Keeping in touch sometimes requires conscious effort. We meet a lot of people physically and virtually. Today as we embrace the new normal of working remotely, staying at home and practicing social distancing, staying close to those you care about can be a challenge. Technology can help. Here are 5 online tips that will help you keep in touch with those you care about.
Video calls/meeting
Connect with your friends, co-workers and family using Google Duo. It is a free video calling app that allows you to spend time face-to-face when you can’t be together in person. The app has a feature called, “Knock, Knock” where you can get a preview of who is on the other side of the line before accepting the call. There is also GoogleMeet, a conferencing platform for secure video meetings.
Play online games
You can easily find your friends on Google Play Games. You and your friends can compete on leaderboards, compare achievements and find new games together. Games are more fun with the Google Play Games app. Whether it’s a puzzle or an action game, with “Instant Play” you can play your next favourite game without having to install anything.
Share videos
Stay in touch by sharing entertaining, educational or inspiring YouTubevideos. Simply go to the YouTube Channel page, in the browser address bar, copy the URL and paste it wherever you want to share it. Sharing videos with your friends and family can become a fun and exciting activity that creates a bond.
Keep track of events
With Google Calendar, you can quickly schedule meetings and events with your friends, family and co-workers. The Google Meet link is available in your Calendar and you use it to host virtual meetings. You can share your calendar with others so they can find your schedule and fit in with theirs. While Google Calendar is used for work purposes, it is also a good organizational tool that makes sure you get reminders for planned events.
Share Photos
Using Google Photos, pictures you take are saved automatically and can be shared privately and securely with those you care about so you can relive happy memories together. You can make collages, movies or animations of your images and share them either by email, text or your favourite social network. Hundreds of photos can be shared at once with shareable links and high quality is always guaranteed. Note that the person you intend sharing photos with must also be using a Gmail account.
“I have a website but I’m not making any sales! Why am I not getting any positive results despite investing heavily in building my online presence?” Recently a follower sent me this message “I’m really finding difficulties marketing my business online and get customers. I’m just a new business owner, can you help me?”
When I receive requests or hear business owners state these, I categorise them into two groups:
You’re either investing heavily in the wrong strategy for your business.
You want a quick fix and don’t have patience for organic growth.
More often, business owners fall in category 2; you invest in building a website and setting up your brand online, good and fine, smart and great move but you then expect all the traffic and sales in the world automatically without investing the most important of all assets which are; time and patience to grow the brand.
It’s just like giving birth to a child and immediately expecting the child to start taking care of you. Things don’t work that way, you need to cater for and train the child, invest heavily in the child until the child is matured enough to fend for him/herself and then fend for you, this takes time and patience-so also your online presence.
In the period of patience and investing time, there are three (3) areas among many others you must focus on to invest quality time to grow. For the purpose of this article we’ll only be focusing on these three and they include:
Search engine Optimisation (SEO)
Mobile Optimisation
Paid search
If you’re familiar with digital marketing, you must have heard of SEO. This simply refers to some tasks that must be completed to increase your chances of being easily found on a search engine result when a user like you and I make a search query through a search engine like google.
Everyone using the internet has at some point “googled,” it’s quite inevitable. The results you see when you search for things like “Cakes in Lagos” are made possible by SEO. Google as the most popular Search Engine on the Internet with over 91.8% market share has indexed hundreds of billions of web pages and still counting, now imagine how many pages are struggling to be seen all at once.
Whenever a user makes a search, google web crawlers crawl these indexed pages and refer results that match certain crawling parameters. These parameters are built into what is known as algorithms. Google changes algorithms often so as to retain the credibility of search results to always return the most relevant results to a searcher.
What makes your site relevant to google and other search engines range from keywords, to alt tags, H1/H2 headings, backlinks, etc. Optimising your website to reflect these parameters increase your chances of being on googles first page result. It would interest you to know that google is not the only search engine available but with a market share of approximately 92% as at April 2020, other search engines just seem obsolete. As a business owner managing your website, learn how to use SEO to your advantage, click here to embark on your learning path or you could click here to get us to do it for you.
