Employment opportunities in the tech industry are expected to increase in the next few years and one of the aspects of this industry is UI/UX ( that is, User Interface/User Experience) design. This article answers questions about how to become a UI/UX designer in Nigeria (and abroad).

What is a User Interface?

On a webpage, app, or device, a user interface is the aspect of human-computer interaction or oral-auditory interaction for VUI. Display screens, keyboards, and the looks of a desktop are examples of this.  User interface elements are typically classified into one of these four input control, navigation elements, informational components, and units that group similar content together. Input controls enable users to enter data into the system, such as an input field that allows users to register with their email addresses. Navigational elements assist users in navigating a product or website. Progress bars, notifications, and message boxes are examples of informational components. Accordions are examples of units that group similar content together.

What is UI design?

The first graphical user interface (GUI) was developed at Xerox PARC by computer scientists in the 1980s. This enabled users to interact with their personal computers by giving them visual commands via buttons, checkboxes, icons, and menus. This implies that the computer can be used by literally anyone, without any coding, thereby launching the revolution of computer use. The Mackintosh computer was launched by Apple Computer in 1984, and it had a point-and-click mouse as part of its components. The prevalence of personal computers led to the need to design interfaces that are easy for the product user to comprehend and use, and this caused the development of User Interface (UI) designers.

The four phases of the development of user interface design include the following: the Batch interface (1945–1968), the Command-line user interface (1969–present), and the SAA User Interface or Text-Based User Interface (1985). The batch interface phase featured the use of punch cards, paper tapes, and line printers. There was no real-time response and jobs often took days or hours to complete. After 1957, systems called load-and-go were developed and these had monitor programs that reduced the usual time spent completing jobs. The Command-line user interface phase developed from the batch monitor programs of the previous stage. It featured the use of teleprinters and later, video-display terminals (VDTs) in the mid-1970s. This phase further improved real-time response and user interactivity while also reducing the cost spent on ink and paper.

The Systems Application Architecture (SAA) standard was created by IBM in 1985 with the advent of Microsoft Windows and other graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It featured the reorganization of some elements such as the pulldown menu system and a status bar on the computer, and this vastly increased the rate at which users could learn and understand an application or software. From 1968 till the present day, the graphical user interface (GUI) has undergone several developments including the introduction of the oN-Line System (NLS), the windows, icons, menus, pointers (WIMP), the development of Blit, a programmable bitmap graphics terminal and Teletype, an electromechanical device that can be used to send and receive typed messages through various communications channels amongst others.

What is UX design?

User experience design can be traced to the ancient Chinese philosophy of Feng Shui (about 4000 BC), which highlights the importance of organizing the environment in the most harmonious, or user-friendly way. Also, in ancient Greece where research suggests that around the fifth century BC, Greek communities developed their workspaces and tools using ergonomic principles (ἔργον, stands for “work”, and νόμος, stands for “natural laws”).  Ergonomics is also known as “human factor” and it is the scientific discipline that is concerned with understanding how humans interact with other components of a system and the application of principles, theories, methods, and data to designs to optimize the well-being of humans and improve the overall performance of the system. Great industrialists like Henry Ford and Frederick Winslow Taylor started to include simple user experience design principles in their product production processes in the late 19th century.

The term “user experience” was first used as a job title in the 1990s by Don Norman, a cognitive scientist. When Norman worked at Apple, he defined the term thus, “User experience encompasses all aspects of the end-user’s interaction with the company, as its services, and its products.” This definition is not restricted to the user’s digital or virtual experience because it covers all the likely interactions users can have with a service or product. This term is sometimes referred to as customer experience by some user experience professionals while others refer to it as experience design. Regardless of what it is called, the definition given by Don Norman succinctly captures the essence of the user experience design because it focuses on the people who would actually use the product or service.

User experience (UX) designers ensure that the product delivered meets the user’s needs and allows the users to easily get the desired result. UX designers work hand-in-hand with user interface (UI) designers and other key players such as marketers, product teams, and UX researchers to conduct research and experiments in order to better understand the needs of their users. The insights gained from the qualitative and quantitative user research are then used to improve the user’s experience.

Responsibilities of a UI designer

The UI designer is responsible for visually enhancing the user’s experience with the product (website, application, or videogame). The designer has the duty of helping the product user easily move from point A to point B through various visual directions or touchpoints. He designs the visuals of the screens that the user needs to use the product. They basically put themselves in the shoes of the user, predicting what they will expect at each stage. Then, this empathy is used to create interactive, visual elements that react in the way the user expects. They work with engineers and product managers to evaluate the requirements or specifications of the user, they use sitemaps, storyboards, and process flows to conceptualize design ideas, and they design elements of graphic user interfaces such as widgets, tabs, and menus.

The UI designer conducts research to obtain necessary information about the product users, competitors, and current trends in design. This enables the designer to get creative inspiration or ideas that will help when developing the interfaces that will meet the user’s needs. A user interface designer is responsible for developing the layout of the product and all the visual aspects of the user interface, including fonts, buttons, colors, icons, and others. Also, the user interface designer needs to work on the brand positioning of the product to ensure greater output. The designer has to ensure the product’s usability and consistently promote the identity of the brand that has been created by the company’s creative or branding team. The user interface designer ensures that interfaces are well-adjusted for function and form across all platforms, devices, and screen sizes or types.

The designer also has the responsibility of creating pattern libraries, components such as font type, colour, font size, etc.), and style guides to promote the brand and product consistency. A UI designer is in charge of developing immersive programs that improve a customer’s experience with a brand and make navigating the company’s website more enjoyable. UI designers must also have a good knowledge of coding and must be able to properly communicate the strength of a brand through the product interface. Because the position combines elements of psychology, programming, and digital design, the user interface (UI) designer needs professional knowledge in all areas to produce high-quality products and services. It is required to have a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Graphic Design, Web Development, or a related discipline.

Responsibilities of a UX designer

User experience (UX) designers are responsible for creating and evaluating user journeys judging by available data and insights. They explore the needs and behaviour of the customer or user by conducting in-depth user research and employing usability tests to be sure that the designs created are in line with the requirements of the user as well as the requirements of the business. They work with other team members such as product teams, UX researchers, and marketers to conduct experiments and carry out research to better understand users’ needs. The knowledge gained from the research and experiments is used to improve the experience of the users. UX designers work with other team members to receive feedback and repeat and implement design solutions.

They use user flows, storyboards, prototypes, and wireframes to create visual impressions and illustrations of user experiences. They also stay updated on the product of competitors and trends in the industry. The user experience (UX) designer conducts research to develop the action plan required to build a product or service. He is primarily concerned with thoroughly researching users’ areas of concern and developing products or services to address these issues. The target audience and their needs in relation to the product or service are also investigated. A UX designer creates a framework for the user’s navigation through the product, taking into account factors such as content organization and the likely features the users will require.

Difference between UI and UX

While UX design involves the components that enable users to use a product or service effectively, UI design on the other hand is the experience of the product or service that the user gets while using the said service or product. User interface design and user experience design go hand-in-hand thus, the application of one ensures the functionality of the other. This does not imply that it is compulsory to have knowledge of the two design types because they each have their different functions or purpose and processes.

A user interface designer works on visual elements such as colours, typography, font, menu bars, and others while a user experience designer is focused on the journey or trajectory of the user through the product or service. The UX designer maps out this trajectory, taking factors like content architecture into consideration, identifies possible features that might be beneficial to the user, and creates wireframes i.e., blueprints for the product.

After the bare bones of the product have been mapped out, the user interface designer then examines all the visual parts (swiping through a device’s gallery, scrolling through a page, or tapping on an icon) of the user’s journey through the product and works on bringing the product to life. It is the user interface designer’s duty to ensure the inclusivity and accessibility of the product or service. For example, he considers the best colour pairings to achieve contrast or the best colour pairings for people who are colour blind.

UX design refers to the process of increasing user satisfaction by optimizing a product’s usability and accessibility. UI designers, in contrast, are in charge of the product’s appearance and feel. UX designers create a product map, which UI designers build on with interactive and immersive touchpoints. During the design process, UX and UI designers frequently collaborate to maximize a website’s efficiency, responsiveness, and accessibility. UX makes interfaces useful, while UI makes interfaces beautiful.

User experience (UX) design and user interface (UI) design both play important roles in the product design process. They work closely collaborate to determine the appearance and function of a product. The combination of UI and UX influences the entire product experience. While two similar products may deliver the same result, their UI/UX reflects how they do so. People will use one of the products more if it has a better UI/UX design compared to the other because they prefer the entire experience.

How to Become a UX and UI Designer in Nigeria

The first step to starting a career as a professional UI/UX designer is to acquire knowledge of the primary techniques, principles, and skills. If you want to learn user interface or user experience design skills for a career change, especially if you have very little industry experience, you can start with the several free UX/UI design training available. In the long run, however, an actual training is a must, and to do that, enrolling in a flexible, supervised online course that you can complete together with any current obligations is necessary.

Asides from universities and colleges, the best way to learn UI design, especially for beginners, is to enroll in a UI/UX design bootcamp course. There are several tech academies that offer online courses on UI/UX design in Nigeria and abroad. Learning these courses online ensures flexibility and easy access. On sites like Delon.App, there are diverse tech-related content including extensive courses on UI/UX design amongst others. It is important to follow popular UI/UX design accounts on social media such as Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook. You can also engage in design challenges to improve your design skills.

Tools used by UI/UX designers

Recent intuitive software applications enable UI designers to create and easily share speedy layouts with shareholders. These tools should be selected based on their usability, usefulness, collaboration, and integration. The tools used by UI designers include the following:

Sketch: this is a tool that is used by UI designers to create hi-fi (high fidelity) prototypes and interfaces on a pixel canvas via the use of vector design shapes and artboards.

Adobe XD: this is a tool used to draw, reuse, and remix vector design shapes and build artworks to create interactive prototypes and screen layouts.

InVision studio: it is used by designers to create transitions, custom animations, and interactive interfaces. In one artboard, responsive designs can be produced using this tool.

Others include wireframing tools (MockFlow, Balsamiq, and Framer), prototyping tools (UXPin and Marvel), design hand-off tools (Zeplin), collaboration and documentation tools (Airtable and Asana), usability testing tools (UXCam App Analytics), vector-based design tools (Figma), user testing tools (Applause), flowchart user experience tools (FlowMapp, Overflow, and UXCam Screen Flow) amongst others.

Skills needed by UI/UX designers

A successful professional career in user interface requires both soft and hard skills. Hard skills needed include knowledge and understanding of principles and processes of user experience, interaction design principles, knowledge of interactive visual design principles like colour theory and typography, the ability to understand responsive design and information architecture, practical understanding of tools used in this field, and knowledge of how to create designs that are inclusive and accessible. Some of the soft skills a user interface designer needs include problem-solving skills, excellent communication, and collaboration skills, creativity, empathy, a mindset that prioritizes the user, and an eye for detail.

User experience designers should have a mix of design skills, soft skills, and business acumen. These include the ability to easily create personas, user stories, sitemaps, prototypes, storyboards, and wireframes, competency in organizing and carrying out user testing, surveys, and formal evaluations, the ability to tweak designs based on data from user testing and qualitative feedback, an understanding of information architecture and interaction design principles, capability to turn goals, objectives, and data into digital experiences, knowledge of business metrics and how the created designs affect performance, ability to articulate and discuss design choices with clients and stakeholders, strong presentation and communication skills, and flexibility and versatility.

By Temilade Aderiye

The earliest use of electronic digital computers in Nigeria was in 1963 when the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) set up the African Education Centre at the University of Ibadan (UI Computing Center). In connection with the analysis of the national census of 1962/1963. Between 1963 and 1973, Nigeria had about 20-25 computers, and six were associated with multinational companies. There were about seventy computer installations in Nigeria by 1977. Software developer hiring in Nigeria could thrive only because of these foundational steps in the Nigerian tech space. In 1977, only three of these multinational computer vendors were in Nigeria. These were IBM, NCR, and JCL, and they all mostly dealt with mainframes and minicomputers. To ensure a more indigenous integration of Nigerians in the budding computer business, the government established the indigenization decree.

