Jobberman, KDSG partner to train over 1m youths on soft skills

Jobberman Nigeria, a career platform, and Kaduna State Government are partnering to train 1.5 million youths across the state on soft skills.

Mr Ahmed Alaga, the Programme Manager, Jobberman, made this known in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Kaduna on Tuesday.

Alaga said that 70 per cent of the 1.5 million youths targeted for the training between 2022 and 2025 would be young girls.

He said that the training would be conducted at no cost to the government, adding, however, that the state government would provide facilities for the conduct of the training as well mobilise the youths to key-in.

The programme manager explained that the training was very critical in view of the huge soft skills gap among young people, making it difficult for them to secure jobs.

He noted the lack of sufficient jobs, adding that young people do not get the few available jobs because they lack requisite soft skills.

Alaga identified some of the soft skills to include how to write marketable curriculum vitae, personnel effectiveness and time management, effective communication, business etiquette, and employability skills.

Others he said were emotional intelligence, critical thinking, and problem solving and creativity and idea creation.

These soft skills, according to him, will ensure that young people put their right foot into the doors of employment.

He said that the training would be delivered through physical sessions across the 23 local government areas of the state, depending on accessibility, and other online platforms.

Alaga said that after the training, the youths would be linked to job opportunities in Kaduna and beyond through the Jobberman pathway, leveraging partnerships with the government and employer partners.

According to him, Jobberman will also work with the Kaduna state government to establish an employment consortium to drive employer/partner attraction strategy to increase the number of jobs posted leveraging the Jobberman platform.

“We will also be organising career/job fairs where mass recruitment and linkages can occur. This will equally give employers access to qualified job seekers.

“The fair will also help to create awareness around sectors and untapped value chain.’’

The programme manager said that Jobberman had already trained more than 77,000 youths in Kaduna State and currently had over two million job seekers and 60,000 employers on its platform.

He said that the carreer platform leverages technology and data driven recruitment solutions to work with employers to ensure that the right person was placed in the right job for increased productivity.

Alaga said that 60 per cent of the database was between 26 years and 40 years, while fresh graduates between 19 years and 26 years, account for 50 per cent of new job seekers on the platform.

Mr Bashir Ladan, Head of Economic Intelligence Unit, Planning and Budget Commission, said that the training was in line with Kaduna state commitment to prioritise human capital development.

Ladan told NAN that Kaduna state, being the third most populous state in the country, the government had undertaken initiatives to place its youth into gainful employment.

According to him, the partnership will go a long way in addressing youth’s unemployment.

“This is in line with the vision of transforming the state into a knowledge-based economy, as outlined in the State Development Plan,’’ he said. (NAN)