the job you
need to get so you’re moving at least into a field similar to the one you want to
end up in? Do you need to switch companies within the same field to gain access
to resources and people who might put you closer to your dream? Plot these
thoughts out in a series of steps: from the current job, to the next one (that you
could easily obtain with your current qualifications), then to the one after that, and
so on, until you reach your desired area. This will form the basis of how you’re
going to begin. Of course, it’s only a plan, and it is going to change as you
continue to build your career. But you need a plan, so you know roughly where
you’re going (and so you can tell if you’ve temporarily lost your way.)
• Think About Your Dream Often - If you’re anything like Tip Dude, you’re too
busy dealing with realities of everyday life all the time to have time to
contemplate your future. Tip Dude understands the difficulty, but the future is an
important thing. If you never think about your future, it’s very easy to end up in a
dead-end job doing the “40/40/40 plan”. Once in a while (say, every time you get
a paycheck), ask your self, what have I done in this pay period to move myself
towards the dream? It might be something as small as updating your resume and
looking up position postings in the newspapers or on company websites. It might
be asking your cohorts in the industry if they know of any openings in your dream
area. It might be doing two job applications during a weekend and following up a
few weeks later. These are sure small steps, but they add up to something big. The
only way to keep yourself taking these small strides forward is to ask yourself
periodically: what have I done recently?
• Be Persistent, And Don’t Despair - Pursuing a dream is very exhausting. Time
after time after time you will come up against ‘career roadblocks.’ A roadblock
might be a difficult personality, a difficult monetary situation or just random
events that occur to frustrate your progress. It is easy for Tip Dude to say that it
happens to everyone, but the only ones that succeed are the ones who overcome
the frustration through sheer persistence. Despair, of course, helps no one except
your competitors.
• Don’t Take No For An Answer - With a roadblock that keeps saying “no” to
you, you usually have a choice of action to take: you can bang your head against
it, you can go around it or you can just decide to do something else. Sometimes,
sheer head banging can work - an acquaintance of Tip Dude’s got hired as a
railroad engineer by flooding the crew office with letters and resume. Sometimes,
you can wait it out, wait for the annoying guy to quit or retire. If those alternatives
don’t work, there might be some way for you to get hired without banging your
head against a bureaucratic system or a difficult personality - a loophole of some
kind, usually through training or personal connections. If this position you’re
trying to get is part of your overall ‘plan’, it might not be worth bothering with it -
in most cases, other positions that will serve the same purpose will open up if you
stepped back and considered what you really need from this ‘intermediary’ job,
and consider options you hadn’t considered before, such as a different company
or a geographical relocation. Change your action plan - remember, it is a living
document.
• Try a Lower Level, Embrace Lateral Moves - If you keep getting rejection
letters from your ‘next step’ job, you’re stretching too far. You’re simply not
qualified for that job. What you need to do is to break the ‘next step’ into several
smaller steps. For example, let’s say you’re a Payroll Clerk and you really want to
be the Human Resources Director, and you figure your next step might be to
apply for promotion to your boss’s equivalent position, Payroll Manager, when he
or she either retires or get promoted. But you’ve already been passed for
promotion twice. Why? Maybe they were looking for someone with budgetary
experience and keep hiring from outside. Maybe they really want someone with
an accounting degree to be the Payroll Manager, and you don’t have the money to
get it. Either way, you are getting nowhere. But there is nothing stopping you
from applying to be a Budget Analyst Assistant, or a Marketing Coordinator.
Maybe you have skills besides running payroll that would allow you to sidestep
this problem by making a lateral move. Moving from Payroll Clerk to Budget
Analyst Assistant isn’t exactly a promotion, but it’ll get you the budget
experience you need. In a few years, you might end up with a promotion to
Budget Analyst or even Manager of Budgets. If you’re not happy there, it
wouldn’t be too late to take another lateral move back into H.R.
• Never Say No to a Challenge, And Take Advantage of Opportunities - You
have a plan. But opportunities don’t always arise consistently with your plan.
When you are asked to take on a more challenging position, don’t say no. The
reason why someone in a position of authority would ask you to apply for or
consider taking a challenging position is because they are either trying to cover
their own behind, or they truly believe in your abilities. Even if you don’t believe
you can do it, clearly your superiors do - and that’s good enough. Take it. You
can always figure out how to charge them later; and if it’s a bust you will have
ways to recover gracefully. Yes, this will sometimes mean no-merit promotions,
increased responsibility without increased pay. While Tip Dude generally advises
against this for the fear of being exploited, it has to be understood that building a
career entails allowing oneself to be exploited under controlled circumstances. In
return for moving you up, of course they’d want something back, and usually that
something back is a discount on your salary. Once you take the position and gain
some experience, if they don’t give you a merit increase, there’s always that
company next door who will be very interested in all the new skills you’ve
learned at this new higher position you have been asked to assume. Oh, and what
if it’s a bust? Yes, you might become a scapegoat and get demoted or fired for it.
But there’s always that company next door…
• Use Your Network Effectively - This is kind of a hard one. Different professions
demand different approach to networking. In some disciplines, it is absolutely
crucial. In some cases, networking does absolutely nothing for you and just
consumes critical resources that you could spend much more fruitfully building
your career in other ways. Understand how to use your network and where that is
leading you. Use your network to gather industry news, find out about new
position openings, and particularly gather intelligence on large industry changes
that might be forthcoming. Use your network to connect to people who may be in
a position to offer you a ‘next step’ job. Check out Tip Diva’s Top Ten Tips on
effective networking. On the other hand, if you feel like certain areas of your
network isn’t delivering anything, feel free to forget to return their calls once in a
while. Remember, your time is valuable. You’re looking for information about
your ‘next step’ job and you’re not in the business of just chit-chatting on the
phone.
• Enjoy The Breathtaking View From The Ridge - So you’ve just accomplished
a series of promotions, changed jobs a few times, and you’re closer to your dream
job than you were five years ago. You’re not quite there yet, but you still have a
plan (which by now has changed 20,000 times because you’ve gotten around
roadblocks, taken advantage of unexpected opportunities and got a job at a
competitor because your boss wouldn’t give you a pay raise). In between thinking
about what you’ve done in the last pay period to advance yourself, stop for a
minute and: appreciate what you have accomplished; thank all of those people
who have helped you get where you are; take the time to look at the next
generation of budding careerists and give them a hand in moving up; and just look
around and check out the scenery. Ask yourself if your goals are still your goals.
Redefine your dream job if your requirements have changed. Revise your plan if
you have found a better way towards what you want. Relax a little and get ready
for the assault on the next summit. It probably won’t be what you expect, nor
what you planned to conquer. But it’ll be taking you somewhere