Helping graduates become experts
With increasing skills gap in labour market and his experience in navigating a separate reality from the classroom, Nicholas Gachara founded Somakazi to train accountants to transition to professionals.
Immediately after graduating with Bachelors of Commerce in accounting and finance, Nicholas Gachara felt disoriented.
Even after spending years in the university acquiring the needed skills to excel in this field, he still felt inadequate and jumbled.
In 2010, desperate, he landed a job, but the salary was only enough to cater for the commute to work.
Three months later, he was frustrated and even more depressed, forcing him to look for another job.
“Like many other graduates, I did not have direction, and without a mentor to guide me through it all, I was left wondering if this was the right career for me.
I was caught between going back to school or working in the bank. Then I interned in an audit firm and they later retained me with a salary of Sh7,000,” he says.
Sharpen skills
Not satisfied with the offer, he hunted for another job and got one that paid him Sh30,000.
For a man whose salary increased four times his previous one, it was great. However, he felt unsatisfied and stagnant career-wise.
“After three years, there was no growth in position and salary and I knew it was time to move on.
I admired accountants in big corporate offices who seemed to be always happy.
They were paid well, and my evaluation showed they were better skilled than I was.
That’s when I decided to sharpen my skills through training,” he says.
After improving his skills, he got better opportunities including becoming a financial accountant in a multinational, and getting consulting opportunities in preparation of accounts and reports. This increased his visibility in the sector.
It was not long before recent graduates and juniors would inbox him with mentorship requests, all curious to know how he had excelled in the industry.
He realised that most of them were confused like he was when he was starting 10 years ago, so he decided to look for a solution.
In December 2019, he came up with a course that led to the creation of Somakazi, a personalised and packaged career mentorship and technical skill transfer for accountants.
Relatively new
Somakazi, Gachara says, is a three-module course that will ensure your accounting career is on the right path.
“Before coming up with Somakazi, I asked myself what I had lacked and had needed as a graduate 10 years ago.
What was the missing link? We have a human resource specialist and two finance managers, giving career guides and mentorship on a one-on-one basis.
Additionally, we offer financial modelling, reporting, forecasting and consolidation,” he says.
With the platform, Gachara wants to narrow the gap between the theoretical schoolwork and real-time scenarios. Graduates leave school with a degree, but are not fully prepared.
“For you to excel in this industry, you will need human resource managers to notice your efforts and your manager to mentor you.
Further, you will need to master financial modelling, reporting, forecasting, and consolidation. We offer all this training for Sh10,000,” he says.
His services also include teaching how to writer CVs after he found out that most recent graduates do not know how to sell themselves using their CVs, which an average human resource manager will in 10 seconds decide whether to read it or not.
“Such skills may seem trivial, but through training and mentorship from people with years of experience, you will be able to understand what employers look for in a potential candidate you will be able to better position yourself through asking the right questions,” he adds.
Once a person completes the course, they are issued with a certificate of participation.
“The certificate is good, but what is important are the skills you acquire. When you perform at work and make a good report, nobody cares about the certificate,” Gachara says.
Somakazi has aso experienced challenges.
“The somakazi course is relatively new, so people find it hard to understand it despite testimonials of people who have mastered and applied what they learnt.
Coronavirus has reduced the number of people applying, but if you look at it even with the economic challenges, some people are getting bonuses and job offers, it all about skills and how you position yourself,” he explains.
He notes junior accountants are the first to be affected during economic hard times and urge them not to be discouraged.
Rather, they should work towards improving their skill sets and positioning themselves.
