Boitekanelo College breaks student-employer barriers
Kabelo Boranabi | Monday March 18, 2024 06:00
The occasion, a first of its kind in the institution, brought together various stakeholders including companies and organisations that align with the institution in the health-care space.
Speaking at the event, Boitekanelo College’s Student Engagement and Experience Manager, Kagiso Kgakge, said as the institution continues to strive to produce market-ready graduates, it is vital for students to have an insight of the workspace through engagements with potential employers.
“We realised that as students come in and out of Boitekanelo College for their various programmes, sometimes they meet these people when they go for (industrial) attachments. So we are saying let us call different stakeholders and come tell our students what is happening out there, competencies and functions that they need to look into so that they can prepare for the employment market out there,” said Kgakge. She further implored the learners to use the information attained from the setting to better their approach to learning and job hunting once they complete their studies at the College.
The activities of the day included an opportunity for the students to meet various stakeholders at the expo and get an insight on how each company and organisation operate. In addition, the learners were trained on basic skills and tools of job hunting including, Curriculum Vitae and Cover Letter construction, interview skills and application tracking system. Meanwhile, the Chief Operations Officer for Botswana Human Resources Development Council (HRDC), Meshack Tafa, advised the students to have a broad set of skills in addition to what they learned during their study periods.
He highlighted digital literacy as a priority in the modern era of job hunting. “If you are not literate digitally, you are finished. You need to keep up with the digital evolution because everything is now at our fingertips. In my experience, we have had people lose their jobs because they were computer illiterate.
One of the most painful things we had to do was to get rid of people who had poor computer skills and we lost a lot of people because they did not keep up with the digital space. We have heard about the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) and it is almost gone, we are not with AI stage (Artificial Intelligence), so you need to come up,” said Tafa. He said graduates should possess excellent communication skills, emotional intelligence, time management, personal branding and development of leadership skills because they are some of the qualities of a good employee.
Tafa further warned the students on the use of social media platforms. He said the employers in this era scan the social media profile of an applicant to see if they model themselves as employees of repute. Among some of the exhibitors were emergency assistance companies, private clinics and hospital, dental services companies and telecommunication companies.