On Thursday the 23rd of March this year, Barclays kick-started this year’s edition of the Ready to Work program at the Barclays Business school along Waiyaki Way. The event was an interactive forum that included speeches from Dr Wale Akinyemi a world renowned consultant and Augustine Jay Jay Okocha, one of Africa’s greatest footballers of all time. They took their time imparting their knowledge and a vast combined wealth of experience to this year’s students from Strathmore and The University of Nairobi. The students were also given a chance to ask any questions they had about a variety of topics related to the program or in Jay Jay’s case, football.
The Barclays Ready To Work initiative is a graduate training program that aims to impart actionable skills that will help the graduates in the outside world. These are people skills, work skills, money skills and entrepreneurial skills. All these are not only necessary for everyone getting into a workplace environment, they go a long way in making things flow a smoother for them day to day going forward.
What are work skills?
Work skills are exactly as they sound; they are skills that equip you with the knowledge to look for work and prosper in a work environment when you start your new job. As it stands, graduates leave the workplace with a lot of theoretical information about their preferred sectors. It takes additional training to get them job ready and this is what the Barclays Ready To Work program aims to do.
The work skills module of the training will cover the important criteria that will help students and recent graduates in finding their dream jobs. The module consists of four main courses at the end of which the student will be equipped with all the essential skills to get them that job they want.
The first course is titled “How to get in and stay in”. This one focussed on teaching the student how to identify the job they want. This means that they will be taken through what it takes to navigate the selection and recruitment processes. They will also be taught how to deal with dead ends and rejection.
The second course of the Work Skills module is focuses on creating a CV you can be proud of. Here, they will be taught what a CV actually is and what should be in one. They will also be taught how to use a CV to create a personal brand and promote themselves.
The other two courses are titles “Identifying , pursuing and getting what you want” and “Interviewing the right way”. These will cover setting and acting on personal goals including creating a vision board. It will also cover Interviews and how to conduct yourself while in one. Students will learn how to interview well including how to structure your answers in the best way.
Barclays are doing something good with the Ready To Work Program. The fact that anyone can go on to their website here, register and access the information to educate themselves on what you need to either help you become a self-sufficient entrepreneur or a super-efficient employee, is a nice touch. It is a nice resource center for young people to add on to their skill set.