Nigeria has come a long way from the first recorded use of digital computers and the establishment of computer centers to the widespread use of computers. Nowadays, nearly every household has a functioning computer system. People no longer have to go to cafes to get their work done because everyone can do this from the comfort of their homes. Around the world, the software development industry is booming, and Nigeria is no different. Entrepreneurial software development training centers in Nigeria are emerging, especially in Lagos. Investments made by tech giants in the tech space have encouraged the establishment of software development hubs across the country

However, software development in Nigeria still faces the challenge of a talent deficit. As more Nigerians are becoming tech-inclined, there has been a high rate of migration to international companies that want to hire software engineers from Nigeria. This has led to the reduction of available tech talents in the country. Asides from the advantage of more career opportunities, some Nigerians migrate to other countries to gain more in-depth knowledge about software development. This habit would not benefit Nigeria’s economy in any way. Also, many foreign hirers are reluctant to hire software engineers from Nigeria because of the bad reputation the country has regarding the online space (i.e., fraud schemes such as 419, Naija Prince, etc.) They are wary of getting scammed or getting their work undone.

This leads to the need to train more talents in software development. More training centers have to be established in Nigeria to get more interested people trained and certified in software development. This would not only ensure the provision of more jobs in Nigeria, but it will also boost the economy. Some companies such as DelonApps offer training on software development in Nigeria at an affordable rate. At the DelonAcademy, interested would-be software engineers can choose between regular and weekend courses. Some companies also provide programs where candidates can learn and work simultaneously. This training will level the playing ground between Nigeria and other countries in the tech space.

Software development is the process that is involved in creating and maintaining applications and other software components. These processes include ideating, specifying, designing, programming, documenting, testing, and bug-fixing. It involves all the processes in software development. The word software refers to the commands used to instruct a computer to carry out specific tasks. Someone who develops software is known as a software developer or software engineer.

The terms software engineers and software developers are often used interchangeably as they carry out many of the same tasks and share many of the same abilities. However, compared to software engineers, software developers frequently operate on a smaller scale and specialize in certain fields, such as the internet of things or mobile applications. While on the other hand, software engineers use a broad perspective that may encompass testing, scalability, and data analytics in addition to programming. Generally, though, these two terms can be used synonymously. Some trending software developer jobs in Nigeria.  include back-end developer, front-end developer, DevOps, etc.

Software Developer Jobs

1) Back-End developer: Back-end developers generally design, fix, and alter some elements of a software application. The back-end developer has to ensure that the software can effectively deliver the client’s requests. These professionals also maintain APIs, oversee critical databases, and conduct testing. Thus, a good back-end developer must know how to defend software against cybercrime threats. They help to support a project’s user interface and functionality.

They work with other team members to ensure that all pending projects are completed while meeting set deadlines. A back end developer’s job deals with scripting, website architecture, and writing codes that ensure the effective transfer of data between the website’s database and the user’s browser. Some necessary skills for a back-end engineer include PHP, Java, HTML, JavaScript, and CSS.

2) Front-End developer: front-end developers have the duty of creating prototypes of web pages and various other features. The developer is also in charge of testing the web pages to ensure that they work well. They also write code using JavaScript, CSS3, Java, HTML5, or Python to produce interfaces that are user interactive.

3) Full stack engineer: a full stack engineer works with both the back-end and front-end of a website engineer. He works with both the front-end of a website and the back-end design of a website.

4) QA Engineer: QA stands for Quality Assurance (QA) and has to do with ensuring there are no mistakes in the manufactured product to be delivered to a client. A QA engineer is responsible for making sure that the product meets the required standard and design specifications.

5) Mobile developers: Mobile developers work with mobile operating systems and the frameworks and environments that are used to develop software programs on these operating systems. They utilize software development skills such as Swift, Java, application programming interface, cross-platform mobile kit, and web development language. They write codes for Android, Windows, and iOS applications.

Processes Involved in Software Development

Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), also known as the software development process, is the process taken to create products that meet all the required specifications, standards, and users’ requirements. These processes include:

1) Planning

Proper planning is one of the most fundamental steps in software development. Most clients generally tend to have an abstract notion of what they want but not what the software would be able to do. Analysis of requirements is used to draft the fundamental design approach to the client’s need and carry out a feasibility study of the software. A technical feasibility study can be conducted to define the different technical approaches which can be used to successfully deploy the software with as little risk as possible. Planning for quality assurance requirements and identification of the risk associated with the design process is done during this first planning stage

2) Defining Requirements

After the analysis of requirements in this first planning stage, the next step in the software development life cycle process is to define and document the requirements of the software and then get them approved by the customer or market analysts this stage in the software development process is done via a software requirement specification document SRS includes all the requirements for the software that is to be designed and developed throughout the lifecycle of the project.

3) Designing the Software

The reference point for software engineers to build the best design for the software being developed is the SRS document. Using the software requirements which are specified in the software requirement specification (SRS) document, developers then propose (more than) one design structure for the software, and these structures are documented in the Design Document Specification (DDS).

4) Developing the Software

Software development is that part of the software development process where software engineers program the code for the software and then build the software. If the software design is properly structured, it will be possible to generate codes without expending too much time and effort. Codes are generated by software engineers using high-level languages such as C, Pascal, C++, and PHP. The software that is being developed determines the programming language used by software developers in Nigeria and around the world.

5) Software Testing

Software testing is an important process in all the stages of software development. After developing software, engineers conduct a test whereby the defects or mistakes in the software which has been built at detected, fixed, and then the software is retested. Testing the software at this stage gives the developer an unbiased and objective view of the software. Software testing can be explained as the process of verifying and validating a software application until it meets the standard of quality defined in the software requirement specification.

6) Software Deployment and Maintenance

After the software has been tested, the software is then deployed and approved for release in the appropriate market environment. It may be released and stages depending on the company’s marketing strategy. The software is also maintained by ensuring that it continues to operate well, and it can be further enhanced by updating the software to tackle recently discovered errors or faults. When the software is being deployed into the market space, it is important to carry out software training and support or create a manual to ensure that the software is correctly used by the end user.

Why The Software Development Industry Is Booming.

1) High Demand for Back-End Developers

Many Nigerian software development companies require the services of back end developers to achieve company growth. Recent reports indicate that almost 30% of the requested jobs on an engineering employment platform are for back-end engineers. Front-end developers, on the other hand, made up about 23% of this demand. Also, full-stack and mobile developers each made up about 20% of this data. This high demand for back-end developers in recent times is one of the reasons why the software development industry is booming.

2) Large DevOps Community

The large community of DevOps engineers in Nigeria is also contributing to the growth of the software development industry. Notably, DevOps engineers can get together, share their experiences, and find mentors at meetups hosted by some online groups. The country can move forward with its solutions more quickly because the DevOps methodology places an emphasis on automation and collaboration. Automation tools such as JFrog Pipelines are ideal for supporting startup developers in the software development process as their user base expands. In a nutshell, Nigeria’s software development industry is expanding as a result of the large DevOps community.

3) Growing Freelance Market

Some freelance platforms such as Upwork, Freelancer.io, Fiverr, etc., allow developers to create freelance profiles. These platforms allow people to create freelance profiles where they can upload their past employment, major projects (such as design, application testing, and back-end development), and their area of expertise (such as JavaScript, HTML/CSS, and Node.js). Business owners then use all the information provided to hire the right freelancer for their business. Innovations are advancing more quickly throughout the country due to the availability of greater access to some software.

4) The Rise of Learning Platforms

There has been the establishment of many learning platforms that offer training to interested people. A large number of these platforms provide programming lessons online while other organizations offer hands-on training sessions and meetups. For example, DelonApps, a software development training institute in Nigeria offers courses in Back-End Development, Front-End Development, Android Development, IOS Development, DevOps, And Data Science, and trainees can select between weekday and weekend courses.

5) Overcoming Challenges

The software industry in Nigerians is booming as more Nigerians are overcoming their stereotyping biases. An experienced developer in Nigeria reports that some international clients are often unfamiliar with the fast-paced growth of Nigeria’s tech space. Thus, they are stereotypical when it comes to making important employment decisions. However nowadays, major tech companies are beginning to spotlight the country’s achievements in the software industry. For example, GitHub released a report identifying Nigeria as the fourth-largest growing developer community worldwide. Also, major giants in the tech space have begun making investments in some software development companies in Nigeria. Despite the challenges Nigerians face due to global bias, the tides are turning as the skills of the country’s developers are starting to boost the industry’s growth.

How To Become a Software Engineer

1. Study Computer Science or Related Course

This is one of the more common ways to become a software developer in Nigeria. Many people decide on a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, or Information Technology because it allows them to study the theoretical side of computer scientific disciplines and assists them in understanding the basics of software engineering. Some courses learned include web technologies, database systems, computer networks, programming languages, data structures, algorithms, and mathematics. These courses will help upcoming developers completely understand contemporary software development techniques. Many hiring companies mandate a four-year bachelor’s degree program in Computer Science as a requirement for recruiting software developers. However, it would be unwise to depend only on getting a degree in Computer Science because it is often the practical experience one has that determines whether one would get hired or not.

2. Learn Programming Languages

Programming languages are the computer equivalent of human language which are used to tell the computer what to do in the language the computer understands. A software developer’s major responsibility is to give the computer commands using these programming languages. Thus, it is necessary to not only have a degree in Computer Science or other related fields, but it is important to choose a programming language that best fulfills your needs and take time to learn it well. Some of these programming languages include Java, MS SQL, Azure, Python, Swift, and JavaScript. With time, fluency in more than one of these programming languages can be achieved. Learn the language’s syntax, practice writing computer programs, and learn the unique qualities associated with the language you have chosen.

3. Figure out your end goals

Having had the necessary knowledge to start working as a software developer, the next step is to outline your end goals. Ask yourself where you would like to work, how you would like to work (remote or onsite), and how much your fees would be. Some industries that software developers’ services are needed include financial institutions, software publishers, engineering or manufacturing industries, and insurance providers. Having a clear view of what you want in your career will help you achieve your goals faster.

4. Become Conversant with Algorithms and Data Structures

A data structure is a way of processing, storing, organizing, and retrieving data while an algorithm is a set of clearly defined instructions that can be used to solve particular problems. Software developers must be familiar with data structures and algorithms because they help software engineers quickly solve problems with less use of the computer’s memory. A software engineer’s responsibility is to provide the best solution to a specific problem while taking note of time restrictions and memory use.

5. Practice

Whether the knowledge of software development was gained through formal schooling or self-taught, it is necessary to put whatever has been learned into practice. As the saying goes practice makes perfect thus, putting the knowledge acquired to use will help better the software developer’s dexterity in utilizing programming languages. This skill set can then be used in various contexts such as DevOps engineering, front-end development, data science, etc.

6. Make a portfolio

A portfolio displays previous works. Having a portfolio shows prospective clients the software engineer has actual, theoretical knowledge of the skills listed on the CV or resume. An ideal portfolio should contain the following details short biography, contact information, skills, link to resume, awards (if any), and professional or personal projects. Include any new experience in the portfolio. For the sake of accuracy and interactivity, it is advisable to use portfolio design websites such as Wix, Journopolio, and Clippings.me.

7. Certify your skills

For people without actual job experience in software development, it is advisable to take some certified courses which offer certificates when completed. The certifications obtained will help potential clients verify the skillset, capabilities, and competence level of the prospective employee. Certifications can be gotten in data management, cloud computing, or data security.

Tools Used by Software Developers

1) GitHub

GitHub is a website hosting service that offers a location for a global developer community to exchange, enhance, and discuss software projects. GitHub is a version control and software development hosting service with a graphical interface and beneficial collaboration and project management functionalities. GitHub is said to have the world’s largest developer community, and is frequently used for issue tracking and code review.

2) LeanKit

A cloud-based visual management program that is considered one of the most user-friendly software products available for agile teams. With custom board templates, advanced Kanban capabilities, and backlog management, it can assist a team of software developers to work faster and more effectively.

3) Codenvy

Codenvy is a cloud-based integrated programming environment that is used for developing apps and debugging. It is an open-source workspace server that serves as a platform for teams can use to develop remotely. Its best qualities include version control, APIs and extensions, and resource limits.

4) Code Climate

Code Climate is another useful software development tool. It is an automated, open-source tool used by software developers for code analysis or review. It assists in ensuring code quality by grading apps based on complexity, style, test coverage, and more. CodeClimate provides the software developer with valuable insight into the starting point for a software or code review. Other features of this tool include test coverage, team management, and data-based engineering.