Another area business owners must not fail to work on to establish good online visibility is the optimisation for mobile. Mobile users accounts for 52% of devices used to access search engines, desktop and tablets share the remaining 48%. Mobile optimization is very key in web development and you must ensure that whoever is responsible for building your website puts this into consideration.
Factors that make up a good mobile experience involve; fit to any screen size feature- you don’t want webpages that extend beyond the device screen and content cannot be read at a glance, instead users have to scroll left and right to view content. This dampens user experience and someone like me will never return to that webpage.
Another factor to consider is site speed. A couple of things usually reduce a site speed, an example is non-optimization of images for web. You don’t just load up images or files with high storage on your website, ensure you optimize the files well enough to the lowest possible size with a good enough quality. There are other reasons for a slow site and Think with google test my site feature had made this possible for you to identify these issues and it also proffers solutions.
We put together a free training manual to help you leverage the test my site feature on google for a better user experience, and some other tools like google my business and Google analytics. Click here to get it.
User experience is everything when online brand positioning is being considered. It can be likened to the ambience and service delivery of a physical office. Imagine entering an office and it’s hot, no air, crowded, and service delivery is slow. This is how prospects feel when they visit a slow site that is not optimized for mobile. In addition, google web crawlers know sites that have poor user experience and such sites will be last resort when it comes to page ranking, or google will show your page when there are no more pages with as much relevant content as the searcher needs.
The final area we’ll be discussing in this article is as relates to paid ads. While it’s very good and totally advices to grow organically especially at the initial stage of your online launch, usually within the first 3 months, paid ads cannot be ruled out especially when you have a limited period of time to sell out stocks of items in your inventory. Search engine marketing (SEM) can be said to be SEO being paid for. SEM is very important and should be used from time to time to increase traffic to your webpages, boost sales significantly, generate leads, boost physical foot traffic to your shop, boost phone calls for inquiries, etc. Whatever your marketing objective is, SEM just like SEO can help you achieve them.
Before paid ads are run, we usually advise businesses to take some time out to ensure their SEO is doing well and growing, from time to time type your business name o search engines to see how it appears, this gives you a clear picture of how people see you online. You can also use Google search console to control what people see about your business on Google. It would interest you to know that 65% of all buyer intent keywords are from paid ads clicks. This means that 65% of these keywords drive sales and should be used in your content, SEO structure or SEM campaign. Check the infographic below for more statistics.
These factors discussed cannot be overemphasized and should be put into consideration when building a strong online reputation for any kind of business.
Smartphone is one gadget that has helped improved everyday profitability, communication and even entertainments for the modern man.
As close as people may get attached to their smartphones, proper maintenance is a topic many give little consideration or thoroughly overlook.
Without intending to, there are some common habits that seem harmless, which however, may coincidentally damage your smartphone:
1. Ignoring software and application updates
Software and apps updates are introduced to fix loopholes and to boost your smartphone’s effectiveness. Your smartphone may get sloppy and slow when you postpone an update for so long.
More importantly, cybercriminals are usually on the lookout for devices with loopholes to gain easy access to such devices and dupe proprietors.
So next time you see that notice to update your smartphone, take as much time and data to do immediately.
2. Using cheap, incompatible chargers
Most smartphones come with a compatible charger but in a situation where such charger gets damaged or missing for whatever reason, it is best to replace it with another charger with the same quality.
A cheap charger might be pocket-accommodating yet may be to the detriment of your cell phone’s battery. Utilising a charger with a specification that isn’t compatible with your smartphone may destroy additionally your charging port.
3. Downloading apps from suspicious source
Free access to certain applications may not be genuinely free until you affirm the wellbeing of their source. The most straightforward approach to open your gadget to malware is by downloading applications from unconfirmed platform.
So it is to your greatest advantage to avoid downloading applications from third-party stores or suspicious websites, regardless of whether they show the symbol and name of an application you think you can trust.
4. Allowing your phone to overheat
Strong sunlight, delayed charging, and multitasking on your device may cause it to overheat. But repeatedly pushing your device to that point will probably do more harm than good to your smartphone.
Shielding your phone from the sun, turning it off if you have to leave it in a hot car, and otherwise keeping your device at a comfortable temperature is a good idea to forestall inadvertent harm.
