Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Last week, hun­dreds of un­der­grad­u­ate stu­dents re­ceived their de­grees from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine.

Some may con­tin­ue their stud­ies at the post­grad­u­ate lev­el but all will like­ly seek part-time or full-time em­ploy­ment, join­ing the pool of skilled work­ers in the coun­try.

How­ev­er, con­cerns over ad­e­quate re­mu­ner­a­tion, job se­cu­ri­ty and grow­ing com­pe­ti­tion for jobs have caused some grad­u­ates to con­sid­er mi­grat­ing in search of bet­ter op­por­tu­ni­ties.

At a ca­reer fair on Oc­to­ber 25, Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter Allyson West re­port­ed that there were 13,000 va­can­cies in the pub­lic sec­tor.

The Cen­tral Bank re­port­ed in its Jan­u­ary 2024 eco­nom­ic bul­letin that un­em­ploy­ment was 3.2 per cent in the third quar­ter of 2023, a de­crease from 5.4 per cent for the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2022. That de­cline has been at­trib­uted to a strength­ened do­mes­tic econ­o­my.

For the third quar­ter of 2023, the bul­letin re­port­ed that the num­ber of per­sons with­out jobs and seek­ing em­ploy­ment fell to 12,600.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the UWI’s St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus and spoke with sev­er­al stu­dents who were not con­vinced by those fig­ures.

Ro­han Kur­banali, a year two Com­put­er Sci­ence stu­dent, said he is wor­ried about whether he will find mean­ing­ful em­ploy­ment when he com­pletes his pro­gramme next year and plans to net­work with peers and prospec­tive em­ploy­ers.

“I have no idea what it en­tails to get a job so for now I’m kind of leav­ing it up to con­nec­tions. I’m very ner­vous, but I’m hope­ful that things will work out,” he said.

First-year law stu­dent Christo­pher Rocke was not sure about his chances of find­ing em­ploy­ment af­ter grad­u­at­ing but was not wor­ried.

“I think there are op­por­tu­ni­ties in the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor for my vo­ca­tion, so I think I should be able to get a job af­ter grad­u­at­ing,” he said.

The UWI has held ca­reer fairs and work­shops un­der their World of Work ini­tia­tive which of­fers fi­nal-year stu­dents ses­sions on re­sume writ­ing, mock in­ter­views and net­work­ing. How­ev­er, chal­lenges in find­ing em­ploy­ment per­sist as the num­ber of skilled per­sons in the work­force has been steadi­ly in­creas­ing.

Un­nec­es­sar­i­ly high re­quire­ments

Pres­i­dent of the Hu­man Re­source Man­age­ment As­so­ci­a­tion of TT (HRMATT) Cavelle Joseph-St Omer said there have been in­stances where em­ploy­ers de­lib­er­ate­ly set high aca­d­e­m­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tions as a pre­req­ui­site for jobs which don’t re­quire spe­cialised skills.

De­scrib­ing the prac­tice as “de­gree in­fla­tion,” Joseph-St Omer said em­ploy­ers raise aca­d­e­m­ic re­quire­ments be­cause they be­lieve this at­tracts em­ploy­ees who are smarter and more pro­duc­tive. She warned that the prac­tice can lead to long-term chal­lenges for the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

“The re­sult is a mis­align­ment be­tween the sup­ply and de­mand for spe­cif­ic jobs or skills,” she said.

“At the same time, uni­ver­si­ty grad­u­ates are fill­ing mid­dle-skills po­si­tions—sup­port spe­cial­ists, tech­ni­cians, sales rep­re­sen­ta­tives, ad­min­is­tra­tive roles—are cost­ing com­pa­nies more mon­ey to em­ploy, tend to be less en­gaged in their jobs, have a high­er turnover rate, and reach pro­duc­tiv­i­ty lev­els on­ly on par with sec­ondary school grad­u­ates do­ing the same job.

“This com­bi­na­tion of un­der­achieve­ment and mis­align­ment hurts Trinidad and To­ba­go’s com­pet­i­tive­ness and grad­u­ates seek­ing a ca­reer path to­wards a pro­fes­sion­al po­si­tion and a de­cent stan­dard of liv­ing.”

