Hilda Kabushenga Kragha, who hails from Uganda, is the Chief Executive Officer at Jobberman, arguably one of the top career development platforms in the country. In this interview with Olaitan Ganiu, she speaks on the prospects and challenges in the labour market vis-à-vis opportunities for economic development in key sectors. Excerpts:
How do you feel becoming the CEO of Jobberman?
I feel really grateful because you don’t think about Career Development among other things you planned to do. Though, I prayed for something like this to come, so definitely I am grateful that the opportunity has finally come. On the other hand, I feel a sense of responsibility because I’m taking off the company in a pretty good condition with real life at stake, you know, I have to pay my staff, rent and other things.
Can you tell us about yourself and background?
I was born and raised in Uganda but I left Uganda at the age of 18 after my secondary school. Then I proceeded to South Africa to study Law for four years. And before moving back home, I worked briefly with the Central Bank and KPMG East Africa and then later decided to enroll at the Business School. My reason was I wanted a bigger platform for impact which is always a craving of my mind. Despite the exposure KPMG gave me, knowing so well that for every multinational there is an Eastern Africa office that you put into global office and I kept thinking to myself, ‘I need to get to that global stage, I need a global platform and I need to widen impact.’ This was the reason I went to Business School in South Africa in 2015. While I was there I remained in consulting and coming from KPMG it was a different type of consulting but we are in the same professional services industry.
At a time, we are allowed to choose different locations across Africa to visit and I told myself, ‘I was born and raised in East Africa, worked and studied in Uganda, Kenya, South Africa and I’ve been to Tanzania a lot of times and familiar with their culture. I was like, I have never been to West Africa, let me pick the Nigeria office for the adventure.
So, what have you learnt about Nigeria’s culture especially the people and the organisation?
Fortunately for me, I’ve been in Nigeria for the past four years and I have worked intensively with some top Nigerian companies which have enabled me to get a good handle on the work culture in the country and when it comes to Jobberman, I see a similar things. For the people, I am a people-oriented person; anybody who knows me personally will tell you that. So, it’s about getting into the minds of everybody working with me, finding out: Did they feel the impact of this organisation? Are they aligned with the overall vision of what we want to accomplish here? Do they feel motivated or encouraged to grow? And that is what I have been trying to do for the past two weeks.
Although, I think people approach it differently, my personal approach is to talk to everyone, moreover, I don’t have up to 5,000 personnel. So, it has been super interesting for me, getting to know the company from the eyes of people I met here. I feel I’ve gotten a lot of deep context I could never have gotten from the handover or unbundling process.
What strategic plans do you to make the company afloat?
Well, I think speaking on a strategic plan in the second week of resumption is not the best to do because at this stage we are still trying to understand the company. What I can say for sure, is that I want Jobberman to focus more on its social mandate. In this company, we are privileged to have access to the largest base of jobseekers and employers in Nigeria and across the world and we are in a market where the labour productivity and workplace ecosystem is quite broken. We have people who go through school and graduate at the university and still don’t have a particular skill that will give them a job. For example, if you are trying to get into accounting, a first degree will not help you because you need a professional course like ICAN to back it up. So, I want Jobberman to take on more of its role, not as a middleman but as a mediator in this ecosystem. We have the data, the trust and support of both the employers and jobseekers and we can actually link them together in the most efficient way. I am talking about this beyond just hoping you find a job, I am talking about trying to link software developers to the NGO to the person that is trying to establish skills pay solution for software developers, linking the HR people to the guys that need training for HR professionals. We are trying to help jobseekers by bringing partnerships that can support your skills and get you set for your career. We will also be there to signal to the employers and match them to the best of qualified, best trained jobseekers. This will make the ecosystem better because I have a strong belief that we cannot succeed, if we don’t fix some of the things that had been broken.
What is your advice to fresh graduates out there?
For fresh graduates, try as much as you can to upgrade skills yourself, no matter what you study there would be a professional certificate of qualification; there would be opportunities for mentorship and growth. Try and do them. Also, if you get an internship opportunity that you can afford, I know sometimes, you get a good opportunity but it does not pay and can’t even get transport but hope that as time goes by it will change. No matter the opportunity that you can use to upgrade your skill yourself, learn from somebody who is already in the industry. And then, of course, log into Jobberman, employers are waiting for you.
