Jonathan will defeat Buhari, says Mimiko

Ondo State Governor, Dr Olusegun Mimiko, has said that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) will defeat the All Progressives Congress (APC) in next year’s election, saying APC is only deceiving Nigerians.
This is just as he said the APC should convince Nigerians on its change slogan, noting that its top shots, by their actions, are anti-democratic elements.
Speaking in Ado-Ekiti on Friday when he visited his Ekiti counterpart, Mr Ayo Fayose, the governor wondered whether APC wanted Nigeria to change from democracy to dictatorship.
He also exuded confidence that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) would win convincingly in the South-West.
“We want APC leaders to explain to Nigerians the change they shout all over. Are they saying the country should change from democracy to dictatorship? This is necessary because their leaders, by their actions, have not shown that they are democratic elements.
“One can see that they are already afraid and panic has set in the way they act now,” he said.
On the chances of the PDP in the coming general elections, Mimiko said the party understood the sophistication of elections and the issues involved.
“In the 2011 elections, when President Goodluck Jonathan did not have any governor in the South-West, he won in five of the states. Now that he has more states and subsequent elections in Ondo and Ekiti have shown that the winning streak is continuing, there is not going to be any problem.
“In places like Oyo, Ogun and Lagos, the tide is changing in favour of PDP. Political jobbers failed to divide us in Lagos and they are panicking already.
“I can say it without mincing words that the APC is anxious in the South-West and all their lies will not be able to save them from electoral defeat,” he said.
Fayose, who chipped in briefly, said the election would surely return President Jonathan back to office.


                                                                                                            SunNewsonline

12 Viruses in your CV

                                                                           HR Talk

                                                                            with

                                                                 

                                                                 Moruf Kolawole Nasir

(Experienced HR professional)

In my previous article I Identified 10 silly mistakes job seekers make in the process of applying for jobs. This edition covers the second part of the article-Silly Mistakes in CVs, although I choose to title it “12 VIRUSES IN YOUR CV”
Errors/mistakes in CVs is also an area which has been widely written on, but most of the articles are filled with conflicting dos and don’ts thus putting job seekers in more confusion. We will attempt to identify some likely ‘dents’ in most job seekers CVs.

1.     Copy & Paste Syndrome: Almost all of us are guilty of this chei? I was going through the CV of an applicant for a driver’s job few months ago, the young man can neither read nor write (because he could not fill a form given to him) yet his hobbies are reading and writing. In another case, a very smart looking fresh graduate was referred to me, I asked him questions relating to his course of study he did not do well until I addressed him as Economics graduate when he snapped in to ‘correct’ me that he studied business administration not Economics, I had no choice but to refer him to the CV he gave me. Oh! He exclaimed, “I am sorry I used my friend’s CV, I forgot to change the course of study”. Many job seekers inject their CVs with this kind of virus. Most times your person and background differ from the person whose CV you are adopting.

2.     Unnecessary information: Fresh graduates are mostly guilty of this. Just to make sure their CV is ‘full’, they add viruses to it. Who says one page of A4 CV cannot do better than two pages? What business of the recruiter is your home town or your religious denomination? He will find out those if he needs them before hiring you. God help you if you are from Aluu community (you put that in your CV) and the hiring manager happened to be related to one of the victims of ‘Aluu 4’.

3.     The‘Jokey’ email address: Yeah! The content of your email address matters. Trust me, nobody will be comfortable sending interview invitation to beerlover@yahoo.comor hotlips@gmail.comfor the position that requires serious minded people, and most positions do. Check if your email address qualifies for ‘jockey’ one and rid your CV of that virus.

4.     Incorrect/Insufficient Personal/Contact Details: While going through some CVs for the post of ICT manager many months ago, I saw a very good CV (a candidate with the required experience and Skills for the job), I went back to the top of the CV to invite him for interview, lo and behold! his contact information is missing. Other job seekers carelessly miss a letter or sign in their email addresses. While yet another set omit a number or mix numbers up in their contact phone numbers. All these are bottle necks to invitations for interviews.

5.     Design and format:  I once saw a CV so nicely design that I stopped for a while to look at the aesthetic value of the CV. Guess what? The aesthetics drew my attention away from the content of the CV and as such the owner missed the opportunity of having the content of his CV assessed.  Similarly, some CVs are badly formatted that one wonders if they were not actually designed to put the recruiter off. These are viruses to CVs.

6.     Telling Lies in your CV: It is unfortunate that the competition in the labour market makes most job seeker stoop so low to the extent of putting false information in their CVs, unfortunately for them, experienced HR professionals are good at identifying the lies and keeping such CVs to where they belong.

7.     Writing a Novel as CV: The longest CV I have seen is 17 pages for the post of operations manager, isn’t that amazing? He was actually invited for interview to come and prove that he is not wasteful. And that was the question he battled with all through. Bottom line, no matter the number of your accomplishments if you can’t sum it up in two to three pages, it becomes a minus to your CV. Some writers are even of the opinion that two pages is the maximum for experienced applicants while one page is enough for Fresh graduates.


