Ghanaian graduates entering the labour market are facing a recruitment environment in which academic qualifications alone may no longer be enough, as employers rely on technology, cognitive abilities, and behavioural skills to identify suitable candidates.
Casely Ato Coleman, a senior fellow of IMANI Africa and global Human Resources Practitioner-Scholar, said graduates need to understand how the labour market is changing and deliberately build the skills required to remain competitive after leaving university.
Coleman, who until recently served as Global Director of People and Culture at the Meliore Foundation in Belgium, said artificial intelligence was changing the nature of work and the way employers identify talent.
“The world of work” is being reshaped by AI, he told final-year Political Science students at the University of Ghana, while stressing that human intelligence and socio-emotional and cognitive skills would remain critical in determining who successfully enters the labour market.
His comments highlight a growing challenge for universities and employers: graduates may leave school with strong theoretical knowledge but still struggle to translate that knowledge into skills that businesses can immediately use.
Coleman drew on more than three decades of experience in international development and human resources to explain how knowledge is generated within organisations, the key components of jobs, and the major trends influencing what employers are looking for.
He said the same trends affecting employment were also relevant to entrepreneurship, suggesting that graduates need to think beyond traditional job applications and develop the ability to identify opportunities, solve problems, and adapt to changing business environments.
A major part of the lecture focused on technology-enabled recruitment. Graduates were introduced to platforms used in job searches and shown how to prepare for increasingly “Psycho-Technological” screening processes associated with AI-centred recruitment.
The shift means recruitment is becoming less focused on academic credentials alone and more concerned with whether candidates can demonstrate practical competencies, adaptability, empathy, resilience, and integrity.
Coleman also urged students to learn how to communicate their capabilities through competency-based interviews, using authentic experiences to demonstrate how they have handled challenges and solved problems.
That puts greater pressure on graduates to understand their own capabilities before entering the job market. Rather than approaching employment as a one-off search for vacancies, Mr Coleman encouraged students to develop individual career plans and use mentoring, professional networks and relationships to execute them.
The implications extend beyond individual job seekers. Employers need access to graduates who can adapt quickly to technology and changing organisational requirements, while universities face increasing pressure to connect classroom learning with workplace realities.
The University of Ghana’s Department of Political Science is seeking to address part of that gap through its practitioners’ series, which brings experienced professionals into the academic environment to expose students to practical knowledge.
Coleman, a 1993 Political Science graduate of the university, said his objective was to help students understand the ecosystem of work and prepare for the realities they would encounter after graduation.
The lecture was attended by University of Ghana Registrar Michael Opare Atuah, Dr Bossman Asare, and Professor Rosina Foli, while Professor Isaac Owusu-Mensah, Head of the Department of Political Science, chaired the session.
Professor Owusu-Mensah said the practitioners’ series was a flagship programme designed to integrate experienced practitioners into the department’s course offering and give final-year students insights that connect theory with practice.
Ghanaian businesses will need employees who can adapt as technology reshapes job roles and workplace processes. For graduates, this makes it important to build practical, cognitive, and interpersonal skills that complement their academic qualifications and improve their ability to compete for jobs.
