If you’re stepping into the job market, especially targeting jobs in governmental institutions, established parastatals, or legacy employers, the types of places known for job security where you might stay for decades and eventually retire, then there’s more to consider than academic qualifications alone.
While it’s true you can land a job purely on merit, being intelligent, qualified, and capable, this isn’t always the reality for many people. In most cases, especially when dealing with legacy employers, there are additional factors they consider that schools don’t address. These are the unspoken essentials that significantly influence hiring decisions and career progression.
Understanding these factors will greatly improve your chances of securing the stable, long-term career you’re aiming for.
1. Connections
This is the reality we must accept as a society: in Kenya, if you want a secure job, especially one in the government or a parastatal, the type of position that guarantees stability for decades, you need connections.
You have to know someone inside the system, someone who can put your name forward or influence the decision-making behind the scenes. This might be uncomfortable to admit, but it’s the unfortunate truth of our current society.
I’ve realized that in most cases, getting hired in these secure, legacy positions heavily depends on connections. It’s not fair, but it’s how things are. Not everyone, though, is fortunate enough to have those connections. Maybe you dream of working at the Ministry of Lands, but you don’t know anyone there. In such cases, you must adapt, find where you might fit in, and learn how to play by the existing rules.
Playing by the rules starts with learning them.
- Identify the institution or role you’re aiming for. Perhaps you’ve heard stories about the good salaries and benefits there, or maybe someone you admire works in that organization.
- Find someone, anyone, within your reach who’s connected to that institution.
- Seek information. Ask them about recruitment periods, selection criteria, and how hiring decisions are made. Gaining this information will allow you to be strategic and intentional about your next moves, significantly increasing your chances of success.
- Start lobbying. Lobbying isn’t merely asking for favors; it means building genuine relationships over time. Once you’ve found someone inside, start engaging them consistently. It might involve doing favors, offering services for free, or volunteering your skills to gain trust. Doing so builds goodwill and increases the likelihood that they’ll support you when opportunities arise.
- Think long term: It’s unrealistic to expect immediate results. Give yourself at least one or two years of consistent relationship-building and providing value. Over this period, your connections grow stronger, trust deepens, and your chances of landing the job greatly improve.
Ultimately, your mindset should be oriented towards long-term success. Without existing connections, you must patiently and strategically build them. It won’t be easy; everyone naturally wants to prioritize their family and close friends.
To break into these tight circles, you must consistently demonstrate value and reliability, making yourself indispensable and gradually becoming part of their network.
This is the truth that most people won’t openly tell you: in legacy institutions and parastatals, connections matter deeply. Without them, entry is difficult. Accepting this reality empowers you to take deliberate steps towards securing your desired job.
2. Conformity
Legacy employers have established structures and cultures that have existed for many years. People within these systems have spent their entire careers adapting to, managing, and maintaining these ways of doing things.
If you want to enter and advance in such a workplace, you must be ready to conform.. Essentially, this means acknowledging and aligning yourself with the established rules and norms.
“When you go to Rome, do as the Romans do.”
Avoid entering the system intending to immediately overhaul or challenge it. Even if you notice inefficiencies, understand that these inefficiencies are often deliberate or maintained by design.
Attempting to be revolutionary right away is rarely beneficial in these environments. Instead, it can make existing employees feel threatened, fearing that their jobs or comfort zones may be disrupted. When people feel threatened, they’ll naturally resist your presence and advancement.
Therefore, enter such organizations with humility. Accept that initially, you know very little about how things truly operate, and approach your role as an opportunity to learn, observe, and adapt to the established culture. Doing so significantly improves your chances of integration and career growth within these long-standing institutions.
However, if you’re passionate about innovation, efficiency, or actively reshaping how things operate to improve society, traditional legacy workplaces might not be your ideal environment.
These values thrive much more naturally in startups or companies dedicated to solving tangible, real-world problems. Legacy employers rarely prioritize innovation or disruption, preferring stability over rapid change.
Understanding this reality will greatly enhance your ability to successfully navigate and build a lasting career within secure, traditional employment systems.
3. Aptitude
Your aptitude is your ability and willingness to learn and acquire new skills.
When entering any workplace, it doesn’t matter how knowledgeable or academically accomplished you are. Everyone enters these workplaces essentially clueless about the practical realities of the job.
You’re not there to immediately instruct others on how things should be done, regardless of your qualifications. Instead, you’re entering a learning environment, and you must approach it with humility and openness.
In the real world, very little of what you studied in school is directly applicable. Often, you’ll find yourself focusing on specific tasks or specializations unique to your role. About 90% of your academic training may never directly apply to day-to-day tasks at work.
What truly matters, therefore, isn’t how smart you are on paper, but how quickly and readily you can adapt, learn, and embrace new ways of doing things.