5) Axosoft

Axosoft is one of the best tools for software development which is built on simple Scrum software. It is designed to assist engineering and development teams with issue tracking and project management. Axosoft is used by software developers because of its bug tracking, data visualization, and Scrum planning board.

6) Trello

Trello is a free app used for project management. It lets users make columns and place cards in them. These cards represent projects or tasks that need to be completed. Trello is an excellent way to organize personal workload, side projects, or things to be accomplished. Having an organized workflow can help a software developer be more productive. Jira is another more robust project management tool.

7) Sip

Sip is a simple tool used for selecting colours for front-end development. Any colour can be chosen in various formats (such as RGB and hex) from the device’s screen.

8) Evernote

Evernote is a virtual notebook that can be used by software developers to keep track of vital information which can be forgotten due to work overload. It serves as an external brain where details like courses, links, keyboard shortcuts, and software requirements can be posted for safekeeping. It can also include details such as diagrams of how the product being worked on fits, screencasts, or tech talks to be watched later, commands that can be easily forgotten, and so on.

9) CodeWars

This tool provides hundreds of small programming challenges that are ranked by difficulty and several programming languages. These challenges can help the software developer improve or increase his software development knowledge of the fundamentals of programming. CodeWars also exposes software engineers to other programming languages asides from the one(s) they are familiar with. After solutions to challenges have been submitted, CodeWars also offers highly rated solutions to the submitted challenges.

10) Apache NetBeans

This is a popular, open-source, and free Integrated Development Environment (IDE). It is one of the best software development tools that allow the development of mobile, desktop, and web applications. It supports fast and smart code editing, helps to write bug-free codes, and offers support for C, C++, and PHP software developers.

Considering the various career benefits of the software development industry, there is a need for more people to become involved in this industry. This is why DelonApps, the leading IT recruitment company in Nigeria, is organizing a software development training program for interested participants. The company is the #1 recruiter of software engineers for companies within Nigeria and other countries such as Korea, America, and Europe. Another benefit to be obtained from the training asides from knowledge gained is job placement or job opportunities. A subsidiary of the company, jobs.delon.ng, is the leading job site in Nigeria and the site boasts over 600,000 jobs in various sectors, including software development. The software development industry in Nigeria is booming and could help to boost the country’s economy if resources are properly harnessed.

Since 1948 when software development made its debut in society till date, there have been several changes and upgrades to the actual processes involved in software development. For the last 50-plus years, software development has played a key role in shaping the world’s technological advancements. Recent trends indicate that it will play an even more vital role in the nearest future.

Several companies and individuals offer software development services. One of such companies is DelonApps, the leading software development company in Nigeria. Delon Apps provides top-of-the-range software development services to companies locally and internationally. The company also provides IT outsourcing services by providing highly experienced and professional software developers for businesses that require their services.

Software development is the process that is involved in creating and maintaining applications and other software components. These processes include ideating, specifying, designing, programming, documenting, testing, and bug-fixing. It is all the processes involved in software development, from the imaginary ideation of the software to the final actual development of the software. The word “software” itself refers to the set of commands that are used to instruct a computer to carry out specific tasks. Someone who develops software is known as a software developer or software engineer.

Types of Software

There are three basic types of software. They include System software, Programming software, and Application software.

a) System software: this type of software is used to provide fundamental functions like disk management, operating systems, hardware management, utilities, and other functions. It serves as the middleman between the computer hardware and the user. It helps to manage the entire computer system. The system software functions in the background of the device and is not used by the end-users, unlike application software. Examples of system software are the Operating System (OS), Basic input or output system (BIOS), assembler, device driver, etc.

b) Programming software: this software is used to give software developers or programmers the necessary tools which include compilers, text editors, debuggers, and linkers to generate codes. Just like the system software, programming software is also not used by the end-users. It is used for creating, building, testing, and debugging other computer software such as the system software and the application software. Programming languages like C++ and Python are used to translate other software into a language that the computer can understand. This language is known as Machine Language. Programming software also offers diagnostic reports, assign data storage, and corrects errors in the system while the system is being used.

c) Application software: or apps is used to assist end-users to perform and complete certain tasks. These tasks include taking notes, designing graphics, keeping activity logs, shopping online, setting alarms, recording voice notes, etc. application software differs from other types of software because it is primarily designed for the end-user. It is also sometimes referred to as non-essential software. This is because it is built, installed, and operated based on the needs of the user. Examples of application software include media players, calculators, calendars, office productivity suites, web /mobile applications that are used to post on Facebook/Instagram, shop online, etc.

Processes Involved in Software Development

Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) is another way to refer to the software development process. This process involves the steps taken to create products that meet all the necessary specifications and users’ requirements. The software development processes include:

Step 1: Planning

Analysis of requirements is the most fundamental step in software development. Clients generally tend to have an abstract idea of what they want as a result, but not what software should do. Requirement analysis is used to draft the fundamental design approach and carry out a feasibility study of the software. A technical feasibility study can be carried out to clearly define the different technical approaches that can be used to successfully deploy the software with minimum risks. Planning for the quality assurance requirements and identifying the risks associated with the design are also done during this first planning stage.

Step 2:  Defining Requirements

After requirement analysis, the next step in the software development process is to concisely define and document the requirements of the software and then get them approved by the customer or the market analysts. This process of software development is done via a software requirement specification (SRS) document. SRS includes all the requirements for the software that is to be designed and developed throughout the life cycle of the project.

Step 3: Designing the Software

The SRS document is the point of reference for software developers to build the best design for the software being developed. Based on these software requirements specified in the software requirement specification, developers often propose more than one design structure for the software, and these structures are documented in the design document specification (DDS).

Step 4: Developing the Software

Software development is the part of the development process where software engineers actually program the code for the software and build it. If the design is rightly structured, it will be possible to generate codes without expending too much time. High-level languages like Pascal, C, Java, PHP, and C++ are used by developers to code. The programming language used by developers is determined by the type of software that is being developed.

Step 5: Testing

Software testing is a predominant process in all the stages of software development. However, after developing software, engineers carry out a test whereby the defects in the software built are detected, fixed, and retested. Testing the software at this stage offers the developer an unbiased and objective view of the software. Software testing can be explained as the stage of verification and validation of a software application until it meets the standard of quality defined in the software requirement specification.

Step 6: Software Deployment and Maintenance

After the software has been tested, it is deployed and approved for release in the appropriate market environment. The software may be released in stages depending on the company’s marketing strategy. The software can be maintained by ensuring that it continues to operate well, and it can be further enhanced by updating the software to tackle recently discovered errors or faults. When the software is being deployed to the market space, it is also important to carry out software training and support or create a manual to ensure that it is correctly used by the end-user.

Top 12 Software Development Trends in 2022

Here are top 12 software development trends in 2022:

1) Low-code & no-code software development

Coding is the foundation of software development. Therefore, the idea of low-code and no-code software development might seem odd.

However, software development is increasingly complex (with approximately 20% of software development projects failing), quite expensive, and the need to deliver software faster increases concurrently. This has put software developers under constant pressure and has also made new talent unwilling to enter such a high-pressure working environment. Thus, low-code and no-code products quickly gained popularity across the software development field. But low-code and no-code options can be used to complement software development processes.

This can be done by allowing users to develop, deploy, and manage some parts of software solutions and delivery processes. There are also the added advantages of reducing the difficulties involved in branching into the field of software development and attracting new talent.

It is important to point out that low-code and no-code tools and platforms can never replace actual coding in software development, but more people are becoming interested in the benefits they offer.

2) Increasing Reliance on Artificial Intelligence (AI)

With artificial intelligence (AI), the pace of software development has been forever changed in history. It has already become a central component of many software, ranging from simple computer-vision applications to large-scale predictive analytics.

AI innovates how software is being designed and tested, and this is also beneficial for software engineering. In addition, AI can help determine the patterns across projects carried out, automate the generation of coding, reduce coding errors, and predict outcomes via machine learning.

Due to the constant developments being made in the field of artificial intelligence, AI may match human intelligence by the next decade. Many software developments will shift from creating static pieces of logic to developing self-learning algorithms and entities that can evolve to meet changing end-user requirements.

Improvement has become a trend to make sure that this field continues growing, thereby offering more helpful and valuable benefits to the end-users.

3) Software Development Outsourcing

Due to the increasing complexity of the global business environment, more businesses are trying to make the best use of the capabilities they have. For example, it is possible for a manufacturing company to have many IT assets, but that does not make it an IT company because it is not their area of core competency.

Businesses have found that focusing on their core area of competencies and delegating the other tasks to professionals who can handle them has helped their business growth and output time. And this realization has helped to continue to boost the trend of IT outsourcing.

Even as businesses seek to reduce cost and increase output, they should be careful to focus on the right priorities such as delivering quality products to their clients when they are outsourcing software development.

4) Increased Emphasis on UI/UX

User interfaces and user experience (UI & UX) have been brought to the fore in the tech world due to the increasing dependency on virtual experiences and services.

Previously, most software developments prioritized backend services and application logic without paying much attention to the user interface and user experience. However, the story is vastly different as there is an increase in the demand for user-friendly interfaces and new user experiences. Thus, putting UI/UX design at the forefront of software development processes in recent times.

5) Serverless computing

The cloud has fundamentally transformed how software is utilized. Today, the new serverless computing framework is developing further by simply removing all infrastructure management prerequisites and allowing developers to devise solutions that can be directly utilized in these serverless environments. This will undeniably alter how software is developed and thus should result in even faster software development process lifecycles.

6) Blockchain technology

Blockchain changed how we look at transaction recording. Blockchain is a (P2P) peer-to-peer network that provides decentralization, security features, and transparency. It was first popularized by digital currencies and has become increasingly popular in the finance sector as a decentralized digital ledger that can be used to safely record transactions.

This decentralized nature and the ability to store any form of data makes blockchain technology one of the most secure technologies, thus increasing clients’ trust. These reasons have made blockchain technology become more utilized in other sectors such as logistics, publishing, healthcare, and others.

More software products are now using blockchain in one capacity or the other. Examples are creating blockchain-based software solutions in software development. This technology provides businesses with supply chain management, identity management, better analytics, and other great benefits.

7) Multi-cloud architectures

Many organizations depend on one cloud service provider to power their applications. But multi-cloud architectures are increasingly becoming popular, thereby allowing software developers more flexibility to combine various cloud services from several providers to meet their needs without being restricted to a single provider.

Multi-cloud service providers are prominent players in this sector by offering tools to manage networking, applications, and infrastructure across cloud providers. All of these will change the software development process from reliance on a single cloud service platform to a more diverse development pattern.

8) Rise of modern programming languages

Some programming languages like Java, C/C++, and Python are still dominating the field of software development. However, other more modern programming languages like Go, TypeScript, Rust, and Kotlin have emerged to challenge these pre-existing languages by providing solutions for current issues. These modern languages also provide new features and offer native support for recent technologies, thereby offering a better development experience for software developers.

9) Cloud-native application development

By the next decade, virtually all software will be making use of one form of cloud service or another due to the vastly unstoppable development of cloud services. This is because by then, most software will be explicitly designed only for cloud-based environments.

By doing this, cloud-native application development will become the standard practice in the future, and studying recent trends, this future will come sooner than expected. The software will be evaluated, deployed, and managed in the cloud as fully online solutions due to the movement of software development tools and services to the cloud.

10) Mixed Reality (MR): Augmented Reality & Virtual Reality

Mixed Reality (MR) is a blend of the Augmented Reality (AR) component and the Virtual Reality (VR) component. Augmented reality incorporates online content with consumers’ physical environments, whereas virtual reality provides users with an interactive experience.

The global market for mixed reality is rapidly growing and is being used by many businesses. For example, it is used by manufacturing companies to model 3D in a virtual reality environment to improve their design processes. Entertainment businesses use augmented reality and virtual reality to offer engaging content to their viewers.

The ability to superimpose digital content on the physical environment in real-time creates many possibilities for augmented reality in business. Businesses can make use of mixed reality to allow their prospective clients “test” their products virtually, and this eases their sales efforts.

11) The Internet of Things (IoT)

The Internet of Things (IoT) technological trend could have a great impact on the world, and not just on businesses. It is a network connection of physical devices that use sensors such as vehicles, gadgets, appliances, and others. These devices make use of application programming interfaces (APIs) to transfer and receive data over the Internet.

