CV and cover letter trainings in Freetown

The African Community Internship Placement Programme (ACIPP) West Africa is a Netherlands-based youth-serving organisation focusing on using internships to build development bridges by working with local institutions to build their capacity and bring international knowledge to their work. In the last six months, ACIPP has been running training programmes for graduate students in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

We started the CV and Cover Letter Training Programme in partnership with educational institutions to facilitate the integration of graduates into the job market. We found that the lack of skills and knowledge in crafting comprehensive, professional looking CVs and Cover letters to be a major challenge for otherwise excellently qualified graduates. West Africa's economy is rapidly changing and expanding, and mid-level and higher management positions in transnational companies are often filled with citizens from other ECOWAS countries, since there is an educational and skills gap in Sierra Leone since the war. Ten years post-conflict, this situation should be changing and the skills gap for Sierra Leoneans is not a reality any more. The local universities produce enough excellently qualified graduates, who deserve to be challenged and supported to be groomed for higher-up positions. The Sierra Leonean government recently implemented the 'local content policy', which asks companies to prioritize hiring Sierra Leoneans unless they can prove the foreigner is better qualified, which is an important step in the right direction, and which gave our initiative its framework. Our initiatives are designed to strengthen the local content policy by enhancing job candidates' chances of success upon applying for a position.

Simon Tsike-Sossah, ACIPP West Africa's executive director, started these workshops in partnership with the Government Technical Institute in Kissy in November 2012. The workshops were met with a lot of interest, with over 250 students attending the first workshop. The principals of the colleges, universities and other institutes we work with are acutely aware of their students' lack of skills and knowledge in these areas, and have all been very supportive of our idea and asked for a continuation of the trainings after contact was first established and the first groups had been trained.

I usually start the trainings by introducing the idea of a CV or cover letter to the students, many of whom heard about them before, but never actually saw one. After stating the purpose, I draw the structure of a CV or a cover letter on the board and talk about the individual sections, to make sure that all the necessary information will be in the CV's and cover letters. After this, the trainings usually get more lively; the students will have questions, and the presentation becomes more of a discussion. This is usually also the moment I start talking about the most delicate topic of the presentation – what personal information about yourself not to include. People in West Africa often mention their religion, marital status, their tribe and region – all things that one would not see in western-style CVs. My main argument to not to include them is that including this information perpetuates longstanding problems like tribalism, religious factionalism and favouritism. At this point, there will usually be an interesting conversation between some of the students, the teachers and me, because obviously, including this information can sometimes help you to get a job in Sierra Leone! And ultimately, what these young kids care about in a country with 70 percent youth unemployment is to get a job, which I can understand very well. So I usually try and strike a balance, and also tell them to mention these personal things rather in the cover letter than in the CV.

If possible, I try to have the cover letter training for the same group of students about one week after the CV training, so the students will have time to write up their CVs and show them to me for feedback after the cover letter workshop. This is not only good for the students, but also for the trainers, since it gives us an idea of what has come through to the students and which issues need to be addressed more in depth in a next session. In the cover letter session, we don't only talk about the structure of a cover letter, but also about the creativity that is sometimes needed to connect your own work and life experiences with a job description. Usually I give them the example of someone with a very straightforward career first, and then we discuss another (fictional) person wanting a career change who is applying for the same job, but with a completely different background. Often, I can feel the 'click' in the students, who sometimes at first have a hard time to grasp what I mean by 'creativity in linking past experiences to a given job description', and then in the end come up with excellent and creative examples of their own!

After a few months of experience in giving these trainings, I can say that the workshops are usually very well received both by students and the school staff, and that they address a real gap in knowledge in the general population. In the future, we plan on expanding these trainings from covering only application materials to more topics, like public speaking skills, networking and other blocks for personal development that will help graduates' entrance in the job market. Another one of ACIPP's ideas would be to organise career fairs where organisations, businesses and other institutions can connect with the soon-to-be graduates.

Often, more than one teacher sits in on the training, and they and the students often come up to me afterwards to thank me for the presentation. This, and seeing someone write a good and professional-looking CV after a training, is what makes these trainings personally very rewarding!

* Imma Mader is ACIPP West Africa’s Director of Marketing and Recruitment and is based in Sierra Leone.