Do or Die...?!

Before anything else, I must say “Blogging no easy oh!” if you have any doubts about this, check the date of my last post…

Moving on, I’ve been wondering about passions since yesterday. No, I’m not referring to the kind that’s unleashed in steamy red-lit bedrooms (snap out of that daydream!), I’m referring to the sort that drives dreams and ambitions.  You know that feeling that people like Steve Jobs and other famous AND successful folks are known for.

Unfortunately, I’m not about to laud this forceful feeling (that topic has probably been milked dry any ways). Passion, drive and ambition are great. They are the stuff that communities and civilization are founded upon… but what happens when a person gets more than a healthy dosage?

When does a person cross that invisible but potent line between “I want this so bad, I will give my best to get it and “I want this so bad, it’s do or die!” You don’t think this possible? Welcome to the lives of Lagos Politician Al-Mustaim Abaniwonda and Motunrayo Agbara.

Motunrayo Agbara

Until Monday, 18^th July, 2011 Al-Mustaim Abaniwonda was a member of the Nigerian political party PDP as well as a Lagos State ministerial nominee. Whether his loss of the race for a political office had any bearing on his sudden dead on Monday has been the subject of several heated debates. Word around town is Mr. Abaniwonda walk away from his car and driver and ultimately committed suicide in the Lagos Lagoon.

Abaniwonda Al-Mustaim

26 year old Motunrayo Agbara is said to have been jilted by her boyfriend and after contemplations and inspired by depression, ended up hanging from a rope in her room on the same day Mr Abaniwonda ended his life.

Out of respect for the dead I would try not to speak of these people in rude or speculative terms but I can’t help wondering how an entire existence can be shrunk so narrowly into a single individual or achievement?! So what if he doesn’t like the ways your eyes are set or that you speak with a drawl? Isn’t he but one in a billion alternatives? And, what if I can’t own property in Banana Island or Park View Estate? I would take a BQ in Abaranje or Ijaiye-Ifako over a rectangular confined space in the ground any day! But then again, may be I’m not highly motivated sha…

For full details on the unfortunates deaths see Motunrayo and Abaniwonda   

(Do Not) Apply Here!!!

As a HR practitioner, I have noticed a very annoying trend amongst Nigerians. I find this trend so very annoying that I recently found myself tempted (almost to the point of yielding) to send a 'stinker' to an absolute stranger. All that held me back was the knowledge that my mail would have been unprofessional. So I've decided to blog about it. I don't have to be professional on my blog ‘cos here, I'm just a girl, saying it as she sees/thinks it. Hell, I can open my ¤@*#? and jiggle my  #@+* in your face if I please. Mind you, the missing words are mouth and tongue, respectively, so get your mind out of dark funky smelling corners!

But I'm not doing that now (jiggling my tongue in your face). Nope, I'm talking about/to those who send in their CVs for ALL and ANY job. Those who claiming to be literate, read a vacancy ad saying 'Engineer Needed' and send their CVs pronto, never mind that they are practicing accountants with degrees in Banking and Finance. What is it they hope for?! That the poor person sorting through the thousands of CVs would fall asleep while on-the-job and mistaken save his/her CV?! Or that the recruiter would be so besotted with the annoying passports they usually have on the top right-hand side, that qualifications and experience would become secondary, or even irrelevant?! Well, it doesn't usually happen that way! All they end up achieving is a very pissed off recruiter who thinks about them in words and terms that should never be documented and even mentally note and black-list them.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with aiming a little over the bar, with the hope that the prayers we prayed on Sunday would somehow vault us beyond where we naturally would have landed. No, I do that myself every now and then, but ‎​​ there's a ton of difference between that and been plain silly and annoying. An example of the former would be a situation where the ad states that Accountants with 10 years work experience are needed and ‎​you, having only 8 years of RELEVANT work experience, give it a shot. The latter however could be a situation where ‎​you are an integrated science teacher of 6 years, who studied Economics but somehow think ‎​you read your name in the fine print of the same ad.