5. Prolonged charging
Leaving your phone plugged in overnight is one habit that might eventually damage your phone’s lifespan. Once your battery reaches its charging limit, prolonged charging will make your phone generate excessive heat and further strain your smartphone’s battery.
So, while it’s great to be consistent with creating and publishing content on social media, there are certain trends which should be left behind that currently do more harm than good to your social media growth. Some of them include:
· Stop abusing #hashtags: Did you know that studies have shown that the ideal number of hashtags per post is two? Using more than two actually decreases your chance of people clicking on your post.
Over-using hashtags actually makes your posts look spammy and can be really annoying to your followers. #Hashtags should be created with the aim of joining conversations or creating themes and trends, not just to get indexed.
· Stop auto-posting across platforms: We know it could be really tempting to just auto-post the same content across all platforms at once.
However, this act in the long run gets your subscribers (those subscribed to all your platforms) irritated in the long run. Makes you look less creative. We know its hard work but try to create multiple- related contents for each channel.
Even if you must post the same content, post at well -spaced intervals. Unless they’re content that requires a call to action to benefit all your followers eg give- away.
· Don’t keep your account on private: If you’re a business, this is for you. People are more willing to follow you if they can view your content for free before following. They usually want to preview your content to see if your content is something they would love to see frequently on their timeline, or just to check how legitimate your brand is.
· Stop posting only promotional content: In addition to being annoying to your followers as they are not just on social media to receive sales pitches from you, the algorithm on most of the Social sites now consider multiple factors in showing updates to your audience’ timeline. If your updates are turned off or your audience isn’t interested or engaging with the post the next update you put out will likely not make it into News Feeds.
· Never ignore comments/messages: The primary aim of social media is engagement. Engagement with an update increases the likelihood your future updates will be seen. Comments on your updates or Social accounts also contributes to SEO/search rank outside of certain Social sites, and the people in your followers’ networks also see that interaction and your business is then introduced to a whole new audience. Engagement is very crucial.
In a bid to play its part in supporting economies of the world to keep sailing during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, Foreign Investment Network (FIN) Magazine has organised a virtual webinar tagged ‘Deploying technology to mitigate the Impact of the pandemic’.
The aim was to bring together experts in various fields to dissect and explore opportunities in technology.
The first discussant, Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Ali Ibrahim spoke on the technological initiatives of the Federal Government of Nigeria.
Noting the various challenges encountered in the various sectors of the Nigerian economy, he commended the synergy between the NCDC and Telecommunication companies in Informing citizens adequately since the outbreak of the pandemic.
“It is worthy to note that there are challenges in various sectors of the Nigerian economy before the outbreak of coronavirus. There is room for development despite the challenges and problems encountered. The media is doing well to communicate with people and create awareness,” he said.
Asked about his plans on technological training and continuation of working remotely after COVID-19, he noted that plans are already in place for virtual training of Ministers who will key into the use of technology.
He also noted the establishment of collaboration with International institutions for youths to get trained and the launch of Virtual Academy at NITDA.
“We can’t rule out physical interraction benefits. Working at home saves time and allows for participation. Virtual meetings participation even after COVID will be retained in a higher percentage. We need to learn how to live with the virus. So, virtual meetings and communications will be maintained.
Head Sub-Saharan Africa GSMA, Akinwale Goodluck harped on the need to use technology to make the difference through digital literacy, mobile money, mobile and smart phones, data, SMS, etc.
“COVID-19 will reinvigorate thinking. For us to make a difference, mobile voice identification must be linked to data. Difference will be made where we can use the infrastructure to facilitate payment but limited to smart phones and data. We can use mobile money to facilitate social transfer and reach people,” he said.
He further stated a lot needs to be done by governments and Civil society Organisations with the right political will to bring people to do online businesses.
Another discussant, Benjamin Benaim, was hopeful of the fact that the world will survive the COVID-19 crises just like others before.
He frowned at the fact that 80% of Nigerians are not internet savvy as he expressed elation at the level of resilience in start ups of SMEs, innovative private-public partnerships and the use of phones to access drugs and medication in Nigeria.
On his part, Dele Nedd informed participants about the investment opportunities in digital technology saying now is the time to invest in it.
