According to Aristotle, “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”. This was the objective of organizers of Graduate Internship Scheme (GIS) when they recently held exit training for the Lagos batch of the interns who had done one year internship in various companies.
The GIS is an initiative of Subsidy Re-investment and Empowerment Programme SURE-P designed to provide the unemployed youth with job
apprenticeship opportunities that will expose them to skills and experiences relevant to the current laboour market and enhance their employability.
Having gone through the one year job experiences, some of which could have been retained at the companies on good performances, the rest of the interns were engaged on the review of their experiences but more importantly assist them to plan for their future. In addition to preparing them on how to secure jobs, they were also prepared to exit from the scheme with clear opportunities to move on either seeking jobs or creating platform for set-
ting up own enterprise.
At the training , the interns who were paid certain amont monthly evaluated the job market and were taught the process of recruitment, tips for preparing and uploading CVs and interview processes.
In case there was no white collar job, the interns were also exposed to methods for effective entrepreneurial development, basic business planning
and financial management tools for entrepreneurial development, sources of funding for SME businesses and basic concepts for selling and promoting
SMEs.
The facilitator, Mary Ann also exposed them to employment sources, questions and answers during job interviews and the need to acquire extra skills while on employment.
For instance, a driver could go ahead to learn mechanical job or a teacher could further learn graphic design.
It is expected that from the training, the interns were supposed to start planning for their future either for paid employment or entrepreneurship as they have acquired different skills from their one year work places.
Speaking to them, Peter Papka Project director, GIS whose speech was read by his assistant, Kemi Fatoki told them that “many graduates are well prepared for this experience.
This is because there are many that have proved themselves worthy and have already been employed, others have established SMEs and have secured loans and grants to move on.
Others have yet established cooperative associations with co-interns and saved enough to start up businesses immediately after exit”
Some of them who spoke at the training believed in Aristotle maxim that self discovery is the route to achieving succcess. Though many of them complained of non payment for months while on internship at their companies but were quite delighted on the experiences they acquired over the 12 months period.
The Federal Government had introduced SURE-P which created GIS in 2012 to assist unemployed gain experiences for employment. This is because many graduates cannot get jobs because they have no work experiences and this scenario leaves the graduate without a place to learn the skills required to get sustain able employment.
The GIS project therefore seeks to create opportunity for eligible graduate youths to be placed as interns in reputable public/private sector firms to enhance building the manpower requirement to drive the nation’s transformation agenda.
