FROM MIDDLE EAST WITH THANKS: A LETTER FROM A JARUSHUB MENTEE
Hi Jarus,
You might be able to recollect the story behind the email correspondence below.The young man in 2014, who completed NYSC a year before and wouldn’t settle for anything other than an oil and gas job…Well, I’ve been thinking lately and thus remember how the advice on your website helped put me in the position I am today.With no success at securing a graduate trainee job in an oil and gas firm, I decided to apply for a CAD Engineer position in an automotive company in Ogun state (I self-tutored CAD back in my university days). I got the job. I loved the job.My boss was an expatriate. He left six months after I was hired to join another firm in the Middle East. He sent for me after two months.It’s been two years as an Automotive Design Engineer Expatriate. My path is not the regular graduate job seekers’. I never got an internship, or got enlisted into a graduate or management trainee programme despite queuing to write tests and attending interviews for such. My first job required me to I hit the ground running with a skill I learned outside my school’s engineering curriculum. You would remember I studied Chemical Engineering – far cry from Automobile design and manufacture.You have a part in this, Jarus. And for which, I will be eternally grateful. It did start with a tweet asking for your email address which you obliged. Thank you very much.Regards,xxxxx (Name protected)
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Hi,
Wow, good to hear from you.
I mentor probably hundreds of fresh grads and students, so I can’t remember all cases from the top of my head. However, from the trail of this email (3 years ago), I can see our communication.
I’m happy to hear again from you after 3 years and happier than you’re doing well. Try to give back by mentoring other younger people too.
Jarus
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COMMENT:
Got that in JarusHub inbox this afternoon. Response also published.
I receive this kind of feedback from time to time. I got similar one even yesterday.
Like I always say, I’m not the only one that has all this education and career information. Many people do. Maybe they don’t have the time – or the openness to share.
I’m a product of information myself – especially academic, and later career. My academic story and the role played by information and guidance from Michael Taiwo are all too familiar to anyone that follows this wall. On career, Niyi Yusuf (now CEO of Accenture Nigeria) played the most part on information and orientation.
I count myself very lucky to have right information at right times. Very many students and grads do not have such information.
I think it would be criminal of me not to pass this on. Hence, my free sharing of info on both subjects – education and career – first from Nairaland starting from 2008, and later, in 2013, when I floated my independent website, JarusHub, where people like the sender of this email got to have their own share of the info.
Yes, JarusHub is today a for-profit venture (and beyond me), but our core service of providing education and career tips for young ones is still pro bono.
I personally derive joy in seeing people do well in their studies and career. Not less than 10 of the people I offered academic tips for have graduated with first class (I shared some of the stories here in the past).
A couple of the people I played a part in their academic or career path with information/guidance are actually higher than me in station today. One of them – who I offered tips to passing Shell Assessment in 2009, having done mine in 2008 – is now running a multi million naira enterprise. Another I mentored as a student in Unilag became so successful that he was the successor to the office tenancy that JarusHub found expensive to renew in 2015. His own business was able to pay for it, while JarusHub considered it expensive and moved to a lower-cost office. He called me that he heard we were the last user of the office, and that he wanted to be the new tenant. I advised him to go ahead. His business could afford it.
Trust me, a candle does not dim by lighting another.
Jarus
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