Ginika Shares The Key To Reducing Unemployment In Nigeria In This Interview

Fresh graduates always face an uphill battle to land a job after graduation. It doesn’t sound nice to have spent at least four years in school and still struggle to relevant.

What’s the way forward?

How can our fresh graduates become relevant after their first degree?

Meet Ginika, as she offers her own solution to unemployment in the country.

Can you give detailed information about yourself to the audience, please?
Okay, thank you!

Ginika Chukwudi is a Career Development Coach who is passionate about the career development of individuals.

I am the director of IHTIL COACHING, a platform where career people are equipped to thrive. I am goal-driven, detail-oriented and I love to impart knowledge.

I am also a good networker, with project management and leadership skills.

Upon graduating from the University, being a victim of the ills of unemployment, and identifying its cause as lacking the requisite employability skills, unexplored potentials, and opportunities, I became motivated to be a remarkable solution provider to the menace of unemployment and wrong career choice; this led her to create a career development platform, this platform has trained over 1000 individuals.

In my spare time, I love to network, volunteer, attend insightful events and spend a memorable time with family and friends.

I believe everyone can thrive, my favourite quote is – “Life is not a bed of roses but you can make life your bed of rose”.

Wow! That’s a quote I’ll remember forever. You mentioned your platform, can you explain what you mean by that?
IHTIL Coaching Service is a platform that helps individuals thrive in their career by equipping them with the necessary skills and information needed to become pacesetters in their career.

We have a free online training every month that addresses workplace related issues, choosing a career path, identifying skills needed to succeed in the career. We bring in Career professionals that handles this training from career development, financial management, Goal setting, Employee job search tools, Work-Life Balance, Handling Mentoring Relationships,  to workplace ethics etc.

We also hold offline trainings that also brings a physical and practical aspects of this training, knowing that some people learn better when it’s a physical training we merge both to strike a balance.

IHTIL COACHING is birthed to bridge the gap between Passion, Profession and Purpose and its relevance in the 21st Century Workplace.

What gave you this vision?
As an undergraduate, the drive and passion towards graduating with either a first-class or Second class upper was one career goal for me, fortunately for me I graduated with a 3.49 CGPA. I used the word fortunately because if not for the disappointment and frustration I experienced after seeing my result, the vision of IHTIL COACHING will not have been birthed.

Now upon graduating from the university, I couldn’t count myself worthy for a job because of my results and the information we get from society, especially our parents about making good grades, which of course is very important. This incident created a yearning in me to find out what could be my plus so I can stand out.

I started going for career development training and this brought to my knowledge that the result is good but not a prerequisite for being a good candidate or a great employee.

I began to understand that their are so many others like me in the society that needs the good news and to crown it all, I prayed about it and God gave me a scripture which is first where the name IHTIL was birthed and secondly my role as the director.

JOHN 1 vs 4a IN HIM THERE IS LIFE

ISAIAH 42.6 – 7
“I, the LORD, have called you in righteousness; I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles,

”Isa.42.7 – to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.”

I had to start preaching the gospel of career development.

That’s a great mission which must be spread all over the world. Considering the rate of unemployment in the country, how has your company been able to help?
I will say of a truth that with collaborations and relationships we have been able to carry out most of the plans.

The first medium we have created is the online platform which has been used to train individuals and we have gotten so many testimonials of standing out during interviews, internships, job offers, scholarship offers.

From time to time, we post job openings, career development training opportunities, seminars and workshop on the platform, educate people on how to apply for job, do CV reviews, LinkedIn profile review, scholarship awareness programs etc.

We also have a group of mentors that provide career mentorship support and give career advice.

We have physical core hard skill trainings, Our offline training programs are paid mostly to cover up for logistics and appreciate the facilitators.

We have another one coming up in November, by God’s grace this is one of our goals for IHTIL Coming through, it’s a combination of both hard skills and soft skills training.

The testimonials has really been our motivation pill, that we are really giving our quota in reducing the rate of unemployment. And we hope to do more.

That’s interesting. You have trained many graduates in your company, so far so good, what can you say about our graduates?
Are we really producing problem solver or just bookworms?
The truth is I won’t put the outcome of what we have as graduates on the graduates. The truth is they will do better if they know better. The workplace skills has changed and what is being taught in our universities do not efficiently meet the demands of the workplace except for some science related profession like Medicine.

I won’t call them bookworms, because the knowledge does not even provide a solution. Our educational system needs to bridge the gap between graduation and employment, they are not just aware of the graduate gap, so many measures needs to be put in place. Career development courses should be encouraged to help nurture employability skills in our graduates.

Ginika, I can definitely testify to this – if you know better, you will do better. You mentioned about an event coming up, I am interested to know more. I hope you don’t mind sharing about it?
The Career Benchmark 2.0 is designed to equip graduates with the skill that makes them job-ready and employable.

With the current trend in recruitment, employers are not ready to recruit prospective employees to get them trained, rather they want candidates with the required skill to just get to work.

This is because the market is very competitive, and time is an effective tool and needs to be maximized.

Career Benchmark MASTERCLASS 2.0 is set to engage and train this graduate with skills that would make them stand out as graduates and prospective employees to help them get planted in the workplace.

Some of the skills we will be addressing are listed below

1. Digital Marketing
– Social Media Management
– Content Creation

2. Advanced Microsoft skill

– Word
– Powerpoint
– Advanced Excel Data analytics
– Power BI

3. Career Development
– Vision Boarding
– Goal Setting
– Career Planning

4.  Finance
– Make
– Multiply
– Manage & Invest

5. Work Ethic
– Elevator Pitch
– Communication & presentation
– Workplace etiquette

6.  Employment & Job Search Tools
– CV & Cover letter writing
– Email Etiquette
– LinkedIn Profile URL
– Interview skills

7. Networking Skill
– Mentor Relationship
– Workplace Relationship
– Social media Networking skills

8. Sales & Marketing

I think I should come and learn too. This is a whole lot of professional tools to excel in life. Where is this taking place, and who are the facilitators?
You are the boss, we hope to learn from you too.

The training is being held in Lekki, Lagos

The Facilitators:
– Kayode Abass
– Steph Redd
– Funmilola Kehinde (Careers with Funmi)
– Louis Adie
– Kanyi Adio Moses
– Omawunmi Ogbe
– Chukwuemeka Ezeogu
– Victor Onyekere
– Segun Ekeleme

Who are the audience to benefit from this blockbuster event?
Our targeted audience is the Unemployed, Fresh graduates and even the employed that need to upskill.

How can they register for this?
They can register via the link below:

http://bit.ly/careerbenchmarkmasterclass

Or send a mail to: [email protected]

Better still, they can call 08168490861, for more details.

What’s your plan for the graduates in the next five years?
We are taking employability skill training to the universities, so that the undergraduate has this skill outrightly before they coat the Term Graduates.

This is a big one for us, because it more of addressing the challenge from the root.

In the next five years, we hope to produce graduates that are fit for the job by not just getting employed but also creating jobs

We are also looking out for collaboration from the government and private institution, so that we are not in the situation where there are no candidates to fill job roles or no job to get people employed. Rather we have graduates that are being employed and also creating job opportunities with their skills.

What would you like the government to do for your company?
It’s easier when we have this facilities planted here and there for seamless operation, when we have policies that support the funding the employability skill training in our universities, it makes it easier to focus more on building content.

Thank you, Ginika, for the chat. I wish you success in all your endeavours.
Thank you, Chinedu, for the warm reception, I had a nice time too.