My enterprise is designed to reduce unemployment – Dare, CEO, Poise Graduate Finishing Academy

Young and innovative, Mrs Ukinebo Dare is CEO of Poise Graduate Finishing Academy, PGFA, a subsidiary of Poise Nigeria, one of Nigeria’s foremost finishing schools for human capacity development. Unlike the regular entrepreneur who take on ventures for profiting, Uki, as she is fondly called, conceived and designed PGFA five years ago to rescue Nigeria’s teaming youth population from unemployability by equipping them with skills that put them at par with employers’ requirement, using the PGFA PSENSE Employability Skill Certification.

The alumnus of Benson Idahosa University, Edo State, as well as Bradford University, UK, who has just clinched the Future Awards and Ford Foundation prize for Youth Employment tells more in interview and says Nigerian graduates are intelligent but lack pertinent soft skills. 

By Josephine Agbonkhese

What’s the PSENSE initiative about?

The PSENSE Employability Skills Certification is an initiative designed to close and bridge the gap between what employers want and what higher institutions are teaching students. So, it has a three-month employability skills curriculum that covers every aspect of what employers want in terms of soft skills that are pertinent in the Nigerian corporate and business environment.

We teach practical lessons to build graduates’ experience and capacity in problem solving, creative thinking, project writing, communication, emotional intelligence, how to market themselves and their organisation, business letter writing, memo, emails, business plans, networking, self-awareness and much more. We also teach charity and social work.

Some persons now take advantage of our teaming job-seeking population, pretending to be potential employers and exploiting these youths financially and otherwise. How can genuine employers be identified?

Job seekers should know that no genuine employer will ask for any form of compensation before employment. Also, it is important to do a research online about any organisation before honouring their invitation for interview. With the help of social media now, it is easier to detect fraudsters who pose to be employers because one or two persons must have written about their experience with them. One thing we, for instance do not fail to do at PSENSE, is to vet organisations coming to employ our trainees.

The cost of management terminated many businesses in Nigeria. Have you ever considered quitting at any point?

I’ve never thought of quitting because for me, this is a purposeful venture; a venture designed to help fifty percent of Nigeria’s youths who are sadly unemployed It is daunting when we are faced with more people begging for our  scholarship (free training), after seeing maybe friends or relatives that have benefitted from us.

Worse still, organisations scarcely want to support initiatives such as this by funding us to be able to train more graduates and make them employable. They would rather have their names behind other less-impacting initiatives.

I, however, have never thought of quitting because I feel fulfilled each time I see lives being improved by the PSENSE initiative.

In a few words, how would you describe the average Nigerian graduate based on your experience?

The average Nigerian graduate is hardworking, has big dreams such as becoming a CEO in the next five years, and much more. But it hasn’t dawned on these youths that there are skills that must be developed. They believe everyone can always learn on the job, but the truth is, employers are not always ready to give such opportunities. Our graduates need a lot of extra training and they should become aware of this while still in school so that events do not catch them unaware.

Nigerians who studied at home rate high when they go for further studies abroad. How come they still need a graduate finishing academy to be employable back home? 

The Nigerians among us while I was studying in the UK, were the best students. Like I said earlier, the average Nigerian graduate is very intelligent. Because we are not spoon-fed, we have learned to teach ourselves and do things somebody that was not spoon-fed cannot do. But you know what; intelligence is not what makes a person thrive on a job. It is how you can mix your intelligence with the right set of skills. We have the intelligence here. But the soft skills are lacking.

What steps have you taken towards tackling unemployability from its root which is partially the university curriculum?

While doing my M.Sc in Management at the University of Bradford in the UK, I realized the difference was clear. There, while in school, you’re learning all these soft skills required for employment. You will be taught how to write your CV, time management, self-management, etc., but here, we don’t get that and that’s what we’re trying to change. Over 10,000 youths have benefitted from PSENSE and about 87% of them are now gainfully employed.

To that effect, in an effort to tackle unemployability from its roots, we’ve succeeded in getting the Nigerian University Commission, NUC, to endorse PSENSE and advise university Chancellors to incorporate it in their curriculum. But then, there’s been a whole lot of bureaucracy even though we’ve had to go from university to university to make this a reality.