Vocational skills typically refer to skills and occupations that you gain toward becoming knowledgeable in a specific trade or profession. Acquiring one or two vocational skills is a vital first step to entrepreneurship. Most successful business owners and entrepreneurs in Nigeria started by acquiring a vocational skill or training that is in high demand in the society.
Today, over 73 million young people in Africa are jobless, meaning that a young person is three times more likely to be unemployed than an adult. Aside from paving your way to entrepreneurship, acquiring one or two vocational skill in Nigeria will make you more employable among the millions of Nigerian workers and graduates that are currently unemployed. This post is all about the top vocational skills and training that are worth acquiring in Nigeria.
1. Hair Styling (Unisex)
Hairstylists are an important part of the health and beauty industry, as they are responsible for cutting and styling clients’ hair. They are highly skilled in their ability to handle hair, and also have extensive knowledge of the appropriate products for different hair types. In Nigeria today, hair-stylist are very much in demand everywhere you go.
Hair Stylists need specific skills to become successful at cutting and styling hair. These skills may be learned while attending vocational school and while on the job. As a hairstylist, you are constantly learning and will always want to keep up on the newest trends to be successful. If you ever dream of starting a beauty salon business someday, you need to be very skillful and knowledgeable about hairs and hairstyles.
Also Read: How To Start Your Own Real Estate Business In Nigeria.
2. Fashion Designing
Style and design go hand in hand. If you’re a good designer, you will also be able to effortlessly piece fabrics and garments together to create a stunning end product. Fashion design is a glamorous career – from dressing top models and celebrities to showcasing at fashion shows across the country across to making and selling ready-to-wear clothing for the young and adults.
If you are going to be creating and designing your own clothes, learning to draw is important for you to be able to bring your ideas to life by drawing them on paper. Good fashion designers don’t just need to be able to bring their ideas to life, but they also need to have a good eye for detail. Although there’s a lot of pressure that comes with being a fashion designer, it can also be an extremely rewarding and lucrative career choice.
3. Makeup Artistry
Makeup artistry is a type of vocational skill that brings out the cosmetic “best” in people making them more beautiful and attractive to the eyes. The beauty industry has labeled makeup artistry as a goldmine for self-made women by Forbes.
In Nigeria, looking good is good business. There is a boom of makeup artists right now. Many of which are mostly young female fashion enthusiasts. The need for a makeup artists may be seasonal and occasional (majorly on weekends) but its a booming profession for very skillful artists.
Providing your services to wedding ceremonies and beauty salons will allow you to quickly create a clientele. Whether you attend formal classes, watch makeup videos on YouTube or choose to partake in on-the-job training, acquire unique skills that further expand your knowledge so that your makeup artist business will make money.
4. Event Planning
Every weekend, hundreds of thousands of Nigerians are attending one event to another, from weddings to child dedication, to house warming or burials. Event planning is a type of vocational skill that involves a lot of management and supervision. Being an event planner is both a rewarding job and rated to be one of the most stressful in the world. A good event planner needs to know a bit of everything, from catering to baking to managing resources and personnel.
The long-term success of an event planning business will be based on the experience that the planner brings to his or her clients. So when it comes to securing a successful path through the events industry, you’re going to need a diverse set of baseline event planning skills and a great network of diverse event professionals, such as caterers, photographers, DJs, bands, lighting, and A/V, décor, video, and beyond.
5. Electrical Repairs
If you have found yourself repairing little electrical appliances in your apartment, for your friends, family members, and neighbors, then it is high time you think of acquiring more in-depth electrical repair skills and starting your own electrical repair business.
One thing with household electrical appliances is that anyone regardless of how much they earn can own one, and while some people do not mind replacing their faulty appliances with a new one, most people would prefer to repair their appliances in a bid to save money.
Even though this is not a business that requires any sort of formal training before one can start it, having experience from either vocational training or an apprentice program will help you have an edge over your competitors.
Also Read: How To Start A Profitable Business With Little Capital In Nigeria.
6. Home Cleaning
Starting a home cleaning business is one of the least expensive ways to become a business owner. This is a lucrative business in the urban parts of the country as there will always be homes that need cleaning, and it’s a job people are eager to handoff.
The skills required to become a professional home cleaner are simple and basic skills that we all pick up in our homes when we were growing up. The only thing to do to distinguish yourself is to be as professional as possible and get the right cleaning equipment to make your life easier. You can checkout Nigerian websites like Fichaya.com for more inspiration.
7. Arts and Crafts
Art and craft are any of a wide variety of types of work where useful and decorative objects are made completely by hand or by using only simple tools. Arts and crafts describe a wide variety of activities involving making things with one’s own hands. Arts and crafts is usually a hobby. Some crafts (art skills) have been practiced for centuries, others are more recent inventions.
Common arts and crafts activities required among Nigerians are Painting, Drawing, Weaving, Beading, Sewing, and Shoemaking. Acquiring any of the afore-mentioned arts and crafts skills will set you up an incredible journey of business as you can easily beautiful art products and sell them to people that like them.
Conclusion
In conclusion, vocational education can play a vital role in the stability and security of Nigeria’s economy. The more the numbers of vocational skilled entrepreneurs the more money there is to be made and kept within the economy.
It takes less time than a traditional four-year university to obtain a job with vocational skills and can be learned in a few months to two years at any vocational training institutes around you.