There is a quiet contradiction at the heart of most engineering job listings today. A fresh graduate opens a job portal only to be stopped by a requirement that reads: “3–5 years of experience required” — for a role they are applying to precisely because they are new to the field. It is a paradox, so common we have stopped questioning it. We should not.
Young engineers are caught in a loop the system itself created. Companies say they cannot hire without experience, yet those same companies are rarely willing to provide it. Every experienced engineer was once inexperienced. The difference is that an earlier generation of employers were willing to invest.
What companies overlook is the advantage young engineers bring; no entrenched habits, fluency in emerging technologies, fresh academic knowledge, and the drive to prove themselves. These are not weaknesses. They are assets being ignored.
The cost is real. Talented young people take irrelevant jobs simply to accumulate years on a CV. Others leave the continent entirely, finding opportunities abroad where graduate schemes are built into the hiring pipeline. Africa does not only lose talent to brain drain; it loses it to a hiring culture that never opened the door.
There is a better way. Companies that build internship pipelines and graduate programmes report stronger loyalty and lower long-term hiring costs. They are not doing young engineers a favour, they are doing themselves one.
The task is simple: where the role genuinely allows it, replace rigid experience requirements with a willingness to train. Create the entry points. Invest in the engineers your industry will depend on in a decade.
A young engineer never given the chance to grow is not a risk. They are a missed opportunity. And missed opportunities, compounded over time, become a crisis.
Yirenkyi Yahaya
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect The Chronicle’s stance.
