Bootcamp training for graduates

“Everyone is a sales person.” That is what international sale.s specialist Enzo Graziano emphasised upon while training Tanzanian graduates, entrepreneurs and recruiters. He was accompanied by Dr Darlene Mutalemwa, Senior Lecturer at Mzumbe University Dar es Salaam Campus, college.

According to the duo, to be a sales person means, “from the time you get up in the morning until the time you go to bed at night, you are continually negotiating, communicating, persuading, influencing and trying to get people to cooperate with you to do the things that you want them to do”.

Dr Mutalemwa explained that, at university we learn to win grades but in the world outside university, we learn to win people.

“And that requires one to be more skillful to know how to sell his product to his/her intended customer. In order to best prepare graduates for a competitive workplace, this gap or what is often referred to as the war for talent must be addressed,” she said.

She described that, graduate employability has become a thorny issue in the economies of a developing country like Tanzania. There exist reports and stories of the hardships graduates go through when trying to find employment. And there are also reports on employer dissatisfaction with the graduates seeking employment, especially their poor preparedness for the workplace.

A frequent descriptor is that they are ‘half-baked’. The high unemployment rate among graduates in Tanzania is attributed to lack of work experience, training opportunities and soft skills, which the 2016 World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report poignantly remarked that it is difficult to survive without these skills which are transferable.

The aim of the graduate sales bootcamp which was first ran in September 2015 and included 60 graduates, 20 recruiters and one sponsor, October 2016 (300 attendees of which 100 were graduates and 20 were sponsors, with 200 staff, and in November 2017 (600 diverse attendees and 23 sponsors).

This year’s bootcamp took place from 4-5th September and it aimed at forcing graduates out of their comfort zone (mindset, personality traits and behavioral patterns) as well as improve their employment prospects as successful job seekers, job shapers and job makers.

The graduate sales bootcamp this year provided skills and knowledge on selling to professionals, graduates and students in the healthcare sector and also young delegates from Kisutu Secondary School students (132) who were taught life skills to enable them to implement in the future what they have been taught and not to make the same mistakes as those of the current university graduates.

There is always something new about selling that everybody needs to learn and some of the people who attended previous trainings prove it.

Doreen Materu, a graduate in political science and public administration from the University of Dar es Salaam remarked “I expected the bootcamp to land me a job. I was so wrong. I realized that I was not ready to be employed because I did not know how to sell a story and how to sacrifice”.

Hyasinta Ntuyeko, a manufacturing entrepreneur remarked “I shamefully noted a number of mistakes we made when selling our products which were centering on pride and lack of humility when approaching a customer. I have learnt how to make my customers trust me”.

People have to know that the way they live their life is how they sell themselves; like the use of social media can make people view what kind of person you are.

This is done by looking at what you post or comment on, your dressing code always hints at the type of person you are, one has to wear to be trusted and not to attract attention. Another thing is the way you speak, you to communicate in a way that makes your customer or employer to believe that you are confident, wise, humble, competent and the right professional in the position that you are in. That is known as selling for the eye contact.