Joseph-St Omer ad­vised stu­dents to de­vel­op “soft skills” like com­mu­ni­ca­tion, col­lab­o­ra­tion and prob­lem-solv­ing which are sought af­ter by em­ploy­ers. Stu­dents with soft skills are in a bet­ter po­si­tion to be re­cruit­ed, she ex­plained.

She added that this year’s grad­u­ates are en­ter­ing the job mar­ket at a chal­leng­ing time. While there were ex­pect­ed loss­es of ad­min­is­tra­tive roles, record keep­ing func­tions, in­clud­ing cashiers, tick­et clerks, da­ta en­try and ac­count­ing due to digi­ti­sa­tion, there are ar­eas for young skilled work­ers to find a ca­reer.

“There are op­por­tu­ni­ties in ed­u­ca­tion, agri­cul­ture and dig­i­tal com­merce and trade. Ca­reer op­por­tu­ni­ties ex­ist for e-com­merce spe­cial­ists, dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion spe­cial­ists and dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing and strat­e­gy spe­cial­ists, for ex­am­ple,” she said.

“With the labour mar­ket tight­en­ing, it’s not very easy to get your foot in the door and there­fore stu­dents have to be more will­ing to cast a wider net and look be­yond tra­di­tion­al ca­reers.”

Grad­u­ates forced to adapt

The abil­i­ty to ad­just to ca­reers out­side of their com­fort zone has been the norm for some grad­u­ates for years. With lim­it­ed va­can­cies in cer­tain fields, on­ly the can­di­dates with the high­est qual­i­fi­ca­tions will be ac­cept­ed, so oth­ers with sim­i­lar re­sumes have to find oth­er means of earn­ing a liv­ing.

Teacher and en­tre­pre­neur Bar­ry Beck­les said due to the high num­bers of un­der­grad­u­ate stu­dents, many were turn­ing to fields un­re­lat­ed to what they stud­ied at uni­ver­si­ty.

Beck­les grad­u­at­ed from UWI St Au­gus­tine, in 2015 with an un­der­grad­u­ate de­gree in Pe­tro­le­um Geo­science from the Fac­ul­ty of En­gi­neer­ing, but has been work­ing as a math­e­mat­ics tu­tor since he was 18. He has ac­cept­ed part-time teach­ing jobs in his Ch­agua­nas home­town and that has be­come his main source of in­come be­cause it is dif­fi­cult to find a job in the en­er­gy sec­tor.

“I was ap­ply­ing all over the place and noth­ing was hap­pen­ing, so the teach­ing and tu­tor­ing was just a side hus­tle I de­cid­ed I would do un­til I got some­thing in the pe­tro­le­um in­dus­try but that some­thing nev­er came,” he said

Af­ter fo­cus­ing more on his tu­tor­ing, Beck­les earned a Mas­ters de­gree in Mar­ket­ing in 2020 to fur­ther de­vel­op his busi­ness skills.

He said many of his fel­low grad­u­ates have strug­gled to find jobs re­lat­ed to their field of study and had to find oth­er means of earn­ing a liv­ing.

“When you fin­ish your first de­gree at age 23 or there­abouts you’re ac­tive­ly look­ing for a job. You want to find some­thing to make mon­ey un­til some­thing in your field pops up,” Beck­les said.

“We all know you can’t just sit at home and do noth­ing. They know if they just stay home, noth­ing will come of it, so they are will­ing to try dif­fer­ent things.”

He said many grad­u­ates of­ten dis­cov­er their pas­sion in new ar­eas.

Beck­les ad­vised grad­u­ates: “You may study hard to get cer­tain jobs af­ter grad­u­at­ing and even­tu­al­ly spend two years there on­ly to re­alise this isn’t for me. Do some­thing where you can see your­self get­ting up and go­ing to work for the next five or ten years,” he said.

Beck­les added that for­mal ed­u­ca­tion is im­por­tant but as a tu­tor, he has al­ways en­cour­aged the par­ents of his stu­dents to con­sid­er vo­ca­tion­al train­ing as well.

Like Bar­ry Beck­les, many stu­dents will need to dis­cov­er and cap­i­talise on ad­di­tion­al skills to sup­port them­selves as the econ­o­my changes and the job mar­ket be­comes in­creas­ing­ly com­pet­i­tive.