I know I sound really pissed... I am!!! But that aside, my question is, why do so many of us do this? I say 'so many' becos the incidence of this is about 6 in every 10 job applications (never mind that I'm the one who has to repeatedly hiss then hit the 'delete' button). I understand we want jobs and we want them NOW, but wouldn't it really suck to get that job that ‎​​‎​​you're clueless about? I really doubt that the euphoria of landing such a job would last more than the first week by which time you'd realize the job is a ticking ‎​bomb that's gonna blow up in your face sooner than later. So the next time ‎​​you, an IT person, are tempted to send in your CV for a HR job, please don't! Take a few deep breaths and let the feeling pass.

Picture source here

 

VACANCIES IN A MORTGAGE INSTITUTION

A leading player in the mortgage sub-sector of the financial industry seeks to employ the following qualified and top-notch marketing professionals part of its drive towards expanding its customer base and market share:

MARKETING MANAGER (HP/001)

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES AND SKILLS

• Exceptional Leadership qualities
• Function as group branch coordinator and oversee other branch marketing departments
• Must have a clear strategic outlook
• Mobilize deposits while driving  the marketing group towards achieving liability generation  targets.
• Develop marketing plans to achieve business objectives.
• Generate income through origination of quality risk asset and fee based activities.
• Coordinate other members of team or group to achieve organizational goals.

QUALIFICATION AND EXPERIENCE

• A minimum of 9 years experience in the banking sector.
• First Degree in Marketing, Business Administration or a related discipline.
• A masters degree will be an advantage.

DEPUTY MARKETING MANAGER (HP/002)

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Mobilize deposits while driving  the marketing group towards achieving liability generation  targets.
• Develop marketing plans to achieve business objectives.
• Generate income through origination of quality risk asset and fee based activities.
• Coordinate other members of team or group to achieve organizational goals.

QUALIFICATION AND EXPERIENCE

• A minimum of 8 years experience in the banking sector.
• First Degree in Marketing, Business Administration or a related discipline.
• A masters degree will be an advantage

 ASSISTANT MARKETING MANAGER (HP/003)

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Drive the global deposit mobilization targets of sub team or sub group
• Generate income through the origination of quality risk assets.
• Coordinate other members of team or group to achieve organizational goals.

QUALIFICATION AND EXPERIENCE

• A minimum of 7 years experience in the banking sector.
• First Degree in Marketing, Business Administration or a related discipline.
• A masters degree will be an advantage.

SENIOR BANKING OFFICER (HP/004) 

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Drive the global deposit mobilization targets of sub team or sub group
• Generate income through the origination of quality risk assets.
• Coordinate other members of team or group to achieve organizational goals.

QUALIFICATION AND EXPERIENCE

• A minimum of 6 years experience in the banking sector.
• First Degree in Marketing, Business Administration or a related discipline.
• A masters degree will be an advantage.

BANKING OFFICER (HP/005) 

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Drive the global deposit mobilization targets of sub team or sub group
• Generate income through the origination of quality risk assets.
• Coordinate other members of team or group to achieve organizational goals.

QUALIFICATION AND EXPERIENCE

• A minimum of 4 years experience in the banking sector.
• First Degree in Marketing, Business Administration or a related discipline.
• A masters degree will be an advantage.

MODE OF APPLICATION
Interested candidates with requisite experience and qualifications should forward their CVs and cover letters stating the positions applied for before Friday, 28th of January, 2011 via email to recruitment@hpierson.com. Please indicate the reference for the position applied for in the subject of your mail.

Who We Are(n't)

Our parents and their generation as a whole accuse our generation of a host of things; we're too lazy; we're disrespectful and lack courtesy; too reckless and rash; we're inclined towards crime and a long list of other things. We usually argue vehemently about how wrong they are and we, misunderstood. We counter their arguments with one of our own insisting that it's they who are uptight about everything.