The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Ibrahim Pantami, has directed agencies under him to make available research grants for development of digital solutions to COVID 19 and innovative ideas in the post COVID 19 era.
He said this has become necessary considering the likely impact of the xoronavirus pandemic on the nation’s economy in the post COVID 19 era.
He stressed the pandemic has provided an opportunity for young innovators to place Nigeria on the path to digital economic development.
Pantami made the remarks during the virtual final demo and prize giving day of the Nigeria COVID 19 Innovation Challenge organised by the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA).
Out of about 150 participants home and abroad, Algorizmi, an innovation start up meant to provide clinical support to medical personnel and patients, came first in the competition winning a prize of N1m.
Smart Chamber came second and won N750,000 while Myclinic.ng came third, bagging N500,000.
Pantami said ICT innovation was a perfect tool to ensure physical distancing and contact tracing of COVID 19 patients, stating the present administration was determined to leverage digital platforms and opportunities for the betterment of the economy in the post COVID era.
The Director General of NITDA, Malam Inuwa Abdullahi, said the Nigeria Covid-19 innovation challenge was initiated and conceptualised to open opportunities for innovators under lockdown.
He added that it had provided “a sense of stability for us to work virtually while our world has been under lockdown.”
Abdullahi said: “We are prioritising digital solution because that is the only thing working during this pandemic.
“And the pandemic is accelerating technology trends shaping the future of digital world and digital economy in general.
“Imagine being in this crisis without digital technology. Our life would have been miserable, therefore our recovery and exit strategy should be based on what is working now.
“As a nation we can have all the technologies and talent but to extract value we need clear objectives and mechanism.
“Our broader objective is fast recovery to normal and our mechanism is our National Digital Economy Strategy and plan which highlights initiatives for Digital Nigeria”.
According to him, the programme was one of the initiatives aimed at using indigenous digital technology to contain the virus and cushion the economic impact.
A group of Latvian IT and telecommunication companies have joined forces to develop a mobile application for tracking contacts of people infected with the novel coronavirus, local media reported on Tuesday.
Developers of the app hope that initially it will be used by some 400,000 of Latvia’s 1.9 million residents, thus helping prevent the spread of COVID-19 in the population.
The app, which uses Bluetooth to detect the presence of an infected person and runs on iOS and Android devices, will be available for free downloading in mid-May, the developers said at a news conference.
The coronavirus contact tracking app has been developed by LMT mobile operator, IT services providers MAKIT, Mobilly, TestDevLab and Zippy Vission, as well as the University of Latvia and Andris Berzins, a co-founder of TechHub Riga NGO.
The project has been implemented with the support of Latvian President Egils Levits, the State Chancellery, the Latvian Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, the Riga-based NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, as well as medical experts and epidemiologists.
Berzins said that the mobile app has been developed in line with the European Union’s personal data protection requirements.
All personal data will be encrypted to make sure users remain anonymous.
Users would agree to get in touch with the Centre for Disease Prevention and Control if they discovered that they had come into contact with an infected person.
The use of the contact tracing app will not be made mandatory so it will be left to each person to decide whether to download and use it.
Today, I have with me Mr. Lanre Ojo (Chief Operating Officer at Delon Apps Nigeria – owners of Nigeria’s top job portal, jobs.delon.ng and the leading free ads website in Nigeria, delon.ng) in my interview panel and together, we’ll be speaking with a very important guest and experienced IT professional – Mr. Abimbola Abiodun Ogunjinmi (Senior Rollout Manager, Nokia, Nigeria) about getting IT and software jobs in Nigeria.
As people search for jobs across Nigeria, many have focused a lot in recent times on jobs related to IT, software, telecom and power in Lagos, Abuja, and other cities in Nigeria. We will also be talking about software development companies in Nigeria, and how they can leverage on offshore software development opportunities in the United States. Finally, Mr. Ogunjinmi will also be discussing how students can prepare for their future careers in Nigeria while still in school.
Tell us about your career from your internship till date.
Thank you for the opportunity to share my career experience with young Nigerians. I was a 400L intern DCC Satellite and Networks (an erstwhile subsidiary of CWG) in 2002, and this was where I had my first IT work experience in life. I was exposed to network operations, microwave radio technology and general technical project management. There was ASUU strike that allowed me to spend much longer than six months at DCC, and I returned to same DCC immediately after graduation for Pre-NYSC internship.
