Why aspiration mismatch is a bigger challenge than skill mismatch

Prottoy wants to work for a bank. He likes the commercials featuring young individuals wearing white shirts, in their vehicles, waving to their spouses as they leave. He aspires to land in one of those roles in real life. His girlfriend Ramisa is sitting for the BCS exam this year, and wants him to apply for BCS one more time. If he fails, she would like to move to Dhaka with him when they get married. But it all depends on the job! "It's  very difficult for her parents to choose me if I can't provide for her '', he says. 

But Prottoy has yet to convince his father about the banking sector job. His father, a government official himself, wants his one and only son to be like him. Understanding what's at stake, Prottoy can't speak to his father about marrying his girlfriend, having another career option, moving to Dhaka and all that! 

He aims  to speak to them after one of the jobs is finalised. A year ago, Prottoy wanted a government job too. But his motivation has gone down after being rejected the first time. 

With Ramisa's family getting impatient about her marriage, he is somewhat confused and cannot decide which path to take for a better future. After being probed for half an hour, he said he would go into the  private sector, but he also doesn't want to disappoint his father. Although he aspires to work for a bank, he doesn't know how to get into one. 

Such is the case of thousands of youth in Bangladesh. 

The gaps in the job market 

While Brac has spent the last 51 years working mostly with underprivileged kids through NGO initiatives, addressing the needs of the educated youth has become a recent concern, because of rising unemployment and uncertainty of future employment. These issues have made Bangladeshi youth more frustrated and susceptible to mental health breakdowns. 

As such, an initiative called Career Hub was launched by Brac in 2021 in Rangpur, and shortly afterwards in Sylhet, to understand the needs of the youth in tertiary education, to  increase their employability skills and link them to jobs. Just this week Brac Career Hub opened a hub in Chattogram. 

Regardless of the location, our career counsellors state that today's educated youth have choices to opt out of jobs that they don't aspire to do. For example, the highest jobs available in the markets are marketing and sales representatives;  there are over 30% of jobs in this sector in Rangpur and Sylhet. But when approaching the youth, especially from public universities, we see a lack of interest in joining these jobs due to negative perceptions about the work being precarious, long hours, not much job security and being without much benefit. 

Graduates would rather tutor children, and prepare for BCS exams with the remaining time at hand, rather than take on sales jobs, even with  higher pay. 

On the other hand, we see national university students wanting to take on sales representative roles, but unable to demonstrate basic employable skills such as speaking fluently, writing their CVs and being able to carry out basic computer skills. 

Bridging the gap

As such, the gap between youth aspirations and the reality of the labour markets in Bangladesh is large, and more of us need to talk about that, rather than just skills mismatch. 

The job aspirations of the youth - who are continuing or have completed tertiary education - have little in common with currently available jobs. Youths also do not aspire to have a career choice in mind, but rather want a 'job', and cannot differentiate the two. They often aspire to be something, and land in careers based on the choice of their parents, or by pressure of their family. 

A 2018 joint survey conducted by BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD) and BRAC University, also revealed that the majority of youth who complete higher secondary education and above, aspire to be in government jobs. Evidence from Career Hubs also shows that educated youth value government jobs the most, which will ensure them with security and power. 

But only 6% of jobs in the public sector cannot cater to roughly one million graduates  who enter the labour market every year. By the time a young person is 30 years old, and has  given up on the BCS dream, their  choice to join the private sector at an entry-level position also reduces significantly. 

Therefore, parents and policymakers need to take note of this aspiration mismatch between the youth and jobs, and help youths shape their career aspirations based on the realistic needs of the country. 

Improving the quality of private sector jobs and  the behaviour of employers, which will motivate the youth to stay in such career pathways, also needs attention. 

From our experience, we see that young female participants often change their mindset and join work outside their district or even division, which they were not ready to do before joining the counselling sessions. But with young male participants, we often see that even after getting  a good job they switch jobs, prioritising the government job or a job with a lower salary, in a sector they  may not be good at but aspire to be in. 

Thus, much work has to be done to understand this aspiration mismatch within the youth that exists nowadays. A person will only work towards skilling themselves if they are interested in working in the sector. 

If the interest is not there, a person will not focus on acquiring the right skills. Therefore, organisations seeking entry-level job seekers should be able to promote their jobs well, not just by packaging it as a job, but a package with good work culture, security, and stability. 

Tasmiah Rahman is the Associate Director of the Skills Development Programme at Brac. With over 15 years of experience, she works passionately for youth and skills development. 

Career Hub powered by Brac, is a new initiative that matches youth to their career pathway of choice