As a member of the accused group, I've had cause to put up a defence against more than one of the accusations as I'm sure ‎​​you have too ( there's no need to be coy). But lately, I've been thinking along a line that lends credence to one and maybe all of the accusations.

I've heard the Baby Boomers accuse us of being an ignorant generation, a people that generally do not quest for knowledge. Our automatic reason, as always, is "That's a lie!" But is it really?!

In the course of my research, a friend recalled that in his growing days, his father always  woke up early enough to listen to the 4am broadcast of the BBC news and return to sleep afterwards. This same man would pause family devotions whenever they stretched into 9 O' clock so he could catch that hour's broadcast of the NTA's Network News. More than one person made reference to their fathers' ever present battery-powered radio. I personally know about the woe that befalls anyone who dares to tune my father's car stereo away from Radio Nigeria before the news is read.

How many of such avid news followers do we have in our generation? I got a few retorts about reading the newspapers (ALMOST) every morning, but the truth is that most of these people only read papers when their office or colleagues buy a copy. Our fathers probably had a newspaper budget. Even on days when my father's indoors all day, he asks anyone venturing out to buy him his daily dosage and in the event that no one has a mission out, he sends someone out just for the papers. I wonder how much longer the newspaper companies will be able to hold on for dear life, after the Baby Boomers pass on?

Ironically, ours' is the generation that has available to it an array of news sources; there's the good old TV, there is the radio which we can access on-the-go on our phones. Above all, there's the internet where a number of sources (including the newspapers) offer us the news for fee! In the light of all of this evidence, it seems rather glaring that we are what they say we are; an ignorant generation that shun's information and knowledge (except it relates to ShowBiz and other fluff). Yet we wonder ‎​why we are not at the helms of affairs!     

Picture source here

For The Bow-Tied Man

I'm all grins this morning and I have every reason! It’s not everyday that the world has something good to say about Nigeria... not every week that they duff their hats to us or give us a complimenting pat on the back... not every year for that matter, that they point at a Nigerian and tag him the best of a global pack so PLEASE allow me my grin!

Our Central Bank Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi was awarded global Bank Governor of the year 2010 by The Banker, a financial affairs magazine owned by the Financial Times Ltd. If I were to play the devil's advocate, I would say it must have come easy to Mr. CBN Governor as the other governors probably didn't have to clean up the same scale of financial mess that Sanusi has been working his way through, but the truth is what it is, which is that he has done a darn good job!

He did a good job with the 2009/2010 shake down in the banking industry, never mind that some of us got the wrong end of the stick (victory always requires bloodshed…I think?!). He did a good job staring down the people who tagged him loco for being so radical and dangerously revolutionary. Oh, and he also did a good job standing up to our famous fat cats when he called them out on their gluttony.

Sanusi’s style is impressive of its own accord, it’s however amplified cos he’s doing this remarkable things in a country where politicians seem to have a unanimous objective; milk the nation dry and then slaughter it (God help us!). Ours’ is a country were the people in power seem to be criminal minded, let’s not even talk about whether or not they stand up for truth, fairness and national growth and development. In such a country as ours’, Governor Lamido is a more than a breath of fresh air.

As we approach our national elections, a recurring thought of mine is “Give me a candidate like Sanusi or El-Rufai and I’d be leading the lines to the voting booths”. I don’t want to talk about the up-coming elections, but since we’re on the topic, I might as well express my concerns…

The general campaign across the country is an avocation that people participate in the election process by registering and voting for the candidates that they support. I have just one concern on the matter; how do I vote when I don’t support or even like any of the aspirants? Who do I vote for when we have a selection of green-eyed monsters and an unambitious candidate to pick from? The former have mean and selfish agendas that have nothing to do with the nation except to serve as a means to their ends while the latter has no ambitions except to run cos he found himself shoved in the ring and cos some people with whom he keeps council say it might be fun and lucrative.

But I digress, this post is about the man who has somehow managed to stand out of the crowd, both nationally and globally. For this, I am most pleased. If we could find one, I suspect that there must be more out there in the wood works.

For more details on his award, check here .