8.     Using Photo: I sometimes wonder who started the photo thing in Nigeria. In case you don’t know, printing CVs with pictures consumes more printer ink than CV without pictures. Apart from this, instead of judging the content of your CV the recruiter’s attention is shifted to the object in the CV (your picture) and that jeopardizes the chances of fair assessment of your CV. This may be the norm in Far East and Europe, but sorry it doesn’t apply to us here, and when recruiters need your picture, they SPECIFICALLY request for it. So kick that virus out of your CV.

9.     Spelling Mistakes, Typos and Grammatical Errors: How will you feel if you are looking through a CV and come across “I have had sex jobs so far…” instead of six jobs so far?  The Virus (Spelling mistake, Typos and grammatical errors) has been over flogged, so no point dueling much on it. The good news is, hiring managers are not grammarians and as such they are not after your spelling mistakes, typographic or grammatical errors. It becomes an issue, and a serious one at that, if the flaws are visible enough to be noticed.

10.  Leaving out Information or Creating Gap:  I may not blame you for not being employed, for a while after graduating from the university etc; I will only see you as a bad hire if the vacuum shows in your CV without you accounting for it productively. So if you have that in your CV then it is a Virus, kick it out or make productive account of it.

11.  Duties instead of Accomplishments:    Highlighting the duties of the job you  were/are doing is a waste of space. Rather than saying what your duties were/are, why not state what you were/are able to accomplish while performing those duties.

12.  Irrelevant Experience: In as much as we cannot justifiably fault recruiters decision to hire applicants with work experience, Job seekers should not leverage on that to give irrelevant work experience. Two weeks of relevant work experience is more valuable to a prospective employer than two years of shelves stacking (except you are applying to work in a book shop or library). Rather than give irrelevant work experience while not identify the aspect of what you’ve got that tallies with your target job.
 Don't forget to leave your comments and questions in the comment box or send them to shadedreflects@gmail.com

Buhari gets 44.5 million naira campaign fund from supporters

By Nasir Nafisat 

The adoption of Obama's style of raising fund for campaining adopted by APC presidential flag bearer, General Buhari seems to be yielding positive fruit, as he said that his supporters have contributed the sum of 44.5 million Naira to help in his campaign against 2015 election.

General Muhammadu Buhari says Nigerians have been contributing the sum of 100 Naira each for his presidential campaign for the 2015 general elections, insisting that he is not breaking any law as regards the funding.
General Buhari told a press conference in Abuja on Tuesday that he had adopted the approach by US President Barack Obama, when he asked his supporters to contribute towards his campaign.
He said that the crowdfunding project had so far realised the sum of 44.5 million Naira through direct deposit and sale of donation cards
The APC flag bearer had told supporters while delivering a speech on the day of the presidential primary election that he had no money to lobby or gratify any one, asking for their support.
The funds so far raised, according to him, showed the kind of support that he had received from Nigerians.
The former military Head of State, General Buhari, will on February 14 vie for the presidential seat with the incumbent President and flag bearer of the Peoples Democratic Party, Goodluck Jonathan.

Tribunal affirms Fayose as Governor

The Ekiti State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal sitting in Abuja has dismissed the petition filed by the All Progressives Congress challenging the return of Ayodele Fayose of the Peoples Democratic Party as the winner of the governorship election held in the state.

The tribunal affirmed the return of Fayose by the Independent National Election Commission, (INEC), in June.

In a swift reaction, the APC vowed to appeal the verdict of the tribunal while Fayose described them as “bad losers.”

The panel held that the witnesses paraded by the petitioner were unable to adduce concrete evidence to support allegations of corrupt practices at the polling units.

It also held that their testimonies did not support the allegations that the election did not comply substantially with the provisions of the Electoral Act.

10 silly mistakes job seekers make

                                                                             HR TALK

                                                                                  with

                                                                  

Moruf Kolawole Nasir

(Experienced HR professional)

Many writers, HR and non-HR practitioners, have written on the subject of hindrances to getting invited for job interviews. Unfortunately not all job seekers have access to these information and some of the articles are distanced from the average Nigerian Job seeker’s reality.

Even though economic reality may be one of the major factors responsible for applicants’ inability to get called for interview and eventually job, there are plethora of silly mistakes on the part of the job seekers.

I categorize these mistakes into three groups vis:

A.     Silly mistakes during submission of CV/application

B.     Silly mistakes in CVs

C.     Silly mistakes of non-alignment of candidate with the job opening.

We will concentrate on the first group and address the other groups in subsequent articles.

Silly Mistakes Job seekers Make During Application Or When Submitting Their CVs For Job Openings.

1.      Sending mail without attachment: We sometimes make this mistake during our correspondences by sending mail and forgetting to attach the required documents, until the recipient of the mail call our attention to it. Unfortunately, Job seekers don’t enjoy such luxury. No matter the number of applications you send without attaching your CV, be rest assured of not being shortlisted for interview.

