Despite significant economic challenges like inequality, poverty, marginalisation, and elevated unemployment, numerous young Namibians graduate each year with hope. Nonetheless, a considerable number experience prolonged durations of unemployment and labour market entry. Graduates face a lack of opportunities, inadequate experience, and psychosocial hazards due to prolonged unemployment. Indeed, the nation is experiencing a significant unemployment crisis. What factors make graduates see limited prospects as unreachable? Why is this happening? Companies struggle to find the right talent. Graduates often seek multiple internships, leading to exploitation, career fragmentation, and dignity issues, affecting their well-being and society at large.
Some blame the education system’s mismatch with industry needs, but is skill deficiency universal? What’s causing the disconnect, and how can human resources (HR) help graduates find quality employment? The youth hold the future, but the gap between potential and job opportunities widens daily. Youth unemployment is not just a government issue but also an HR challenge. HR professionals are key to creating decent work and supporting livelihoods.
Hire for potential, not just experience
Look at some job advert and you will see that “Minimum three years’ experience requirement.” Some employers expect a 22-year-old graduate to have at least three to five years of relevant work experience for an entry-level job. Our hiring standards and mimicking of recruitment practices often exclude the very people we claim that we want to empower, i.e., young graduates and early-career professionals.
Many young people face barriers such as skills mismatch, ineffective school-to-work transitions and limited job creation initiatives. Notwithstanding, unethical recruitment practices that favours relatives of those in possession of hiring and absolute power. The reports of ‘isms’ in recruitment are among many cases in point! Every experienced employee was once given their first break by someone who saw what they could become. Why have we built systems now that prize experience over potential? Why are we facilitating socioeconomic barriers for citizens instead of collapsing them? With this mindset, we risk losing an entire generation of talent to frustration and disengagement.
The youth are more than a labour market statistic; they are a reservoir of innovation, creativity, resilience, and potential. They deserve decent work, and we know that decent work is a victim of unemployment. Therefore, HR must not view youth employment as a social responsibility issue but must treat it as a strategic business advantage. Hire for potential, and you will unlock innovation that experience alone cannot guarantee.
Youth employment is a business opportunity
Namibian youth are our country’s transformation engine. They are quick learners, digital natives, adaptable and often the best mirrors of emerging customer expectations. Hiring young people into our workplaces does not only inject fresh energy but also accelerates innovation and build future-ready organisations. Offering decent work and youth inclusion can help organisations build talent pipeline. In today’s talent driven economy, giving young people a fair start allows you to build your own skilled workforce who understand your culture, systems and customers. Youth inclusion is not charity, it’s smart HR.
What can HR do?
We do not require massive budgets or complex policies to create decent work for young people. It requires a mind shift in how we think and act as HR leaders. Here are a few practical ways and business-friendly ideas to prove that we are strategic partners, not only in boardrooms, but in the lives, we touch:
Hire for potential, not just experience. Use skills-based recruitment tools to focus on skills, curiosity and problem solving instead of rigid job specs. Create entry-level programs that give young people real opportunities to grow.
Build youth pipelines through structured graduate and internship/ apprenticeships programmes that lead to permanent opportunities.
Create learning ecosystems by pairing young talents with experienced mentors.
Rethink job design to offer flexible and project-based roles that build real experience.
Collaborate with universities and TVET’s to co-create job readiness initiatives.
Champion decent work standards through fair employment, respectful treatment and opportunities for growth for the youth.
Champion youth agency to foster social dialogue and collective bargaining to significantly alleviate fundamental constraints of decent work for economically disadvantaged young people.
To assist in alleviating youth unemployment in the country, HR must move from compliance-focussed practices to purpose-driven strategies that cultivate youth inclusion, employability and innovation. In a country with 36.1% of youth unemployment, HR has the power to turn the youth unemployment crisis into a narrative fidelity. Let’s commit to opening doors; even just one youth placement per company can start a ripple effect. Afterall, “the glory of young men is their strength, and the splendor of old men is their grey hair” (Proverbs 20:29).
Let us fully support the government’s youth upliftment initiative. The future of decent work in Namibia depends on what HR does today. We can influence policies that open doors for future generations, ultimately leaving a lasting legacy that shapes our profession. Many businesses are already walking the walk. To those already investing in young talent, may your example inspire others to follow suit. HR, let’s not be gatekeepers! We are the land of the brave, but even the brave need support. Hire for hope and wishfulness. Become a signpost for the next generation and leave a lasting HR legacy. That’s the HR promise Namibia needs right now.