Dear students, use the Internet wisely

It is that time of the year when many tertiary institutions’ students must do internship.

Internship, like research projects or dissertations, is a requirement for final year students to make it to graduation lists.

It enables students to gain that coveted work experience, however brief it might be.

Those seeking attachment are young (18 – 24, going by either their baby faces, coyness, swag, or Air Jordans’.

They are the generation perceived to be more familiar with digital technology, the Internet, social media and can explain ChatGPT.

So, it is baffling that many carry ‘To whom it may concern’ internship applications to companies.

Many of them have smartphones, data or know the areas in town where they can access free WiFi.

However, going by the National Labour Force Survey released by the Uganda Bureau of Standards in November 2022, only 4 per cent of the persons with access to the Internet in Uganda use it to find jobs.

Most – 36 percent  – use it for social networking while 18 per cent use it for entertainment (for example, either recording or viewing clickbait TikTok videos, speculating on the reasons why Spice Diana unfollowed Sheebah Karungi on Instagram, or to joke about Jose Chameleone and Weasals’ looks).

Up to 10.4 per cent use it for academic work and 6.3 per cent for business. 

We are talking about a generation that rates unemployment as one of the macroeconomic issues the government must address urgently.

The youngsters need their feet on the career ladder for financial independence and self–confidence while the government could do with the extra revenue it would collect from this chunk of the population.

Tertiary institutions should during educational talks with Generation Z bring the latter up to speed with the fact that for the convenience of prospective customers, employees and suppliers, many organisations – be they public or private – now advertise jobs or services online.

Uganda’s Electricity Supply Industry has a graduate trainee programme through which utilities Umeme Limited and the Uganda Electricity Transmission Company Limited, to mention but a few, offer graduates of, among other disciplines, engineering, finance, law human resources training opportunities. 

They later employ them.    The electricity utilities place notices about such opportunities on their websites, and social media spaces.

Even the applications are submitted online with physical meetings only coming in at the tail end, during oral interviews.

Walking or sitting on motorcycle taxis from campuses on the fringes of the city to organisations’ offices in downtown Kampala could be good exercise and show of determination.

However, the time and money could have been better spent googling the challenges the organisations of interest are facing and typing a presentation on how to address them.

With technology, a prospective intern based in Adjumani District in West Nile region who wants to plug into jobs in Uganda’s capital city does not have to travel from Adjumani to Kampala just to submit an application and back to Adjumani to wait for a reply from the prospective employer.

So, students in their last year of study or graduates searching for work should occasionally check prospective employers’ websites, Twitter handles, Facebook pages and LinkedIn for internship or job opportunities.

Nelson Wesonga works at Umeme Limited