What has been your major challenge?
We are working in a broken ecosystem, the major challenge would be one ought to navigate in the ecosystem for the main time and establish a long strategy that can fix it because we can’t do it on our own. We need partners that can bring in training, mentorship and job opportunities to these jobseekers. Another challenge will be creating more trust between our partners, employers and jobseekers.
Where do you see the company in the next two years?
Like I said earlier, it is too soon to start speaking about strategy but in the next two years, I expect us to take our rightful place as a platform. We want to remain relevant in the ecosystem of employment and labour productivity of the country.
What advice do you have for employers?
My advice is that they have a huge role to play in the labour ecosystem not just as an employer who is trying to select talents but as people trying to fix it. We all want good talents but none of us want to develop it; we have a budget that covers everything except staff training and we do everything best on merit except our recruitment. We need to trust the system more, we need to encourage transparency in the way we acquire talent, we need to encourage the way we manage our talents and of course, we need to start investing in our people not just the people you acquire but the entire country. We need our employers to trust the local labour market more. Trust means, you invest in your staff because Nigeria has good talents.
What is the biggest risk you have ever taken?
I arrived Nigeria without knowing anybody, precisely, on the 13th of July, 2015. I could never have done it because Nigeria is a very tough place. I didn’t really have a house, a friend took me in (thank God for that). But over the past four years, it actually forced me to learn a lot about myself, I got to know my weaknesses, strengths and of course, I eventually built a successful life for myself. It is the most challenging thing I ever done but it actually paid off so well. I will encourage everyone to move from their comfort zone because good things will never happen when you stay in your comfort zone. I am a testimony of that.
Can you compare Nigeria with Uganda?
Uganda is definitely a small country. Our GDP is over $26 billion, compared to Nigeria. Nigeria is big and it can be intimidating. Uganda is not that way. We also value different things, in Nigeria, accomplishment and success is almost an overriding factor, everybody here is always working to be better but the Ugandan culture is not really like that. And, I love the attitude of the people here in Lagos and I will miss that when I get home. There is also room for relaxation, taking care of yourself or enjoying the fruit of your labour and I’m sure we do that most in Uganda than people here. I hope Ugandans learn to work harder, hustle and never give up on their dreams.
Why do you think African youths have to travel before making it?
This is a difficult topic for me to talk about, but as you can see the way our system fails young people. For example, as a 19/20 year- old in the United States of America, you can graduate and get yourself a house, car and build a career on a payment plan. But it is unfortunate that in some sub-Saharan African countries, we don’t have such structure.
So, if you have some amount of privilege and hustle your way out, you can choose to travel out, but for some people who don’t have this opportunity it becomes a trying time. To the best of my knowledge, if you want to rent a house in Lagos, you have to pay more than a year upfront which will cost about half a million (N500,000) and as a young professional who is just trying to start life and does not want to remain in his/her father’s house, you need to hustle and you have to pay some utility bills too. So, if you can divert the money to get a visa and ticket to a foreign country and I get there, you could work and earn in pounds. I know that the decision that the young people are making comes from a place of desperation.
What we need to do as a continent, nation and a platform is to think about ways to make them realise that they have a future here and this could be achieved by orientating and enlightening and even coming up with skills and internship projects or any other form of intervention and this is where partnerships is important. All this might seem like nothing to a big organisation, but to the young man or woman who is down to their last N10,000 it can be a different ball game.
Tell us about your passion and motivation?
I am a writer and I am quite motivated by my family, especially my son. I keep saying this, you cannot see a kid learning how to walk and keep giving up on your dreams; you can’t see a child fall a thousand times and pick themselves up and not be motivated to do the same. So, I would say that is what is pushing me at the moment. Just having somebody I can look at and say ‘wow, I want that kind of spirit of yours’. I blog about my child and I on Instagram and it’s more about how you can find a balance between motherhood and being a career woman. I’m using the platform to share my journey with everybody.
