Looking for your first job in your new country

 FAMILY BUSINESS WORK EXPERIENCE and VOLUNTEER EXPERIENCE

This is for new people abroad (Diasporans) looking for work. Oftentimes new immigrants including students look for work and since everyone is required for have some form of work experience, it gets challenging if they do not have "formal" work experience to compete with job seekers in, say, industrialized countries who are fortunate to start working as early as 14 years of age.

In Kenya for instance, young people start being responsible for varied domestic chores at an early age. Those in the countryside juggle between childcare, cooking for the family, looking after livestock etc. Some help with running family businesses in addition to participating in household duties.

People also volunteer all the time in church, community events like clean ups, tree planting, participating in "personal" events like funerals and weddings, building or local roads and bridges, etc.

When they get asked if they have any experience in say teamwork, leadership, delegation, and other competencies, they are more likely to say no because they think they need to be paid in order to have relevant work experience.

I also struggled to get some jobs in customer service, marketing, and administrative duties because I didn't think I had the required experience so my job applications were screened out each time because such experience which I had did not feature in my resume.

You should strive to articulate the experiences you have based on work (paid or not) and volunteering you have been involved in in the past. Most employers will train all new employees anyway but you only get that opportunity once you get your foot in the door.

Speaking of which, I just remembered my very first "job." This was immediately after graduating from Form Four aka Grade 12.

My dad had just retired from Civil Service the year before so I helped him set up his business - a hardware store that also did regular welding (electric) and gas welding. In the same store, we also sold bicycle parts in addition to repairing bikes. We had therefore hired a bike "mechanic" and an electric welder. My dad did the gas welding and he was pretty good at it.

I say it was my first job, not because I earned a salary or wages but because it was my first experience doing customer service, negotiating prices (in Kenya bargaining for everything at a store is common), and making some decisions especially when my dad was not at the store.

Additionally, I'd make lunch for my dad and I at the back of the store. Planning a meal, availing the ingredients, and timing the cooking to coincide with lunch time, the slower time of day wasn't easy for an 18 year old but I did it.

It was the very first hardware store in the area so we didn't really have anyone borrow ideas from or copy so anything we did was "novel" so to speak.

I also say it was my first job because years later, on another continent, I was asked at a job interview if I had "customer service experience" but I said no because I thought to qualify for real experience, it had to be a paid job. Looking back, I got lots of customer service experience from that job and I didn't even realize.

I helped my dad run the store for several months until it was time to move to the city for college. By the time I left, we had increased the goods we were selling and the services we offered, so much so that most people didn't even see the need to go to a bigger town to get things they needed because we brought them near to the people.

We even built bikes from scratch using the parts we sold. We could also charge car batteries and had stocked building materials like iron sheets, steel, meshes, paints, etc.

I discovered that a hardware store was profitable because unlike grocery stores which were many and popular in our shopping centre, we didn't have to worry about perishable stock or competition initially although some competitors started coming up with their own stores once they saw how successful we were starting to be.

When I took stock of all the competencies I took away from just helping my dad open his new business, I realized I had amassed crucial work experience in customer service, delegating, decision making, leading, time management, basic accounting, marketing, negotiating, judgment, etc.

I hope this helps someone who has been trying to look for a job in vain because they didn't think what they already know was good enough. Include everything in your resume and practice how to articulate all those experiences during interview. Best of luck