The Internet of Things is a result of the synergy of different technologies like AI, Big Data, sensors, APIs, Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID), and others.

It can be used to keep the expensive machinery of large enterprises running well through predictive maintenance, monitor energy consumption in real-time, and implement pricing adjustments using smart meters. Other uses include asset tracking, fleet management, etc.

12) Automated Code Reviews

One of the current trends in software development is automated code reviews. These, amongst others, are one of the tools that have made developers’ jobs easier and faster. This is because developers would not have to put in all their energy, effort, and time just to know the common errors in the software being developed. Using these tools, developers can review more codes with less effort and time. The automated code reviews are used to automate the code-checking process and improve the quality of the code. These will increase the production speed of software developers and result in the faster release of software in the market environment. Some of the popular automated code review tools are DeepSource and CodeClimate.

Software development is an extensive market with numerous profitable ventures. It is an industry that is heavily reliant on innovation and state-of-the-art technology. As a result, software developers are constantly striving to stay ahead of the competition by implementing the latest trends. However, apart from the potential profits, software development provides an opportunity to positively impact humanity.

In a bid to eliminate the expense of hiring employees to manage such activities as email and phone correspondence, social media engagements and chats, online sales, and marketing as well as post-sale customer service, many business owners and professionals are hiring virtual assistants.

Going through the website of a leading virtual assistant provider in Nigeria gave me a lot of insight into the growth of a virtual assistant career in Nigeria. DelonApps hires many fresh graduates and older job seekers and trains them to become high-quality virtual assistants for different companies in and out of Nigeria. For some virtual assistant roles that require high skills, DelonApps hires experienced virtual assistants in Nigeria to fill such roles.

Who Is a Virtual Assistant?

A virtual assistant is a remote employee who works outside of the client’s office to provide additional services that help to boost the growth of the client’s business. A virtual assistant usually works from home but has remote access to planning documents such as shared calendars.

Due to the availability of high-speed internet, document sharing, and cheap calling models like Google Meet and Skype, virtual assistants are in high demand among entrepreneurs and online businesses that require assistance with the smooth running of their businesses but do not want to hire full-time employees. This is because a virtual assistant is not restricted by distance and can be contacted without having to physically move from one location to another.

Employing a virtual assistant can help free up valuable hours for business owners to focus on growing their company and generating more revenue. It is easier and more cost-effective to outsource tedious and time-consuming tasks to someone who is skilled in them.

The demand for virtual assistants is high, and this has resulted in a subsequent increase in available job opportunities. A virtual assistant simply performs the duties of an office assistant, with the exception that virtual assistants work remotely. And if you have any relevant skills, you can work as a virtual assistant in Nigeria.

Virtual Assistant Job Description

Virtual assistants offer different types of services. In fact, there are far more than 100 services you can provide as a virtual assistant, so you have tons of niches to choose from.

The primary responsibilities and duties of a virtual assistant largely depend on the client’s needs as well as the terms of the contract. Some virtual assistants oversee clerical and bookkeeping tasks, whilst others publish regular posts on social media or write blog articles. A good virtual assistant may also schedule appointments, book travel arrangements, handle data entry, and other basic tasks, respond to emails, transcribe documents, prepare statements and letters, organize files, coordinate schedules, and calendars, and generally take charge of administrative tasks to free up a client’s time to focus on other aspects of their job.

A book-keeping virtual assistant creates invoices and follows up with the company’s customers in the event of nonpayment of outstanding fees, reconciles bank and credit card statements, amongst other duties.

A virtual travel assistant compiles travel schedules for specific itineraries as needed for budgeting, makes reservations, and negotiates fares with airlines and hotels, and so on.

A customer service virtual assistant can handle tasks such as new client onboarding, checking in on long-term clients on a regular basis, responding to recurring customer inquiries, handling customer complaints, and refund requests, and so on. Other responsibilities include blogging and content creation, website SEO optimization, LinkedIn profile optimization, etcetera.

As a virtual assistant in Nigeria, you can provide services such as copywriting, bookkeeping, editing, general research, web design, community management, ghostwriting, customer service, calendar management, and many more.

Virtual Assistant Key Skills

Have you ever scheduled appointments, made travel plans, managed someone’s calendar or email, blogged, or promoted something on social media? If you answered yes, you were that other person’s assistant. These are some of the most common virtual assistant tasks that do not require extensive experience or skill.

A virtual assistant should have

• Excellent typing skills.
• Comfortable using various computer software programs.
• Phenomenal written and verbal communication skills.
• Time management and organizational skills, as well as the ability to manage a tricky situation and organize it to a client’s satisfaction.
• Prior experience or knowledge of cloud-based communication technologies such as file sharing, password managers, and phone and video conferencing.
• Tech savvy: have a broad range of computer skills.

A virtual assistant who specializes in bookkeeping should be capable of performing basic accounting tasks like account reconciliations and double-entry bookkeeping.

Even if you have little or no work experience or you just do not have any skills currently, do not be discouraged. You can easily get these skills via online courses or free videos on learning sites like YouTube.

How Much Does a Virtual Assistant Make?

Everyone desires to have a career they enjoy, but we also want a career that pays well and satisfies our basic needs.

A virtual assistant can earn anywhere from $10 to $100 per hour, depending on experience and the complexity of the job at hand. In Nigeria, a virtual assistant can earn up to #100,000 per month. Depending on the agreement you have with your employer, you may be paid per hour, weekly, or monthly.

Being a Virtual Assistant: Pros & Cons

Pros

Some great reasons to start a virtual assistant business include:

• It is simple to set up and affordable, especially if you already have the necessary skills and tools.
• To get started, no special licenses or educational qualifications are required.
• You can create your schedule and work as much or as little as you want.

Cons

However, before you commence work as a virtual assistant, you should consider the drawbacks of starting this new business.

• Finding your first clients can be difficult unless you already know someone who needs a virtual assistant.
• You must keep up with the latest technology and trends in the services and industries you provide.
• You will have to compete with international virtual assistants who can provide significantly cheaper rates. To make up the difference, you will have to provide a higher quality of service and, ideally, specialize in something more specialized that may necessitate specific technical skills.

I think you will agree with me that the pros far outweigh the cons, right?

How to Become a Virtual Assistant in Nigeria

With over 1000 virtual assistant jobs available, anyone can become a virtual assistant. As a virtual assistant, you can either work directly for employers or for a virtual assistant agency that provides services to other businesses. You can also make your services available on a contract basis.

If you want to learn how to become a virtual assistant in Nigeria and earn money from home, or if you’re already an office assistant who wants the flexibility of working from home, keep reading. Here are the essential steps to becoming a virtual assistant in Nigeria.

1 Acquire Education

Virtual assistants do not require any special educational requirements or qualifications. All else being equal, academic requirements vary depending on your employer’s needs and the tasks that must be completed.

However, almost all employers do not require a high school diploma or any equivalent degree. Just a few require a university degree. You do not need to worry about your qualifications if you already have a high school education. Most employers are concerned with your work accuracy, skills, and, most importantly, experience. All of these will undoubtedly improve over time as you put in additional effort to improve performance.

It is also advisable to seek the guidance of someone who has years of experience in the field. Be keen to know about the potential mistakes you are likely to make once you get started and be intentional about mitigating those mistakes. By asking these and other pertinent virtual assistance questions, you will be in an excellent position to understand the work of a virtual assistant better.

2 Define your services

The best thing you can do, especially if you are just starting out, is to specialize in a niche and provide your services to a specific type of business. As a virtual assistant, you can offer varieties of services. However, focus solely on the skills you already have and genuinely enjoy doing. Eventually, becoming an expert in your niche will pay you more per job.

To be candid, you simply cannot handle every single facet of office operations. This is another reason you should define the services you will provide as a virtual assistant. You should determine whether you prefer simple tasks like responding to emails and reading or more complex tasks like bookkeeping.

Find out what you are really good at, what you can do with ease, and what a large number of people need. Take a close look at your employment history and target people in that field. For example, if you perform better at academic research, your ideal clients will be professors, scientists, and other scholars in the field.

Defining your services and niche will position you as an expert in that field, and you will receive more good inquiries and projects as a result.

3 Get the mandatory training

There is no accredited certification required to become a virtual assistant. However, you may need to train yourself by enrolling in an educational program to acquire relevant skills. There are numerous websites that provide online training programs for virtual assistants. You can find them on Google but keep an eye out for scam websites as well.

Most employers are not always concerned with how you obtained your training; in fact, they may never inquire. They are usually more concerned with your skills and knowledge. What matters most to them is how you will apply all your skills to help their business grow.

However, this does not imply that you should not invest in training yourself in areas where you are inadequately skilled, as this may allow you to stand a chance with future employers.

Obtaining the necessary virtual assistant training and certification will increase your credibility and enable your clients to regard you as a professional in your field. To be successful as a virtual assistant in Nigeria, you should have stellar communication skills, very good typing skills (at least 70 words per minute), excellent grammar and writing skills, etc.

4 Obtain the necessary tools

Just like any other career field, you must evaluate your tools and resources to ensure that they are up to date and will meet the needs of your clients.

Having the necessary tools and resources to carry out your duties as a virtual assistant is a sure way to success. Some of these tools include a personal computer with a high-speed Internet connection, a printer, scanner, photocopying machine, fax machine, a working mobile line, and, most importantly, a distraction-free home office. You should also have writing apps (WPS, PureWriter), transcribing apps (Speechnotes), graphics design apps (Canva), Google Workspace, and other software applications that can help make your work as a virtual assistant easier and faster.

5 Get your paperwork ready

Before fully launching your virtual assistant business, you need to prepare all necessary documentation. This includes getting a contract document that your clients will sign before you start working. This will prevent you from getting scammed by dishonest people.

Some of the key points that your contract document should contain are:

1 Work overview: this is where you give an explicit description of the work you are going to be doing for your clients so that they would know exactly what they would be paying for.

2 Payment terms: you must explicitly state how much you will be paid for each service you provide, when your invoice will be received, how you will be paid, and when payment is due. This is an essential component of a contract agreement.

3 Non-disclosure agreement: as a virtual assistant, your client might give you access to sensitive information like their passwords, marketing strategy, and client personal information. You will need to clearly inform your client about how you store their information to show that you will keep their confidential information safe.

4 Termination notice: this notice includes information about payment at the time of termination, who can file for termination, and how the termination will be delivered. Having this included in your contract agreement would prevent an incidence whereby you would complete your work and your client then decides to terminate your appointment (because they do not want to pay you).

5 Non-solicitation clause: this is an important part of your contract that must be taken seriously. Some clients may present you with a non-solicitation clause and ask you to sign it if they do not want you to market your services to their clients. It is critical that you read it carefully and have it reviewed by a lawyer before signing. Including this clause in your contract agreement document prevents your clients from presenting you with rigid restrictions and puts their minds at ease about your “loyalty” to their company.

6 Set-Up your website and social media

If you want to work remotely, you must establish yourself as an expert in online communication. The best way to accomplish this is to showcase your skills and the services you provide to your potential clients. Creating your website is critical to the success of your business as a virtual assistant. This would serve as your “virtual” CV or portfolio.

Social media is an important part of your business, but you do not have to be present everywhere all the time. Ascertain where your potential customers are and then set up a strong social media presence on that platform. Are they on Facebook? What about Instagram? Twitter? Or how about LinkedIn? Set up a profile on those platforms to position yourself as an expert in your chosen field, and then follow your potential clients there to show them that you understand their brand.

7 Network

Working remotely can be a lonely activity. You will always need a support group, a set of people who understand you and can help you by giving you advice that could help you grow and achieve your set goals as a virtual assistant. Look for a group of people that share your goals and work alongside them to build a successful business. You can also listen to podcasts that are centered around virtual assistant topics.

Join Facebook groups, blogs, and forums that are in your niche, and network with other virtual assistants. This can also help you be better informed about potential job opportunities.

Take every available opportunity to ask for feedback from your clients. Use every positive note as a testimonial and ask your best clients if you can use them as referrals. This will help you improve your visibility and get more clients.

Finally, it is important to point out that virtual assistance is currently one of the fastest-growing businesses in Nigeria and all around the world. The best time to start working as a virtual assistant is now. Gather the necessary skills and put in the required efforts, and you will be able to start making legitimate money online from the comfort of your home.