I briefly worked for DirectONPC (an internet service provider at that time) after DCC, then moved to A3&O (a fibre optic company providing services to GSM operators like MTN), then GS Telecom (now
Vodacom Business Nigeria). At GS telecom, I was able to broaden my knowledge in teleport and field operation, satellite simulation and IP support. I was part of the team that built their first MPLS network that cut across Nigeria, Ghana, and UK. I left GS telecom to work briefly for Comverse South Africa as a support engineer on a subscriber billing platform project for the defunct Multilinks -Telkom. At Comverse, I got exposed for the first time to Linux/Unix environment and enjoyed the new experience.
I left Comverse for Etisalat in 2008, where I had to learn work politics alongside my GSM technical management work. I left after three years to join Cambridge Broadband Network Limited (a UK-based OEM) as Senior Customer Support Engineer/Ag. Country Technical Manager, where I had to handle technical sales in addition to my technical responsibilities. I left Cambridge to start my own company but didn’t thrive as a CEO. I quickly decided to go back into paid employment and joined Alcatel-Lucent Nigeria as Telecom infrastructure Rollout manager in 2012. Nokia acquired Alcatel-Lucent in 2016, and I have therefore remained with the same company since 2012. It’s been a wonderful experience at Nokia and I thank God for it.
Oh wow, you have moved around a lot. Can you please tell us exactly how you got each of those jobs. I know you won’t tell us names but please tell us how exactly you went about moving from one place to the other so that people can learn from your experience. Before you answer, I like to share a video of how a fresh graduate got an accounting job in Nigeria through a job portal so that people can also learn from this.
Well, first of all, I hope you wouldn’t mind if I say that ultimately, it has always been God’s favour. That said, I would like to emphasize some of the factors that have worked in my favour. First thing is relationship. In order for me to have an internship in Lagos, I first had to worry about where to stay in Lagos. A senior friend at my university (LAUTECH) generously accepted me to live with him without any hesitation. I remember that I was with a former boss discussing possible employment at his new place of work and as his friend passed by, he immediately introduced me to him (the friend) who later helped me secure a job at another company.
To provide some specific examples so that people can learn, I got to Lagos from LAUTECH to find internship placement without any prior company invitation. I was hand delivering my application all around Lagos and kept talking to people about it. I’m sure I visited over twenty-five companies during my search. Fortunately, I entered DCC Satellite and Networks at Ogunlana Drive (former building at Surulere which is now a Tantalizers restaurant) and enquired from the front desk officer how I could apply for internship. She directed me to their Adelabu office (Computer Warehouse Limited) where I was asked to write a test. I wrote the test and did not get a feedback for a long time. I kept following up with the front desk officer and she always politely told me there was no news yet. I lost hope after several weeks and left Lagos since I wasn’t getting any offer. One day I decided to call DCC from a NITEL phone booth and as the front desk lady picked the phone, she screamed that they had been trying to reach me without success. I was overjoyed on the phone and rushed back to Lagos. I resumed work on 27th December 2002 and the first lesson here is that we should always ensure the contact details on our CVs are up-to-date.
My move from DCC to DirectonPC was clearly based on merit. I knew nobody there but did very well in the interview. But joining GS Telecom was based on both merit and connection. Those days, GS Telecom was known for hiring mostly OAU graduates, but during my DCC days, I had met several GS Telecom engineers at different places and bonded well with them. They knew I liked their company and I had given my CV to a few of them to be on the look-out for me. An opportunity emerged and someone submitted my CV. I got invited for interview and my vast DCC experience really helped me do well. The questions were not related to my primary work at DCC but related to several other technologies that I had read up while I interned at DCC. The lesson here is that engineers should do there best to seek knowledge beyond their regular scope of work as it may be very rewarding for them in future.
GS Telecom was a special place as they always encouraged personal development and provided enormous learning opportunities to dedicated staff. They encouraged staff members to write certification exams and provided reimbursement once you passed the exam. I remembered writing about nine difference Cisco Certification module exams and ITIL foundation exam in a year while I was at the company. They paid for all except the single module that I failed. I must say that my time in GS telecom was best period in the early days of my career.