2.      Sending mail without content: This may look harmless but trust me, a recruiter won’t find it funny if he opens an application and the only message in the mail reads: “Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN” with the subject “my CV or my application”. This is exactly what some applicants do, yet they expect to be invited for interview.

3.      Sending mail without cover letter: Most job seekers send out applications without cover letter. I personally don’t give too much weight to cover letters (especially if it is online application) because I hardly read them, and many HR professionals don’t either. You are however sending signal of an unserious job applicant if I open your mail and there is no form of introduction at least about yourself and what you are applying for (even if I did not read the content). I must quickly say most of us don’t read the cover letters because we want to access as many CV as possible and the time spent reading one cover letter is enough to read another CV. God help you if I have limited CVs and I am interested in reading your cover letter and you have none or you send hard copy of your CV without cover letter.

4.      Group application: I have received applications from multiple candidates through a single source at once and I have also received applications that have been forwarded to many other companies before I received them and I kept asking myself if those applicants really wanted the job or they were just testing their skills on the usage of the internet. Yet they wanted me to invite them (as unserious as they were) for interview.

5.      Not following instructions: Due to the volume of applications we receive, HR professionals device means of separating each of the advertised positions. In doing this, we either formulate code for each job or give each of the job a particular ‘subject of the mail’. But funny enough most jobseekers just ignore these instructions and follow their own regular way of applying for jobs. Little did they know that the complex application instructions are sometimes used to test their willingness to follow instruction and attend to details if employed.

6.      Sending scanned CVs: Sometimes I find it hard to understand why applicants go the extra mile of scanning their CVs before attaching and sending it when no instruction told them to do so. And in most cases those scanned CVs were never well scanned; what I still do not understand is whether they were actually scanned or snapped with phones, and of course sent to a friend to help them apply for a job they know next to nothing about.

7.      Inaccessible CVs: I sometimes wonder why, despite all the software on my system, I still cannot open some CV’s.  I have not met any hiring manager who will go out of his way just to open a CV to enable him invite the candidate for interview. Simple MS word is enough, except otherwise instructed. I wonder where the complication is coming from.

8.      Being Too eager for the job: There is no crime in contacting the hiring manager if you have his contact, but when your calls begin to distract/disturb him, he begins to have a rethink about you, if hiring you will not be a problem to the company. Except you have a personal relationship with him and that should not be abused either.

9.      Not applying early: This is an aspect many jobseekers take for granted. By practice all advert should have at least a week window for application, but in reality, the CV’s of the first set of people who applied for the job are considered, except where the job attracts limited applications or CV’s sorted electronically. We can imagine how many cases of the exceptions abound.

10.  READ 1-9 AGAIN             


send your questions or enquiries to shadedreflects@gmail.com

Five PDP lawmakers defected to APC

The battle in the National assembly seems to be getting hotter as five of the house members who were elected into the assembly under the umbrella of the People Democratic Party  today Dec. 16th defected to the APC. The members are: Isiaka Mohammed‎, Ibrahim El-sudi, Taraba, Adams Jagaba, Kaduna, Hambe Herman, Benue & Ahmed Aisha Dahiru, Adamawa. They announced their defection today.

EKITI: Fayose's aide cautions APC

The Chief Press Secretary to Ekiti State Governor, Mr Idowu Adelusi, has advised the All Progressives Congress in the state to stop its campaign of calumny against the government.

Adelusi, who spoke in Ado-Ekiti on Tuesday, said the claim by the APC that Governor Ayo Fayose presented the 2015 budget to the House of Assembly in an illegal and unconstitutional manner was frivolous.

He said the statement by APC State Publicity Secretary, Mr Taiwo Olatubosun, was not only mischievous but misleading.

Adelusi said, “I wondered why the Ekiti APC was still talking after recklessly grounding the state. The last APC -led government was an aberration which Ekiti people never prayed for again.

“They are shameless sort of people, otherwise they are supposed to bury their faces in shame for mortgaging the future of Ekiti people particularly, the generation unborn. Still, they engage in propaganda to deceive the gullible minds.

“It is amusing that the APC described the presentation of the budget as illegal; let them tell the whole world what is illegal in that. The APC lawmakers, who have voluntarily left their official jobs undone, have gone to court.

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“Are they saying state matters and governor’s official assignments and duties be suspended until their matter in court is decided? The governor, as the leader of the good people of the state, cannot and will never allow anybody or group to hold the state to ransom.

“The governor has no business with the internal affairs of the House of Assembly. If the APC lawmakers boycotted their lawful duties, that is their problem.

Adelusi also faulted the claim that reporters were not allowed into the chamber of the Assembly.

“Why are APC leaders thinking that people are fools? Has the APC interviewed the reporters and they said they did not witness the proceeding? No reporter was hindered from covering the assignment.

“We are advising APC leaders and members to quickly get over the bashing they got in the June 21 governorship poll and put the interest of the state at heart,” he added


                                                                                                                            Punch News