Contracting and Negotiation Services in Nigeria

Contract negotiation is the process of achieving an agreement on a set of legally binding terms. When two companies negotiate, they both seek to secure the best deal and minimize their financial, legal, and operational risks. DelonApps is the leading provider of contracting and negotiation services in Nigeria.  Our services include out-of-court settlements, partnership negotiation, business negotiation, staff rationalization, severance negotiation, human resource management, and contract negotiation. Our clients include both local and international enterprises in oil and gas, information technology, outsourcing, and other sectors in Nigeria.

We have experience helping multiple multinational companies successfully negotiate severance packages with staff and out-of-court settlements that had lasted seven to ten years. DelonApps is currently providing services to big banks, international oil companies, and financial technology companies in Nigeria. Our services are outstanding because of our the following values:

• Integrity – clients trust that we’re always honest and factual
• Objectivity and fairness – while negotiating with multiple parties, we carefully listen and propose solutions from the fairest points of view
• Competence – our team is made up of highly experienced negotiators and lawyers with local and international experience

When negotiating contracts with vendors, for example, your organization may insist on being able to pay on a monthly rather than annual basis (or vice versa). There isn’t necessarily a “right” option in payments, as there is in many other situations, but there is an alternative that makes the most sense for your organization. In business, we negotiate contracts to ensure that our agreements position our businesses for long-term success. With a wide array of client example scenarios, DelonApps recently assisted a company in disengaging redundant employees, and we assisted in negotiating employment termination and benefits, as well as disbursement of payment to employees and administration of capital gain tax with deductions and remittance within two months. Also, a foreign corporation also had a ten-year legal battle with a Nigerian vendor. Within a month, we assisted in the negotiation of an out-of-court settlement deal.

Contract negotiation is a crucial part of contract administration. Delays in contract development or execution, for example, can slow a business down, but they are unlikely to have a significant influence on its bottom line. A badly handled negotiation, on the other hand, can leave a corporation with long-term legal responsibilities.

In typical negotiations, such as those over a software license, topics such as governing law, customer data processing, information security, and price are discussed. The back-and-forth can take place in real-time (during a phone call or in-person meeting), but email is more prevalent, and the dynamics are the same in both cases. Both sides make compromises, inserting, removing, or modifying contract sections – the contract’s building blocks — until the two sides reach an agreement.

Knowledge management and process management are the keys to contract negotiation: if you don’t know the history and status of each of your contract negotiations, you can’t be sure you’re getting the best deal for your company.

Legal teams usually spend the majority of their time putting together contract changes from various business teams and tracking down the most recent versions of contracts due to the lack of a centralized mechanism for contract tracking and negotiation. Organizations with quarterly sales cycles face a far more difficult situation.

As a result, contract negotiation is a difficult task for legal teams and contract technologies due to the importance of the business, operational complexity, and an unequal number of contracts.

Our contracting and negotiating professionals in Nigeria work quickly to ensure that all parties engaged in your contract talks are satisfied. Because we strive to provide our clients with the greatest possible results, it’s never a win for us unless it’s a win-win for you.

Great prices don’t always imply excellent service, and excellent service doesn’t have to be expensive. Our strategic sourcing and contract negotiation professionals can guide you through the complexities of contracting and negotiations, not only evaluating the offered terms and conditions but also comparing them to others in the market to reach a mutually suitable agreement. Our staff is made up of lawyers and negotiation professionals that have extensive expertise in offering out-of-court settlements to foreign companies in Nigeria, including those in the Fintech, IT, and Oil & Gas industries.

Our Contracting and Negotiation Services include:

• A thorough review of the proposed contract
• A review of pricing terms, conditions and service terms
• Proposed resolutions to disagreements in terms and conditions
• A comparison to other similar contracts in the marketplace
• Finding the meeting point that leaves both the supplier and buyer satisfied  with the contract

Benefits of Our Contract Negotiation Services

The many advantages of our contract procurement process include:

• Comprehensive Review of terms and conditions: Inconsistent purchasing practices and the failure to secure competitive rates are common symptoms of insufficient contract management. We will execute a complete review of all contract terms that involve pricing, conditions, compliance, supplier service obligations and performance metrics of purchasers and suppliers. We’ll ensure you are working with reliable, reputable suppliers, and if necessary, help you locate more suitable vendors.
• Marketplace comparison: A reliable method for evaluating the fairness of a contract iscomparing its terms and conditions with similar arrangements in the same vertical market. We will analyze your contract to ensure that it is marketplace competitive and sustainable for the long term.
• Conflict resolution steps: Conflicts can arise during the performance of even a well-drafted contract. We will ensure the implementation of appropriate measures to resolve disputes equitably and expeditiously.
• Identifying the meeting point: The most successful negotiations are those where the parties can achieve a meeting of the minds. Our skilled, experienced negotiators have the savvy to identify the most pressing needs of each side and find the means to bring them together.

Why Choose a Professional Contract Negotiator?

DelonApps’ Law and Negotiation professionals in Nigeria know procurement contracts through and out, thanks to our many years in the field. We’re well-versed in industry jargon and have the data needed to assess whether your present rates are competitive. We can even uncover new procurement routes that give a better cost or negotiate on your behalf to acquire a more fair price if necessary. Our skilled contract negotiator can assist you with the following contract terms:

• Pricing: DelonApps enables you to secure a reasonable procurement spend price and avoid mismanaged procurement spend. We’ll make sure you have standardized control and contractors for production, overhead and general supplies.
• Clear conditions: We help our clients get contracts that have clear price protections, payment terms and delivery schedules. We’ll even create competing contracts if necessary.
• Compliance: You can be sure that the contract you get is compliant with every regulation and standard in your industry while still staying at a profitable price point for you. We have experience working with contracts in the Fintech, IT and Oil & Gas industries.
• Keep roles clear: We make sure that your contract has clear sections regarding material losses, insurance, confidentiality and rights of access. We turn the balancing act of contract negotiation into a clear art and ensure that every role has its own dedicated contract section for clarity.

Services for Fact-Based Negotiation

Negotiations for smart contracts are systematic and data-driven. Companies require a competent market research team to traverse the supply chain landscape and deliver the facts when it comes to decreasing costs, driving sales, and building category management strategies. DelonApps has the market intelligence required to conduct intelligent out-of-court settlement agreements. Years of experience implementing strategic sourcing best practices and out of court settlements for top international companies in FinTech, IT, and Oil and Gas industries, along with our own contract database and market research team, gives our clients real-time information on the competition, supply trends, contract terms, price points, and the supplier community. We’ll take the guesswork out of your next procurement investment, allowing you to stay competitive and save money.

Contract Negotiations That Benefit Both Parties

DelonApps has negotiated a substantial amount of contracts and has a database of contract terms, conditions, and price points that may be leveraged to help our customers save money immediately. Our database of rates, contracts, and terms helps us get significant results rapidly when negotiating new contracts for our clients.

Market Intelligence

Due to a lack of relevant data, procurement departments frequently ‘trust their intuition’ or keep inefficient supplier relationships ‘simply because.’ With years of experience, DelonApps has amassed an unrivaled collection of best practices and real-time information. This means we’re in a unique position to help you with contract negotiations and other aspects of the sourcing process both locally (within Nigeria) and internationally as well.

Regular Problems faced in Contract Negotiations

Contract negotiation should be positively beneficial to both parties in every area to achieve an equitable and fair deal. As a well-negotiated contract lays down a solid foundation for a long-term relationship between both parties.

1. When it comes to large-scale projects and government transactions, developing countries encounter several complexities and obstacles. A well-negotiated contract is essential not only for the parties to properly fulfill their current duties but also for the future. By identifying the basic elements, the contract should be carefully specified and regulated. This is the primary reason for the necessity for fine-tuned negotiation in growing markets in developing countries.

2. Conflicts that arise out of contract lead to expensive arbitration or lawsuits, the costs involved in arbitration and litigation are huge. The arbitral awards could amount to huge losses which could totally disrupt the project and the business‘s financial stability and reputation. This is one of the main reasons for the failure of many start-up companies.

3. In most cases one of the parties has more bargaining power than the other. The weaker party struggles to reach an equal footing during negotiation. Which ultimately creates friction in the weaker party’s mind even before the start of the contract.

4. While negotiating the contract, interested parties must take into consideration the recurring rapid changes occurring in the outside world. which are also vital factors as these crucial details could change the scope of negotiations and therefore must not be missed.

There is no doubt about the high cost of living in the UK but with the very low unemployment rate, it is a country to work in. There is strict equality in the workplace irrespective of gender or race and the paycheck is great as well. The working condition is also very conducive and accommodating.

Though Delon Jobs is primarily focused on helping Nigerians find jobs in Nigeria, we also help Nigerians find remote software developer jobs in Nigeria with clients in the United States and Europe. In that light, we believe that publishing an informational article like this would benefit Nigerians looking for care jobs in the United Kingdom and help Nigerians relocate to Europe. This article contains useful information for Nigerians looking for work in Nigeria.

There are lots of work leaves like bank holidays, parental leaves, time offs, etc provided to an employee in the UK. Another important thing to note is the exceptionally functional system that is in place in the UK. People’s movement from one location to another has shaped today’s political, social, and economic worlds and continues to have a significant impact on society. In 2000, nearly 175 million people, or 2.9 percent of the world’s population, spent more than a year living outside their country of birth. Around 65 million of these people are economically active. Nonetheless, the increase in migration is significant for many resource-poor countries because they are losing their better-educated nationals to richer countries: approximately 65 percent of all economically active migrants who have moved to developed countries are classified as “highly skilled”. This classification attempts to define both the educational level and the job level. In the health-care workforce, highly skilled professionals are assumed to have completed tertiary education and to have a professional job, this refers to physicians, nurses, dentists and pharmacists. The migration of health-care workers has closely tracked general trends in international migration. Migration of health workers is not new: nurses and physicians have sought employment abroad for a variety of reasons, including high unemployment in their home country’s health-care labor market.

The UK and Nigeria have deep and far-reaching ties that are rooted in both our shared history and our future partnership. Today, up to 250,000 Nigerians live legally in the UK, contributing significantly to the rich fabric of our society. Every year, approximately 130,000 Nigerians travel to the United Kingdom for both business and pleasure. Now, one would ask why a migrant would want to leave his/her country but with the current regressing economy of Nigeria most of the citizens have decided to move themselves and family to a country hoping for a better life, the economy of Nigeria is one of its greatest downfalls. Unemployment is widespread across Nigeria One factor is the critically poor state of the economy. The economy has not been in good shape for the past five years and first went into a recession in 2016, There’s been a lot of uncertainty, largely due to policy inconsistencies, about where people should invest. This cuts across various economic sectors.

Since the current government came into power in 2015, there has been a lot of policy change with the “command and control” posture adopted in managing the economy. For instance, exchange rates were left fixed for the first year of the administration until the distortions in the market became chaotic before some form of flexibility was allowed in the determination of the exchange rate, following market forces. Also land borders were arbitrarily closed to imports, despite the huge damage it could have on the country’s trade within the ECOWAS sub-region. This had a direct impact on prices of items. These policy somersaults have caused capital flight. The political uncertainty played a role in the downward trend of markets. In the equities market, huge foreign portfolio investments were lost to the economy. There has also been a downturn in portfolio investments, fixed capital investment, foreign direct investments and capital importation. There was also a record decline in capital importation of about $1,548.88 million in the fourth quarter of 2016, a 15% decrease from the third quarter of same year and in the first quarter of 2017, capital importation was recorded to be about $908.27 million. The result has been job losses and the dwindling capacity to create jobs, The poor performance of different sectors of the economy had created uncertainty and unemployment, another issue is Another issue is Nigeria’s weak currency, which has been bad for manufacturing. As many people only have access to foreign currency through unofficial sources, prices of raw materials for manufacturing have affected the sector and its output. Several organizations cannot scale or employ more people.

The low level of infrastructure in the economy is another critical factor. For instance, farmers need to move their goods to markets. The routes that link the farms to the cities are in poor shape. Power supply is erratic, and security is poor. These factors add up to a poor level of investment, meanwhile the labor supply is growing. People are graduating from higher institutions, but the demand for labor is shrinking. There are not enough jobs for young people who are leaving school. People with A levels as their highest qualification had the highest rate of unemployment with 50.7%, followed by people with first degree or higher national diploma at 40.1%.