Crossing from GS Telecom to Comverse South Africa was based on a quick discussion with a former classmate. I never knew anything about the company but when the former classmate hinted me about the company and their salary rates, I was very interested. It was a contract higher-paying job and not the usual full-time jobs that I had done in time past. So the experience was different but I enjoyed the higher salary. My ITIL certification helped me during the interview and on the job.
I had submitted my CV to Etisalat before I joined Comverse, and I got their interview invitation a few months after I joined Comverse. Interestingly, I applied for the role of a senior microwave engineer, but they chose to interview me for the role of a senor satellite transmission engineer because that was the open role and my CV had contents related to satellite transmission. I was surprised when the panel started the interview with satellite transmission questions but still did well because I could defend every content on my CV. I had no internal contact, so this was purely based on merit. The lesson here is that we should be prepared to defend every part of our CV before going for interviews and not narrow our preparations to only topics related to the role we applied for.
After about two years in Etisalat, one of my former colleagues told me about a UK-based OEM (Cambridge Broadband Network) that had just recently started operations in Nigeria. I told him I wouldn’t mind taking a shot at the opportunity and he forwarded my CV to the company. I got interviewed and the company was very impressed with my experience and certifications. A lesson here is that certifications will always complement experience, and young engineers should take them seriously.
Like I mentioned earlier, I ran my own business for a few months after I left Cambridge, so I applied to Alcatel-Lucent at a time I was desperate to get back to paid-employment. And this turned out to be most divine recruitment experience. A friend told me about the job opening on linkedin and encouraged me to apply. I applied and got interview questions through email. I answered the questions to the best of my knowledge, got inputs from a few friends and submitted. The next call I got was from the HR to negotiate salary and I got the job.
For secondary school students thinking about an IT career, how will you advise them?
By IT, I am assuming different areas like telecom, software, networking, etc and they all draw skills from Computer Science and Electrical and Electronics Engineering backgrounds. So you need to pursue any of these two courses or equivalent in a university or polytechnic. But even if you find yourself in any science faculty department like Physics or Mathematics, you can still pursue an IT career. Do your best to learn some programming and networking before you leave secondary school so that you can build upon these at the university. Rather than spend too much time on social media, they can learn from online platforms like couserra, edx.org, udemy, etc. And when you get into a university or polytechnic, write some certifications before you complete your course and before you even begin internships. Seek volunteer jobs during holidays to keep learning before you finally graduate.
What about 300L students in the university currently studying an IT-related course, how would you advise them to spend their last two years in the university preparing for an IT career?
As a 300L student, you have just 1 or 2 years left to complete your program depending on your course. In either case, by 300L you should be planning to go for IT or SIWES program. So it is a time to scout for companies where you can gain relevant experience that will help you in your career after college. It is also good if you can explore working on a final year project that is related to area you desire to specialize in after school. Doing this will give you a good reference on your CV and boost your employment opportunities. Make sure you’re keeping in touch with your seniors that have graduated from school and join professional organizations like the IEEE and perhaps some social ones for networking. If you have funds, try to write some professional certifications before you graduate. They should also start reading newspaper articles on job search in Nigeria even before they graduate.
IT has many areas – which areas are currently hiring a lot in 2020 and will continue to hire well within the next 5 years. Also let us know which areas are not really hiring much so that people won’t prioritize focusing on such areas.
This is another important point to discuss. Categorizing IT is quite difficult, but I will try to list and discuss some areas.
Computer and Local Area Network
Telecom
Server configuration and Administration
Software development and programming
IT process and governance
Telecom Infrastructure Installation and commissioning and configuration
IT user support
IP Network and solution (Networking, Security, Service provisioning)
General IT solutions etc.
Software development
Managed IT services
Talking about ease of getting jobs, I would say that telecom infrastructure installation and commissioning still offer highest number of employment, but it may not pay as highly as IP network and solution, managed IT services or software development areas that are currently in vogue.
Telecom infrastructure installation, commissioning and configuration is an area that continues to employ many people despite the fact that telecom as an industry has not been growing in recent years, because operators are expanding and modernizing their network coverage and infrastructure for value added service.
