Championing Employability For Honoris Students

Each year, we define our employability priorities in line with labour market trends to improve student and alumni employability and best prepare our graduates to take on the jobs of tomorrow.

Four of our inspiring Pan-African students from ESPRIT and IMSET in Tunisia, Nile University of Nigeria, and EMSI in Morocco shared their experiences with Honoris employability initiatives around these priorities.

Ange Michelle Nyankam Tchoutouo – Engineering Student, ESPRIT School of Engineering, Tunisia

“As an engineering student, I took part in the ESPRIT workshop on collective intelligence. I really appreciated this workshop because the work was done in groups, and the interventions of each person were taken into account. Also, the communication between participants and the supervisor was very fluid and the atmosphere, in general, was superb.

I am proud to continue my education at this university. With their rigorous curriculum and knowledgeable faculty, I am preparing comprehensively for my professional career. The courses are designed to give us hands-on experience and help us develop essential skills to succeed in our field. Also, the various training, workshops, and seminars organized and implemented allow me to discover and develop the skills sought after in the job market.”

James Williams – Economics Student, Nile University of Nigeria, Nigeria

“As part of the implementation of the memorandum of understanding between Nile University of Nigeria and the foremost financial institutions in the country, the Department of Economics deemed it necessary to utilize the internship opportunities contained in the signed MoU and expose high-performing students in the department to industry-grade experience with prestigious financial institutions in the country, one of which was the Development Bank of Nigeria (DBN) where I interned for 3-months

I benefitted immensely from this employer partnership opportunity in unquantifiable and innumerable ways. First, I gained amazing insight into the operations of the corporate world. Before now, the corporate world to me existed in abstraction, seeing it projected in movies, books, etc., watching and reading countless legends about its operation, the lies, the truths, and everything in between. But with the internship opportunity provided by Nile University at that time, I had firsthand experience of what living and working in the corporate reality is and what it feels like.

I learned and understood what works and what doesn’t, the do’s and the don’ts, the best practices and punishable malfeasance as well as in-vogue skill sets and the anachronistic ones. It further gave me a sense of the gaps I need to fill if I am to have a seamless transition from the academic to the corporate world, and it made me appreciate the beauty of the inner workings and structures of financial institutions.It was insightful exposure to a world I was once a stranger to.”

Nour Khedhiri – Accounting and Finance Student, IMSET, Tunisia

One element of IMSET’s comparative advantage over other local and regional TVETs is the creation of its H2E institution. H2E is the 7th Tunisian training institution created through the Network of Training Companies of Tunisia (ReeT). ReeT is attached to a global network of more than 7,000 global private sector companies that work directly with student trainees on various real-world market operations in order to improve students’ skills and competencies in a variety of industries. As part of the H2E program, students earn professional certifications and work experience they can leverage for jobs.

“Working at the H2E practice company was an excellent opportunity in my professional career, as an accounting and finance student, to quickly get a job in a firm. This is what H2E offered us; live the real tasks, learn to communicate well with your collaborators, be punctual, learn to respect employment contracts, work in a team and learn to develop your technical and behavioural skills.”

Douae El Mandri – Computer Engineering and Networks Student & Data Scientist Intern, EMSI, Morocco

“In collaboration with its partner Effyis Group, the EMSI Casablanca career centre organized a recruitment session which took place on December 07, 2022. As a result, I had the opportunity to finalize my recruitment process, I was able to validate my Codingame and my interviews with the HR & technical referents with the supervision and support of the career centre team.

Thanks to the services offered by the career centre (CV correction workshop and interview preparation), I was able to benefit from these resources and acquire professional skills that helped me to seize this internship opportunity.

Within the company, I had the opportunity to work on side projects which are actually very important for the firm. This work requires a lot of autonomy and a strong research capacity. Every day, I have to take on challenges and solve them on my own, while being able to defend them afterwards. In sum, it is essential to be an engineer who can work independently and overcome the obstacles that arise.

This experience allowed me to learn a lot about Data Science and how to work independently. I also learned skills in problem-solving and defending my ideas. I am convinced that this experience will be very useful for my future professional career.”