Another risk factor of Nigeria’s poor economy is the recent pandemic that ensued, measures like lockdowns, social distancing, work from home and travel restrictions significantly affected the economy. The aviation sector and related services were one of the worst hits. The entertainment sector – movies, sports, shows – was caught in the stay-home mandate. Small and medium scale industry was also badly hit, particularly micro businesses – those who earn on a day-to-day basis. Even with the opening of the economy, the effects remain. And we’re not sure COVID-19 is going away in a hurry.

Now, on to the main reason for this article, many Nigerians have decided to seek jobs in the UK health department because it’s easier to obtain a visa through it, if you’re reading this article and your main goal is to know how to migrate to the UK in search of a health care job this article would be of help to you.

Migrating to the UK as a caregiver may seem to be a simple task, but there are numerous factors to consider once you begin the planning process. To apply as a caregiver from Nigeria, you must meet all of the following requirements:

1. Be at least 18 years old.
2. Be a citizen or permanent resident of Nigeria.
3. Have a valid passport that is valid for at least 6 months after your application date.
4. Have a medical certificate issued by a doctor in Nigeria that confirms that you are free from illnesses that could be transmitted to UK residents (for example, tuberculosis). The certificate must be provided on official letterhead and be stamped by the Ministry of Health.
5. Have no criminal convictions in any country, including the UK, regardless of how long ago it happened or whether you were charged or convicted (unless you have received a pardon.

QUALIFICATIONS

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1. Care Certificate
2. Diploma in Health and Social Care
3. GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education)
4. WAEC or SSCE

A HEALTH AND CARE WORKER VISA IS REQUIRED.

What is the UK Care Worker Visa?

Officially known as the UK Health and Care Visa, the visa allows healthcare professionals and care workers to come to work in the United Kingdom in a number of jobs in the Shortage Occupation List (SOL) for the health and care sector. The SOL was expanded in December 2021 to include care jobs effectively allowing care takers to become eligible to apply for the visa from February 15, 2022.

A visa is required for Nigerians to work in the United Kingdom. There are several types of visas available. The best visa for this role is the “Health and Care Worker visa,” which falls under the skilled worker category and was previously known as Tier 2 visa.

A Health and Care Worker visa allows medical professionals to travel to or remain in the United Kingdom to work in adult social care for the NHS or an NHS supplier.

THE DOCUMENTS BELOW WILL BE REQUIRED FOR YOUR VISA APPLICATION

1. Evidence of your English proficiency.
2. A valid passport or any other document proving your identity and nationality.
3. Describe your job title and annual salary.
4. The occupation code for your job.
5. Your employer’s name and sponsor license number.
6. If you don’t have a certificate of sponsorship, ask your employer for one.

TO QUALIFY FOR A HEALTH AND CARE WORK VISA, YOU WILL MOST LIKELY NEED TO BE:

1. A doctor
2. A nurse
3. A health care provider
4. An adult social care professional
5. Work in a health or social care job

YOU WILL NEED A JOB OFFER

Before you can apply for a visa, you must have a confirmed job offer as well as a ‘certificate of sponsorship’ from a UK employer detailing the role you’ve been offered within the UK. The starting salary and confirmation that the job offer is from a legitimate UK employer.

YOU WILL NEED A CERTIFICATE OF SPONSORSHIP

If you already have an employment offer, then they (your sponsor) will make sure you meet the eligibility requirements. They’ll offer you a ‘certificate of sponsorship’ so that you can prove this.

The certificate of sponsorship isn’t a physical document but an electronic record. It’ll have a reference number, which you will need for your visa application. You must apply for your visa within 3 months of getting your certificate of sponsorship.

YOU WILL NEED KNOWLEDGE OF ENGLISH

You need to prove your knowledge of English language when you apply. You must prove you know how to read, write, speak and understand English to a minimum of level B1 on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) scale.

Benefits of Working Care Jobs in the UK

Demand for talented care workers is rising year on year and there’s never been a better time to consider this as a professional option. There are many fantastic benefits to working in health and social care, both in terms of the rewarding nature of the role day-to-day and in terms of how this role could support the progression of your career long-term. Below are a few pointers to note about working in this sector and why it’s more than meets the eyes.

1.No two days will be alike.

If you don’t like your days to be boring, working in care may be an excellent choice for you! The great thing about working in nursing homes is that you never know what will happen from one hour to the next.

You and your coworkers will collaborate to create a fun and enjoyable environment for the seniors in your care. What this entails will most likely be determined by the specific interests of residents and their family members, so you will be encouraged to participate in a wide range of activities.

Residents’ care needs are also likely to change from day to day, so this is an excellent job opportunity if you enjoy working with people.

2. It’s an extremely social job.

If you enjoy chatting and socializing, why not choose a job that allows you to do so all day? A care assistant’s job is incredibly people-focused; you will not only be responsible for the physical care of residents, but you will also be heavily involved in getting to know them and supporting their emotional and social needs.

In addition to the elderly in your care, you will be responsible for communicating with residents’ family members and visitors. These people may struggle to adjust to the fact that their loved ones are in a nursing home, so caution is advised.

Finally, there are few jobs that allow you to converse over a cup of coffee.

3.It is a flexible and family-friendly job.

Many people who gravitate toward care work do so in part to be able to accommodate their own family responsibilities. Care home workers can work very flexible hours in order to care for their own children.

There are part-time positions available, or many colleagues will choose to work compressed hours, which means you can work full-time hours over fewer days. Many care home residents will require assistance 24 hours a day, so there will be plenty of opportunities to work hours that suit you and your lifestyle. You could even choose to spread your thirty-six hours over three days, giving you a four-day weekend.

4.Hire based on values rather than qualifications.

The care industry is one of the last places where hiring is truly based on personality and values rather than CV strength.

The most important thing is that adults are deeply concerned about the well-being of others, so one major attribute we’re always on the lookout for are caring, kind, friendly, understanding, sensitive, and approachable people. It’s also critical that you can bring a sense of humor to the role, in addition to being able to work effectively in a team.

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t always need to be fully qualified to find a job in the care industry.

Many employers, such as Nurse Plus, provide relevant on-the-job training to ensure that their workers have all the necessary skills in place to get started. There’s also the opportunity to continue professional development with further qualifications.

So not only will be fully trained and prepared for your position, but you’ll also even get to add real qualifications to your CV.

5.It is extremely rewarding to care for others.

Few things are more fundamentally rewarding than caring for others. Caring for others is a huge privilege, whether it is assisting an elderly person to enjoy their day, assisting them with short- or long-term health needs, or even easing the way for someone as they approach the end of their life.

At the end of each shift, you’ll be able to go home knowing that you’ve made a significant difference in residents’ quality of life. The daily care you provide to the elderly will be valued, appreciated, and critical to maintaining their quality of life.

As well as being among the most rewarding jobs you can do, being a carer also provides true job satisfaction. Providing care for someone on a regular basis allows you make a real difference to someone’s life, particularly when you are supporting someone who is living with a condition that requires a wider range of more complex care needs. Whether it is making sure someone is taking their medication correctly or ensuring they make it to their doctors’ appointment on time, knowing you have done your best for your customer will provide you with a sense of job satisfaction rare in most other professions.

Contract negotiation is the process of achieving an agreement on a set of legally binding terms. When two companies negotiate, they both seek to secure the best deal and minimize their financial, legal, and operational risks. DelonApps offers both local and international enterprises doing business in Nigeria top contract and negotiating services.

When negotiating contracts with vendors, for example, your organization may insist on being able to pay on a monthly rather than annual basis (or vice versa). There isn’t necessarily a “right” option in payments, as there is in many other situations, but there is an alternative that makes the most sense for your organization. In business, we negotiate contracts to ensure that our agreements position our businesses for long-term success. With a wide array of client example scenarios, DelonApps recently assisted a company in disengaging redundant employees, and we assisted in negotiating employment termination and benefits, as well as disbursement of payment to employees and administration of capital gain tax with deductions and remittance within two months. Also, a foreign corporation also had a ten-year legal battle with a Nigerian vendor. Within a month, we assisted in the negotiation of an out-of-court settlement deal.

Contract negotiation is a crucial part of contract administration. Delays in contract development or execution, for example, can slow a business down, but they are unlikely to have a significant influence on its bottom line. A badly handled negotiation, on the other hand, can leave a corporation with long-term legal responsibilities.

In typical negotiations, such as those over a software license, topics such as governing law, customer data processing, information security, and price are discussed.

The back-and-forth can take place in real-time (during a phone call or in-person meeting), but email is more prevalent, and the dynamics are the same in both cases. Both sides make compromises, inserting, removing, or modifying contract sections – the contract’s building blocks — until the two sides reach an agreement.

Knowledge management and process management are the keys to contract negotiation: if you don’t know the history and status of each of your contract negotiations, you can’t be sure you’re getting the best deal for your company.

Legal teams usually spend the majority of their time putting together contract changes from various business teams and tracking down the most recent versions of contracts due to the lack of a centralized mechanism for contract tracking and negotiation. Organizations with quarterly sales cycles face a far more difficult situation.

As a result, contract negotiation is a difficult task for legal teams and contract technologies due to the importance of the business, operational complexity, and the unequal number of contracts.

Contracting and Negotiation services in Nigeria

Our contracting and negotiating professionals in Nigeria work quickly to ensure that all parties engaged in your contract talks are satisfied. Because we strive to provide our clients with the greatest possible results, it’s never a win for us unless it’s a win-win for you.

Great prices don’t always imply excellent service, and excellent service doesn’t have to be expensive. Our strategic sourcing and contract negotiation professionals can guide you through the complexities of contracting and negotiations, not only evaluating the offered terms and conditions but also comparing them to others in the market to reach a mutually suitable agreement. Our staff is made up of lawyers and negotiation professionals that have extensive expertise in offering out-of-court settlements to foreign companies in Nigeria, including those in the Fintech, IT, and Oil & Gas industries.

Our Contracting and Negotiation Services include:

• A thorough review of the proposed contract
• A review of pricing terms, conditions, and service terms
• Proposed resolutions to disagreements in terms and conditions
• A comparison to other similar contracts in the marketplace
• Finding the meeting point that leaves both the supplier and buyer satisfied with the contract

Benefits of Our Contract Negotiation Services

The many advantages of our contract procurement process include:

• Comprehensive Review of terms and conditions: Inconsistent purchasing practices and the failure to secure competitive rates are common symptoms of insufficient contract management. We will execute a complete review of all contract terms that involve pricing, conditions, compliance, supplier service obligations, and performance metrics of purchasers and suppliers. We’ll ensure you are working with reliable, reputable suppliers, and if necessary, help you locate more suitable vendors.

• Marketplace comparison: A reliable method for evaluating the fairness of a contract is comparing its terms and conditions with similar arrangements in the same vertical market. We will analyze your contract to ensure that it is marketplace competitive and sustainable for the long term.

• Conflict resolution steps: Conflicts can arise during the performance of even a well-drafted contract. We will ensure the implementation of appropriate measures to resolve disputes equitably and expeditiously.

• Identifying the meeting point: The most successful negotiations are those where the parties can achieve a meeting of the minds. Our skilled, experienced negotiators have the savvy to identify the most pressing needs of each side and find the means to bring them together.

Why Choose a Professional Contract Negotiator?

DelonApps’ Law and Negotiation professionals in Nigeria know procurement contracts through and out, thanks to our many years in the field. We’re well-versed in industry jargon and have the data needed to assess whether your present rates are competitive. We can even uncover new procurement routes that give a better cost or negotiate on your behalf to acquire a more fair price if necessary. Our skilled contract negotiator can assist you with the following contract terms:

• Pricing: DelonAppsenables you to secure a reasonable procurement spend price and avoid mismanaged procurement spend. We’ll make sure you have standardized control and contractors for production, overhead and general supplies.

• Clear conditions: We help our clients get contracts that have clear price protections, payment terms, and delivery schedules. We’ll even create competing contracts if necessary.

• Compliance: You can be sure that the contract you get is compliant with every regulation and standard in your industry while still staying at a profitable price point for you. We have experience working with contracts in the Fintech, IT, and Oil & Gas

• Keep roles clear: We make sure that your contract has clear sections regarding material losses, insurance, confidentiality, and rights of access. We turn the balancing act of contract negotiation into a clear art and ensure that every role has its own dedicated contract section for clarity.