Beyond the areas described above, I can humbly say that most other areas are not hiring a lot in Nigeria. As per the next five years, I believe the software development and managed IT service will likely hire the most amount of IT engineers.
Since you have worked in a few African countries and with engineers across the world, how will you compare the IT profession in Nigeria to other African countries?
Nigerian IT professionals are typically more versatile when compared to their contemporaries in other Africa countries. While many non-Nigerian engineers I have met focus a lot on their specialties, most of my colleagues and I have delved into several IT areas in the past five to ten years of our career.
There has been a lot of fake news about 5G telecom being the course of COVID-19. Is this really fake news or there is some truth in it?
We need to put things in the right perspective. First, 5G is still under deployment and global standardization is still not fully ready. However, some countries already have operational 5G networks, out of which a significant percentage is still using the same frequency band with the existing 2G, 3G, and 4G. So today some 5G network are still operating at 600MHZ, 2.4GHz, 24GHz and 60GHz. I therefore don’t understand how 5G suddenly becomes linked to COVID-19 when the virus didn’t even originate from the first countries that deployed the technology.
When you screen CVs of prospective trainee engineers, what are you always looking out for?
Honestly, I look out for grade, certification and most importantly internship and professional experience. Any of the first two combined with quality experience is good for me. If I see a CV that indicates idleness for about two to three years, I will be hesitant to interview such persons because I expect everyone to try to get busy even with volunteer or small jobs. There must be a small job you can do while you’re waiting to secure a suitable job. Even if you don’t get a job, find something small to sell online in Nigeriathrough the popular classified ads websites to keep yourself busy.
To the best of your knowledge, what industries aside IT do you think will be hiring a lot in Nigeria for the next five years?
Apart from IT, I expect to see agriculture and power sectors hire a lot of people in the next five years. This is because it is evidently clear that Nigeria needs both industries to fix its economy and most state governments and the federal government are active in both industries. I am also expecting massive growth in the petrochemical industry as soon as Dangote refinery becomes operational. Engineering students and professionals thinking about the future should start acquiring knowledge and skills related to these industries so that they are adequately prepared for the emerging opportunities. As they prepare, they should continue to learn from free platforms that help peopleget the right job vacancies and careers in Nigeria.
How do IT jobs today compare with IT jobs when you started your career about fifteen years ago?
There is a big difference in the industry today. Those days, there were much fewer IT jobs than there are today. Also, IT jobs were mostly for smart people with high grades from college, but today, once you’re skillful and passionate, you stand a great chance of getting jobs irrespective of the college you attended or your grade.
To the best of my knowledge, the first challenge for Nigerian software developers is that they find it to charge similar fees as the Indians, Philippines and the Pakistanis. There are many more software developer talents in these three countries than Nigeria, so they’re able to charge less because of competition. The higher the supply the less the price. The talents in Nigeria are already in high demand in Nigeria and are paid quite well. So there is no motivation to try to outcompete people in those countries with price. I also believe many of our software developers need more complicated development work opportunities in order to gain the types of experience that many developers in India, Pakistan and Philippines have. And that can only happen if big companies and government in Nigeria are patronizing local software companies instead of outsourcing to foreign companies or buying off-the-shelf software products.
I also believe our software developers should become more aggressive in pushing for offshore development opportunities and try to compete more with their counterparts in Asia. This is very different from telecom where Nigerian engineers are doing well in many countries in Africa, the United States and Europe.
Tell us about Online Jobs in Nigeria. Are online jobs really available in the IT industry?
There are online jobs within Nigeria but they are very uncommon. There are Nigerians working in Nigeria remotely for companies outside Nigeria and I see that more in the digital marketing, ecommerce, managed IT service and software development industries.
Finally, besides our IT discussions today, what other professional advice do you have for young Nigerians looking for jobs in terms of searching for jobs, preparing for interviews and writing CVs?
When writing your CV as a young graduate, you may not have any significant work experience to reference, but you must ensure that your CV fully captures your strengths, leadership experience and strong interests. If you belonged to a group in college or held a position, you must highlight it on your CV. Include volunteer opportunities, group projects and roles you played, certifications, etc.