Success hinges on your willingness to be taught. Your colleagues and supervisors are watching for signs that you’re open to guidance, receptive to feedback, and eager to master necessary skills. If they sense your genuine desire to learn and adapt to their established practices, they’ll naturally embrace you, support you, and invest in your growth.
So remember, demonstrating aptitude, being humble, adaptable, and teachable, is key to earning trust and advancing your career within these legacy employment systems.
4. Proactiveness
Being proactive means taking initiative and responsibility for making things happen, rather than passively waiting for situations or tasks to come your way. In practical terms, proactiveness is about being someone who can actively seek out tasks, someone who takes action rather than waiting for direction.
Imagine you’re sitting in an office without an assigned task. A proactive person won’t simply wait; they’ll approach their supervisor or senior colleagues and ask directly: “What are you working on? How can I help?” If there’s something you can contribute to or assist with, offer to help. This demonstrates initiative and eagerness, making you stand out.
In your first five years of work, your main focus shouldn’t be on making money. Instead, it’s a crucial period for learning, gaining experience, and building your value. The real money comes later, once you’ve established yourself as indispensable. To achieve that level of value, you must invest these initial years into developing your skills and reputation by proactively seeking opportunities to work and grow.
In the workplace, true learning doesn’t come from studying or theorizing; it comes from action. You learn by actively doing tasks, completing projects, and delivering results. This practical experience is how you prove your worth.
It’s how you build trust and earn respect from your seniors, who eventually see you as someone reliable enough to manage responsibilities in their absence. Becoming this reliable figure makes you valuable, and eventually, indispensable.
Don’t waste energy feeling jealous or frustrated if you see colleagues or senior staff enjoying perks like working fewer hours, leaving early, or doing less strenuous tasks. Your time for those rewards will come. Right now, embrace the hard work fully. Commit yourself, take initiative, and master the tasks at hand.
Be proactive. Dedicate the next five years to genuinely excelling at your job and becoming the best at what you do.
5. Communication
Communication is about how you relate to and interact with people around you in the workplace. Many underestimate its importance, but good communication profoundly affects your career growth, your reputation, and practically every aspect of your life.
In government agencies, parastatals, or other legacy institutions, how you communicate with colleagues directly influences how you’re perceived and treated. Becoming a skilled communicator doesn’t happen overnight; it takes consistent effort and time to master.
It begins with simple yet significant gestures, like how respectfully you greet colleagues in the morning, how you reach out when you need assistance, and how you handle conversations in everyday office interactions.
But communication isn’t only about how you speak to others; it’s also about how you speak about them. This is something I learned the hard way. You might think you’re privately venting to a trusted colleague about someone else, but there’s always a chance those words will reach that person. It doesn’t matter how; it inevitably happens. And the results can be severe, especially in environments rife with office politics.
You may underestimate someone in your office, viewing them as quiet or humble, but behind the scenes, they might be extremely influential. They could hold significant power or connections that you aren’t aware of.
Negative words reaching such a person could harm your career and reputation severely, especially in established systems where politics often dominate advancement.
Therefore, practice speaking positively about others, or if necessary, refrain from speaking negatively altogether. Positive comments have a way of building goodwill, reaching colleagues, and helping them embrace you more warmly.
Another critical skill is active listening. Especially when you’re new or still learning, it’s important to listen more than you speak. Listening helps you understand office dynamics, politics, and the nuances of how things are done.
Balance also matters greatly. Don’t fall into the extremes of being a people pleaser or being overly blunt. Strive for moderation, being respectful, cooperative, and pleasant, yet assertive enough to voice your opinion or set boundaries when necessary.
Additionally, identify colleagues or seniors who seem particularly invested in your growth. Occasionally, you’ll encounter people who genuinely see potential in you and make efforts to guide you. They’ll express their belief in your abilities, entrust you with important tasks, and consistently show interest in your career advancement.
Take these people seriously and build meaningful relationships with them. These are the individuals who will advocate for you in high-level meetings, influence critical decisions on your behalf, and defend you when it counts most. Be intentional about adding value to their professional lives, as this can significantly accelerate your career.
Tony Robbins said, “The way you communicate with others and with yourself ultimately determines the quality of your life.”
Wrapping up
So this is how you need to approach your initial years of employment, as somebody who has just graduated or who is early on in their career path. These are the things that you need to keep in mind.
It’s not the way you might want it to be , it is how it is in the system.
- If you don’t have connections, find a way to get connected. Find the people who can help you.
- Conform. Don’t get into that space and try to teach people how things are done. Go and learn. Be humble.
- Be somebody who can learn. It doesn’t matter how much you know. If you get into that system, what matters is how willing and able you are to acquire skills and learn how to do things.
- Be proactive. Proactiveness essentially means that you are showing your value at an early age. You are that person who goes out there and gets that job that you need, or that task that you need to do, to help the people around you and add value for them.
- How you communicate will determine how you grow from whichever stage you are in your career, up to the point where you want to be. So it is all about communication. All about how you relate to other people.
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