Services for Fact-Based Negotiation

Negotiations for smart contracts are systematic and data-driven. Companies require a competent market research team to traverse the supply chain landscape and deliver the facts when it comes to decreasing costs, driving sales, and building category management strategies. DelonApps has the market intelligence required to conduct intelligent out-of-court settlement agreements. Years of experience implementing strategic sourcing best practices and out of court settlements for top international companies in FinTech, IT, and Oil and Gas industries, along with our own contract database and market research team, gives our clients real-time information on the competition, supply trends, contract terms, price points, and the supplier community. We’ll take the guesswork out of your next procurement investment, allowing you to stay competitive and save money.

Contract Negotiations That Benefit Both Parties

DelonApps has negotiated a substantial amount of contracts and has a database of contract terms, conditions, and price points that may be leveraged to help our customers save money immediately. Our database of rates, contracts, and terms helps us get significant results rapidly when negotiating new contracts for our clients.

Market Intelligence

Due to a lack of relevant data, procurement departments frequently ‘trust their intuition’ or keep inefficient supplier relationships ‘simply because.’ With years of experience, DelonApps has amassed an unrivaled collection of best practices and real-time information. This means we’re in a unique position to help you with contract negotiations and other aspects of the sourcing process both locally (within Nigeria) and internationally as well.

Regular Problems faced in Contract Negotiations

Contract negotiation should be positively beneficial to both parties in every area to achieve an equitable and fair deal. As a well-negotiated contract lays down a solid foundation for a long-term relationship between both parties.

1. When it comes to large-scale projects and government transactions, developing countries encounter several complexities and obstacles. A well-negotiated contract is essential not only for the parties to properly fulfill their current duties, but also for the future. By identifying the basic elements, the contract should be carefully specified and regulated. This is the primary reason for the necessity for fine-tuned negotiation in growing markets in developing countries.

2. Conflicts that arise out of contract lead to expensive arbitration or lawsuits, the costs involved in arbitration and litigation are huge. The arbitral awards could amount to huge losses which could totally disrupt the project and the business‘s financial stability and reputation. This is one of the main reasons for the failure of many start-ups

3. In most of the cases, one of the parties has more bargaining power than the other. The weaker party struggles to reach an equal footing during negotiation. Which ultimately creates friction in the weaker party’s mind even before the start of the contract.

4. While negotiating the contract, interested parties must take into consideration the recurring rapid changes occurring in the outside world. which are also vital factors as these crucial details could change the scope of negotiations and therefore must not be missed.

Trust DelonApps for Your Negotiation Needs

With more than a decade of expertise negotiating with some of the procurement industry’s biggest names. Whatever your budget, we can help you save money on indirect commodities so you can get the most out of them. Our first priority is always your bottom line. To learn more, come see us in person or contact us online so we can begin negotiating your contract right now.

It is of no news that Nigeria has based her economic mainstay on Petroleum and the country gets most of her revenue from this source, this explains the reason why young people in the country tend to pursue a degree in the oil-based discipline. An average Nigerian believes a man working in the Oil Company earns a fat salary and rightly so.

The young minds of the country tend to however get their minds clouded by this notion, as well as the need to get other “neat jobs” like being a Doctor, a Pharmacist and so on, this is to say that only a few young Nigerians partake in the Technology field intending to pursue a career relating to it.

Truth be told, the Oil industry is crowded, Doctors are becoming less needed by the day, however, today, Tech Jobs are very open and can employ as much as possible with reasonable experience. This field is one of the most sought after in other highly developed Nations and tends to bring in a lot more revenues to them than Oil brings to Nigeria as the World is currently going “more tech”.

The fact is that among the top 50 best-paying jobs in the world, tech jobs occupy almost half of the entire list and this will only increase as the search for tech workers increases.

Nigeria is doing well in catching up when it comes to technology and the tech-related jobs are increasing by the day, here are the top 10 Tech-based jobs in the country.

1. Software Developer

This is where most of these tech jobs fall under. A Software Developer Programmer or Coder is someone who simply creates Computer software. They use a series of languages and codes to create applications, commands, and tasks that run the computer.

They are highly sought after and are one of the highest earners in the World. A Software Developer must be creative and must be an expert in coding as well as utilization of the computer system as a whole.

2. Mobile Application Developer

The world has gone digital, 90% of the World Population uses a mobile phone of some kind, and over 60% use or have used a smartphone in this generation. Looking at the Google Play Store, for example, is the official Android Application store and contains over 2.7 million applications.

The job of an App developer is primarily to create and design applications for particular purposes to serve a particular set of people. These Mobile Application Developers possess a skill in coding and can grow their niche into Web Applications. They can work for companies but can also be independent and ways of earning are flexible.

3. Database Administrator

The Database of a company is one of its most important assets. Here, records and tracks of the company’s staff, activities, customers, inventory, and transactions are kept. It contains an invaluable set of information that is very useful and can be essential in future decisions. A Database Admin is the person that runs it and they earn a lot as it is not a very easy task.

4. Digital Marketer

A digital marketer or a digital marketing manager is a person whose task is to develop, implement and manage marketing campaigns to promote a company and its products and/or services. He/she s a major PRO of the company as they are essential in promoting awareness about the Company to the general public, hence selling their goods and services rather easily. Marketing is a major factor of any company, hence the importance of a skilled Marketing Manager.

5. Web Developer

As earlier said, the world is going digital. Most companies now prefer to sell their products online as a lot of people have access to the internet. These companies have their websites to make things easier for them and a Web Developer is responsible for creating and designing these websites.

A Web Developer must be an expert in a lot of programming languages and must be capable of creating a unique, user-friendly, and easily-accessible portal.

6. Computer Hardware Engineer

Well, technology can’t just be there, there must be some physical portals influencing it. A computer is the most notable and important tech device and it is a Computer Engineer that creates and designs it as well as other computer-related devices.

7. Security Engineer

A company can lose a good amount of its revenue and assets if its security system is breached by a dark hacker. Lots of secret information including passwords and strategies can be leaked which may lead to loss and this is where the Security Engineer comes in.

A Security Engineer combines a variety of skills to design, utilize and monitor various systems that secure a company’s network and software, protecting and shielding its assets from unwanted Intruders. They’re a very important branch of any company.

8. Data Architect

Data Architecture is based on Information Technology. The job of a Data Architect is to determine how Data can be stored, consumed, managed, and integrated by different Data Entities or IT Systems.

9. IT Program Manager

An IT Manager has a lot of responsibility on his sleeves. He or she manages the company’s IT infrastructure and also manages all projects relating to information in the company. They oversee and determine the time frame of an IT project from updates to outages.. they plan, coordinate and direct all activities relating to the Company’s Information System.

10.Software Development Manager

A Software Development Manager simply leads a team of Software Developers. He/She is tasked with hiring and training staff of related companies, creating budgets and documentation then providing reports to those at the top hierarchy.

As businesses expand their market overseas, the need for a reliable and competent outsourcing partner is essential in the path of their growth. From customer care support to data entry services, BPO companies have become the lifeline of every company irrespective of their size. However, the demand for outsourcing has immensely increased over the decade and that has led to the growth of multiple BPO service providers. With a variety of BPO agencies available, it is crucial to choose the right service provider for the company.

Need for BPO Service Provider:

For any company to thrive in the global market, it should maintain a smooth and manageable workflow for its completion of essential tasks. The main point that needs to be focused on is a better utilization of resources. The solution lies in delegating the back-office functions to a service provider that is a professional in carrying out these tasks. One of the biggest benefits of hiring a BPO service is that a company can streamline various office functions at a time. Outsourcing is oftentimes way better than appointing an in-house team for conducting these tasks. It is not only time-consuming but also a huge capital investment is incurred in the process. Hence, it is very important to research beforehand when choosing a BPO service provider for your company.

Tips to consider while choosing a BPO service provider

1. Experience

It is very essential to choose an experienced firm. An experienced BPO service provider will have domain expertise and the knowledge to deal with challenging situations in the business process like data entry and other business functions. The experience of the firm also helps them to provide a competitive edge in the market over other companies that offer similar services therefore putting your organization or brand in a very good position.

2. Security

Data security is the most vital aspect to consider when selecting a BPO partner. While outsourcing, a company shares much sensitive information with the third-party service provider. Hence, it is very important to check whether the BPO company has top-notch security policies like a non-disclosure agreement, strict service level agreement, etc. The companies must ensure that the outsourcing agency must have the latest cybersecurity devices that measure data security.

3. Strength of the Firm

One important reason for consideration when choosing a

. The outsourcing firm should have qualified professionals for delivering the work on time. Always check the resources before selecting any firm for outsourcing.

4. Technology

The intervention of the latest technology is proven to improve the efficiency and productivity of the BPO service provider. Make sure that if the firm is not using the latest technologies but the technologies must be relevant to the business process they are working on. A BPO company can be more successful when its integrated approach will work holistically in its every office function.

5. Scalability

A scalable BPO service provider is important in terms of facilities and resource strength. In the lean season, scalability is important to cater the desired products to the clients without increasing the different overheads of the business. Every company should choose a scalable outsourcing partner while expecting a better commitment toward outsourced business activities.

6. Infrastructure

A good infrastructure is indeed an essential factor for a BPO service provider in setting up their exclusive teams and the equipment. Infrastructure like high-speed internet, phone connectivity, hardware, software, etc. is required for the smooth operations of their workflow. The importance of infrastructure is directly related to the smooth delivery of BPO services.

7. Quality Assurance

Quality assurance is the most important aspect that needs to be considered while selecting a BPO service provider for a company. The quality of data shared by the companies is essential as companies rely on the data for many critical decision-making processes. Hence, the outsourcing company needs to follow strict quality assurance while strictly adhering to data breach policies.

8. Cost-Effectiveness

Last but not least cost-effectiveness is considered the most vital factor that needs to be checked before selecting an outsourcing partner. It is always recommended to compare the prices quoted by a few outsourcing companies and check the quality of services delivered by them. While a very lesser price also indicates bad service quality. On the other hand, a high quoted price can also be a premium price that every company may not afford. Hence, choose wisely and decide in a way so that it can fit under the decided budget.

9. Referrals

Referrals work in every possible sector of industries. Be it marketing and sales or BPO, a referral is something that always pays off. Referrals of known contacts or any competitors can be considered while choosing a BPO service provider. The selected companies can be cross-checked based on their testimonials and performances so that the best can be chosen.

10. Turnaround Time

Always choose an outsourcing partner that is known for its Turnaround Time (TAT). IT is very important to deliver the work to the clients within the stipulated time. Every milestone of business can be met smoothly if the outsourcing partner regularly meets the TAT.

Businesses irrespective of any industry strive to maintain a competitive advantage in the market while staying ahead of their competitors. The success of a company depends on building robust and responsive support while taking the help of a reliable and trusted outsourcing partner that will streamline your business processes so that the business can thrive to the next level. A business must critically analyze the legal and political conditions of the country that they want to outsource. However, there are other factors too such as language and communication that need to be checked while maintaining a smooth communication flow between the two companies.

Are you looking to hire a new business process outsourcing (BPO) service, but have no idea how to pick the right one? Choosing the right BPO partner ensures you pick the right company for your needs. BPO services have the potential to take a significant load off your business allowing you to grow to new heights.

BPO services have their strengths and weaknesses. You’ll need to evaluate factors such as technological capabilities, experience, and pricing to figure out if they are a good match for you

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Insights to Choose The BPO Partner

BPO Services must offer advanced technology

Competing in the modern business landscape means utilizing up-to-date technology. Implementing technologically advanced systems costs a lot of money and might be beyond what your business can handle. Therefore, it makes sense to hire a business process outsourcing service that uses the technological edge you’re after.

For example, BPO services using advanced artificial intelligence systems might make use of chatbots for live chat support to help deal with a high volume of customer queries. Customer service is an important part of running a business but can become overwhelming when you scale. Offloading the task to a technologically advanced BPO company ensures your customer queries are handled effectively and to high satisfaction levels.

Does the BPO service have experience?

Do background research on the BPO service to determine how long they have been around. It takes something special to stay afloat in the competitive BPO service industry. Services that have stood the test of time typically have the experience to overcome challenges your business is faced with. It’s safer to go with an established BPO service that has a list of reputable brands as clients.