When actively searching for jobs, you can have multiple CVs that are tailored towards different categories of companies. You should use Linkedin to find jobs and learn about career development. Link up with your school alumni through whatsapp and linkedin groups and stay in touch with your seniors and former classmates.
Seek pre-NYSC, NYSC or even post-NYSC volunteer or internship positions while you keep working hard to get a proper job. Learn about interview preparations and practice a lot. Always hold your CV with you and on your phone and be prepared to share it anytime you get a chance at any location. Develop an elevator pitch for yourself so you can sell yourself well anytime you get an impromptu opportunity.
Thank you very much for your time. I really enjoyed talking to you and believe that our viewers must have learnt a lot from this interview.
There’s a whole host of hidden features, in your Android phone, that you may not know about that can make your mobile experience a lot more fun.
Android has a wide variety of models, and versions which makes it more difficult to find features that will be consistent across all devices but you could dig into the settings and tweaks available for your Android phone and you’ll find a host of clever features and useful tools.
Here are five (5) tricks you could do with your Android phone:
Find your phone: Usually, you’d have to ask someone to ring your phone or find another phone to ring your phone. But you don’t have to with your Android. Simply search “find my phone” on Google and Google will find it for you. If you own more than one Android device, you’ll be prompted to select one.
Not only can you see its location on Google Maps but also ring it or erase everything on it. The ring also works even if the phone is on silent and rings for a full 5 minutes. So that’s an advantage over a traditional method of ringing to find your phone.
Dual tab viewing on Chrome: So everyone knows how to split-screen on Android and use two apps side by side. Most people don’t know, however, that you can also view two separate Chrome tabs side by side as well. Just make sure you have two tabs open on Chrome and then launch the split-screen view by long pressing on the recent/overview key. Tap on the three-dot overflow menu button on Chrome and select Move to other window and that’s it.
Use a mouse to operate your phone: Is your display broken and the touchscreen doesn’t work? Connect a USB mouse. You can also connect gamepads, USB sticks and more with the adapter. Do it and your iPhone friends will be turning green with envy. You only need a USB OTG cable, and then you can begin.
Unlock your phone automatically: Android has had a feature called Smart Lock for quite some time now but it isn’t talked about much. You can set it to automatically unlock when you’re at a specified location such as your home, office or any other place. You can set it to unlock when you connect to a device such as your smartwatch or your car’s Bluetooth system. Smart Lock can be found in Settings > Security & Lockscreen.
Turn on the Guest mode: Sometimes you’ve to hand over your phone to someone in need. And then they have to walk away a few steps to get a better signal reception. You have no idea what they might be looking at. A better solution would be to use a Guest mode which has been, again, present on Android for a while. Just pull down your quick settings from the top and tap on your user icon. Select Add guest and you’ll switch to guest mode.
When much financial evolution occurs across the world, Nigeria can never be exempted. Especially when it is futuristic and promising. The tendency to boost the lives of individuals is assured.
Firstly, a cryptocurrency is a digital or virtual currency that is secured by cryptography, which makes it nearly impossible to counterfeit or double-spend.
This prominent trade has loads of opportunities lingering and as well, different financial technology companies involved in it. These companies have participated in fulfilling opportunities by tackling some competitive features thereby being outstanding in its way.
Through its improved system, Chiji14xchange has positioned itself as a prominent virtual trading company handled by the Chief Executive Officer, Mr Odum Chijioke whose aim is to digitalize and monetize the virtual currency by creating various services for user’s satisfaction.
Chiji14Xchange is a virtual currency exchange and trading company that provides solutions to customers across the world by putting out groundbreaking services.
Chiji14xchange was developed to be one of the best cryptocurrency companies in Nigeria. And as such, provides unending satisfaction through its trading app; “Rocket”.
This mobile application has made bitcoin and USDT trading convenient, safe and reliable by offering services at the best rates. Its latest update includes the new form of cryptocurrency which is: Tether known as (USDT).
The Tether is a popular stable coin whose value is secured to the value of the US dollar. Users can limitlessly trade and exchange with the latest service.
What moves the market of Chiji14xchange are: The exchanges it trades on, The supplies of bitcoin including other currencies and how the market demands for it. Which makes this company a leading producer of great investments around the world.
