It’s no longer news that job seekers in many countries of the world have far outstripped the vacancies. The more the colleges and universities churn out graduates, the more the job seekers scramble for the few available jobs in the labor market (or “favor market” – as it is popularly called among optimistic individuals in my part of the world).
No wonder many have spent more time in the labor market than they spent in the colleges and universities – seeking to be employed. What is more worrisome is the non-chalant attitudes of most of our youth of today. The question is, must you be a job seeker when you can actually create your own jobs and employ others? Or why should you leave your future in the hands of others? If none will give you a job, then you should plan to create your own jobs. This calls for entrepreneurship.
Look for ways to become your own boss. This requires a change of attitude. Yes, I mean the way you think has to change. Like James Allen says in his famous book – “As a Man Thinketh” – “Let a person radically alter his thought, and he will be astonished at the rapid transformation it will effect in the material condition of his life”.
So to create your own jobs;, you should
- Think more about the needs and the challenges in the society;
- Think more about how you can provide solutions to the challenges in the society and help to change things;
- Think more about being an agent of change;
- Think more about becoming an employer rather than being employed;
- Think more about others knocking your door seeking to be employed than you walking the streets in search of non – existent white collar jobs;
- Think more about how your hobby can be turned into a job. Yes your hobby can be developed into a big business in the future.
The emphasis is on thought pattern. Whatever the mind can conceive and believe can be achieved. Our thoughts are like vibrations sent out to the universe, and as the principle of life is – “like beget like”. If you saturate your mind with the thought of being a business owner or owner of a conglomerate, if you believe it you will achieve it, because that thought that has saturated your entirety will propel you to take necessary steps towards achieving your dream. Whatever a man becomes is a sum total of the product of his thought. Sandy Forster in her “How To Be Wildly Wealthy Fast” buttress this fact by stating that we attract into our lives everything we desire through our thought and the power of our mind.
So to be a CEO, to be an employer of labor, start to think like one today.
How then can we create our own jobs. You have been endowed with a number of natural abilities to get you started. For example;
- Your writing skills can be used to write stories, poems or articles for publisher, and you will make a substantial income from it;
- Your love for painting can make a great artist or an art gallery owner,
- Like George Eastman, the owner of Eastman Kodak Company, you can transform mere love for photography into a big business,
- Your singing talents can become an income earning job
- Sewing skills can launch you into the garment making business
- Henry Ford, a mechanic apprentice, turned leisure-hour experiments with automobiles into Ford Motor Company;
- Your love for nature can see you develop an enterprise in gardens, parks and horticulture
- Your love for animals can be turned into an income generating system. Yes, you can keep pets and livestock for commercial purposes
- Your marketing skills can be turned into a business
- Are you very vocal – there is a huge market for you. Why not consider being an event manager, a speaker and the likes
- How about your soccer and/or sport skills. To mention but a few.
The terrible effects of unemployment are well known. Apart from the many crimes it brings, it amounts to a monumental waste of invaluable manpower.
There have been concerted efforts by the government at job creations and poverty alleviation. But the truth is, there is no way these efforts can entirely wipe out this problem. The only one possible way, as identified by economists is entrepreneurship. Let every youth of today embrace entrepreneurship and we would be surprise at how this menace of unemployment would be a forgotten issue.
