There is a particular kind of confidence that comes with being a fresh graduate.
You have your certificate. You have completed your internship. You have attended seminars, acquired a few extra skills, polished your CV and, if you are particularly ambitious, created a LinkedIn account and started posting inspirational quotes about career growth.
You are ready.
Then reality introduces itself.
“Do you know anyone?”
And suddenly, the four years you spent studying begin to feel like only half of the qualification.
Because in Ghana, there is an uncomfortable belief that getting a job is not always about what you know. Sometimes, it is about who you know.
You can have a first-class degree and still be sitting at home refreshing your email.
Someone else can have a second-class degree, an uncle who knows someone who knows the managing director and, by Monday morning, have a desk, an ID card and a new job title on LinkedIn.
And before anyone gets offended, this is not an argument against connections.
Connections matter everywhere.
People recommend people they trust. Employers often prefer candidates who come through credible referrals. Networking is a legitimate part of building a career.
The problem begins when connections become a substitute for competence.
When the question is no longer, “Can this person do the job?”
but rather,
“Who sent them?”
That is where things become frustrating.
Because imagine spending years being told that education is the key to opportunity, only to graduate and discover that the key apparently has another key attached to it.
You submit your CV.
Nothing.
You apply again.
Nothing.
You tailor your cover letter.
Nothing.
You acquire another certificate.
Still nothing.
Then your friend casually says, “Oh, my uncle works there.”
Suddenly, the vacancy you have been looking at for three months has become surprisingly accessible.
This is where graduate unemployment becomes more than just a statistics problem. It becomes a psychological one.
There is something deeply discouraging about watching qualified young people repeatedly apply for opportunities while others appear to move ahead because they had access to the right person.
Eventually, the graduate starts questioning everything.
Was my degree worth it?
Did I study the wrong course?
Am I not good enough?
Should I have networked more?
Should I have gone to more events and collected more phone numbers?
Should I have called somebody’s cousin’s friend?
And perhaps the most dangerous conclusion is:
“Maybe merit does not matter.”
That is the part we should be careful about.
Because merit does matter.
Skills matter.
Hard work matters.
Competence matters.
But pretending that relationships and social networks do not matter would also be dishonest.
The real issue is that access to networks is not evenly distributed.
Some young people grew up around professionals, business owners, politicians, lawyers, doctors and executives. They know who to call. They know where to apply. They know which opportunities exist before they are advertised.
Others may be equally talented but have nobody in their immediate circle who can open that first door.
And once you understand that, “who you know” starts looking less like a joke and more like a structural advantage.
This is why telling unemployed graduates to simply “work hard” can sometimes sound almost insulting.
They are working hard.
They are applying.
They are learning.
They are volunteering.
They are doing internships.
They are building portfolios.
Some are even running small businesses while waiting for the formal job they trained for.
The issue is not that an entire generation is lazy.
Sometimes, there simply aren’t enough doors.
And when there are doors, some people already have someone inside who can open them.
But here is the uncomfortable part for those of us who complain about “who you know”:
We also want to know somebody when it is our turn.
We criticise nepotism until the person being called is our cousin.
We complain about connections until our friend offers to forward our CV.
We say jobs should be based on merit until someone we know gets an opportunity through a referral.
Then suddenly, it is called networking.
Perhaps the answer, therefore, is not to pretend connections should disappear.
It is to build a system where connections can open a door, but competence keeps you in the room.
Recommend your nephew if he is qualified.
Refer your friend if she can do the work.
Help someone get an interview.
But let the interview still matter.
Let the skills matter.
Let the performance matter.
Because a country cannot afford to have its most educated young people sitting at home believing that their certificates are useless unless they come with a surname, a phone number or a powerful contact.
And perhaps graduates also need to hear something difficult:
Your degree is not the end of the journey.
Build relationships. Learn how to network. Talk to people. Ask questions. Attend events. Volunteer. Make yourself known. Let people know what you can do.
Not because you should have to know someone to succeed.
But because people are part of how opportunities move.
The goal should not be a society where nobody knows anybody.
The goal should be a society where knowing somebody gives you an introduction, not an unfair advantage over someone who is better qualified.
Because at the end of the day, we cannot keep telling young people to get educated and then quietly teach them that the real examination begins after graduation:
“So… who do you know?”