Also, scrutinize if experienced agents are working at the service. You want the best agents in the industry working on behalf of your company. After all, their work impacts your business. It’s more important for front office operations where BPO agents directly interact with your customers.

Ideally, BPO agents should have experience working in your industry. It is advantageous because they will have detailed knowledge about what your business needs to succeed. The teething period is reduced and less training is required to ensure you get the best possible service.

BPO services pricing is a critical consideration

There is no point in hiring a BPO partner you can’t afford. You’ll end up canceling their service shortly and be back at square one. Choose a service that offers a competitive deal and is within your budget. Perhaps they offer a discount if you need more volume as you grow?

Hidden charges are a nasty technique used by services to extract more money. Reputable services like Delonapps, the best BPO service provider will disclose the final price upfront and won’t ask for more money.

Furthermore, you need to know what you’re paying for. Make sure you understand what the BPO service will do for the price. A detailed summary of the service provided leaves no ambiguity. It avoids a lack of misunderstanding that can lead to disagreements down the line.

Does the BPO company provide good communication?

Good communication is a key ingredient of a healthy partnership. It would be frustrating if you struggled to get in touch with the manager responsible for your account.

You may want real-time reporting that details how effectively the call center company can complete tasks. Also, you might want to communicate what changes you’d like to make. In some cases, it’s important that you immediately get an answer so communication is a key ingredient for a successful relationship.

Scalability and limitations

Will the BPO service allow you to scale without limitations? To ensure there is the consistency you’d want to pick a BPO partner and stick with them for many years. Therefore, the service must have the infrastructure and staff to handle requirements as you grow.

Consider your projected growth and look for a BPO service that already handles clients of that size. Make sure they can give you their full attention and prioritize you as one of their important clients.

Furthermore, think about what limitations this BPO service will inflict on your business. For example, if you’re hiring a customer service team, then ask about the channels of communication they offer.

Customer convenience

The BPO company you choose must provide an excellent service for your customers too. After all, your customers are the lifeblood of your business. BPO service agents need to be respectful, considerate and solve problems effectively when customers get in touch.

Also, the BPO service must be large enough so that waiting times are kept at a minimum. Otherwise, customers might get frustrated with your company.

Are you looking to hire a new business process outsourcing (BPO) service, but have no idea how to pick the right one? Choosing the right BPO partner ensures you pick the right company for your needs. BPO services have the potential to take a significant load off your business allowing you to grow to new heights.

BPO services have their strengths and weaknesses. You’ll need to evaluate factors such as technological capabilities, experience, and pricing to figure out if they are a good match for you.
Insights to Choose Your BPO Partner
BPO Services must offer advanced technology
Competing in the modern business landscape means utilizing up-to-date technology. Implementing technologically advanced systems costs a lot of money and might be beyond what your business can handle. Therefore, it makes sense to hire a business process outsourcing service that uses the technological edge you’re after.

For example, BPO services using advanced artificial intelligence systems might make use of chatbots for live chat support to help deal with a high volume of customer queries. Customer service is an important part of running a business but can become overwhelming when you scale. Offloading the task to a technologically advanced BPO company ensures your customer queries are handled effectively and to high satisfaction levels.
Does the BPO service have experience?

One key player for any successful business lies in its ability to retain existing customers. Most companies especially start-ups that don’t have an existing customer database focus on attracting new customers.

However, Marketing now is more focused on digital than ever before. Modern marketers and sales professionals are in a long race of acquiring new customers and increasing brand awareness across newer geographies and scopes of business. While marketing and sales work as a team in growing the business with acquisition efforts, it is imperative to dedicate the same amount of effort and resources in retaining the existing users.

With the long-lasting drastic impact of Covid-19 affecting many businesses, non-essential businesses shut down entirely while even the so-called essential businesses had to adapt to a new market sphere by employing various relationship marketing communication strategies to keep up the communication lines with existing customers.

In today’s customer-centric era, relationship marketing is perceived altruism that entails mutual trust between a business and its customers. With more businesses putting the customer at the center of their marketing strategies, relationship marketing retains its prominence among various organizations that aim to foster brand loyalty and pursue brand ambassadors.
According to Forbes, a business is only as good as the clients it serves, and no business gets too far after losing the clients it has.

What is Relationship Marketing?

Relationship marketing is a way that leverages customer trust to improve customer retention and drive hyper-growth based on one-time acquisition. Having emerged at the forefront of modern-day marketing, relationship marketing is more focused on customers as opposed to traditional marketing which heavily focuses on prospects and new leads.

“Even when you are marketing to your entire audience or customer base, you are still simply speaking to a single human at any given time.” – Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer at MarketingProfs.

Why is Relationship Marketing Important?

Imagine if your business stopped getting repeat customers. Or, if your customers stayed but never referred you to their friends and peers?
Well, this indicates that you might have to go on a scavenger hunt to acquire new customers for your business to sustain itself in the long run.

However, according to Forbes, a 5% increase in customer retention can increase your company’s profitability by a staggering 75%. Also, surveys prove, it would cost just 11% of what it would cost to acquire a new customer.

Every business needs to build “trust” with its customers. Modern businesses are based on existing mutual relationships with their customers. Customers want to feel part of a business and if you can’t keep your customers happy by creating a healthy symmetrical communication relationship, that business would most likely fall apart in time. Even with the best products and business practices, you will still need strong customer relationships to succeed in an increasingly competitive marketplace.
As stated earlier, it is much easier and more cost-effective to retain customers than to acquire new ones. As returning customers have already established trust with the brand or business, they are likely to spend more as well as refer friends and family.

Why Call Center is important for customer retention.

Successful companies understand that a call center’s primary purpose is to retain customers so that they don’t defect to the competition. This means providing service to callers and resolving their problems as well as selling to them.

Yet even the best-run companies often find it difficult to effectively generate sales from their call centers. This common problem certainly makes sense when you consider that callers are primarily seeking answers to questions and resolutions to problems. However, for companies that optimize their call centers for sales, there are big opportunities for increased profits as well as greater customer loyalty

Optimize Your System and Processes

The average call center conversation across all industries is between four and six minutes. During this time, the IVR system has to function properly, and the call center representative must be able to address the customer’s needs. If one component of the process isn’t successful or if a call is simply not resolved, the chance of a sale going right out the window is high. One sobering statistic for any company to consider is that at least 15 percent of customers who don’t get their calls resolved will move on to another company. And these customers will tell on average five others about their less than satisfactory experience.

Before any company can begin to explore opportunities for increasing sales at the call center level, the first step is to ensure that calls are being managed as efficiently and effectively as possible. From the auto-attendant greeting and prompts to the amount of time the customer waits in an on-hold queue, the customer experience needs to be at a high enough level to keep the customer satisfied and engaged. Once a customer gets frustrated by an overly complicated IVR system or has to wait on hold for 10 minutes, the chance of a potential sale is lost.

However, Choosing the right Business Process outsourcing service for your company is as good as hiring the right talents for your company. DelonApps is a leading BPO service company that provides excellent business services to clients across the world. They also provide agile transformation services in Nigeria and own the top classified ads website in Nigeria, as well as a leading job portal in Nigeria.

At DelonApps, our services are tailored to meet your exact needs. While other companies have standard training programs and curriculums, We tailor our programs and curriculum to meet our client’s exact needs. Also taking our client’s culture and behavior and inculcating that into our well-trained customer service staff. This is one major reason why DelonApps is the best call center outsourcing company.

Here are 6 reasons why Telemarketing relationship marketing is critical to your digital business:

1. Build formidable trust:

Relationship marketing builds upon improving the customer experience and puts customer trust at the center of your marketing efforts to foster higher customer loyalty. To build this trust with your customers you must first start thinking like a customer and study your viewing, browsing, and purchase habits, depending upon what industry you operate in.
Assuring the customer your support whenever they need you and by whatever medium possible helps create a sustainable trust factor.

2. Solve mutual problems:

Relationship marketing helps in solving the mutual problems of both the business and the customer. Your customers are the reason your business can leverage monetization opportunities, hitting top-line growth. To actively listen to their concerns, what they like, and what they want to be changed, any specific pain point that has to be addressed and solved.
If more customers are insisting on one thing, perhaps it’s time to pivot. These insights help in iteratively improving your product.

3. Deliver a seamless customer experience:

Customers don’t just want to buy a good product. They want to experience the joy of purchasing and using a good product.
Relationship marketing helps you focus on the customer, rather than on the product or service you offer. It also helps in creating an in-depth profile of customers based on their needs and understanding what exactly they’re looking for. By adopting a more customer-centric approach and focusing on customer relationships, you can align your core strategies and work across teams to meet customer needs, improve satisfaction, and deliver a seamless experience consistently.

4. Strengthens customer advocacy:

In today’s day and age of unreliable paid reviews, your prospects are more likely to believe what they hear directly from the horse’s mouth; i.e. your existing customers!

Let’s face it – not all customers are likely to become super fans of your business. For a customer-centric business, they become your core pillars of growth. It is not easy to build customer advocacy and relationship marketing makes it easier for you. Once a customer starts advocating for you, they’ll become the most profitable source of customer acquisition. They are not just repeated buyers but gradually demonstrate loyalty towards your business.

5. Build a better product:

Did you know that 70% of companies that are considered best in class for customer experience rely on customer feedback? Repeat customers to your business bestow more than just revenue growth.

As your customers continue to do business with your company, they become more closely acquainted with the products and services you offer. This helps your company to get knowledgeable feedback from a customer’s perspective. Converting this valuable and timely feedback into actionable insights helps in building a better product over some time.

6. Lowers Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC)

One of the highest revenue churners is that of a customer’s acquisition. When you leverage relationship marketing and build some viable trust, and engage effectively via nurturing with a multi-channel approach, you can attempt at lowering your customer acquisition costs, since you only spend once on a particular customer.

The most recent software developers in the technology industry have paved the way for some of the highest-paying jobs in software development. From artificial intelligence to information systems and security, top positions for software developers are fascinating and highly rewarding. With the strong computer science and programming skills required, workers in the modern workforce can expect to earn excellent salaries and have plenty of potential for advancement. As computer technology continues to improve, the job market will evolve, providing new opportunities for highly skilled professionals.

As of June 2020, software development is currently the most sought-after category of jobs in the IT industry in Lagos. This is perhaps because there is a much higher demand for them than any of the other high-paying IT jobs in Nigeria. Lagos employers are paying high salaries because of the scarcity of experienced software developers in the country. Thus, when subsequent positional openings for software developers are put up on job sites these positions do not get filled up quickly unless new employers are willing to pay a decent fee. This industry in the country is therefore currently a seller’s market.

If you visit the current #1 job website in Nigeria – jobs.delon.ng that is focused a lot on IT jobs, you will always find different types of software developer positions remain unoccupied  This clearly shows there is a growing demand which is not sufficiently matched with adequate supply at the moment. There are many types of jobs associated with software development. I will discuss a few of them as follows.

UI UX Designer Jobs in Nigeria

User Interface and User Experience (UI/UX) job is one major subject I love to talk about. It is a type of job in the software development industry in Nigeria that’s been gaining a lot of momentum lately. It is however unfortunate that most companies end up spending more time and money fixing poorly created software because they did not devote adequate time to the initial UI/UX design before the development team started coding. No matter how gifted and experienced your software coding team is, they will always run into problems if the UI/UX was not perfectly done at the beginning.

The difference between User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) is that while UI refers to the aesthetic elements by which people interact with a product, UX is all about the experience a user has when interacting with a product or service. So, UI focuses on visual interface elements such as typography, colors, menu bars, and more, while UX focuses on the user and their journey through the product.

UI/UX requires a lot of collaboration with the customer and the challenge is that some customers don’t have a clear idea of what they want and are not ready to exercise the required patience to go through this process. The onus is on the software developers to not only start coding but also show and direct the customer visually into what would represent a perfect idea of what they want. Therefore, it is the responsibility of the software development company to explain to the customer in detail the need for proper UI/UX work before coding. As more understanding of this role is gotten, there will be many new job opportunities for UI/UX designers in Nigeria in the next five years.

Software Developer Jobs in Nigeria

Software development today includes mobile app developers, web app developers, and desktop app, developers. But because of the advent of cloud computing and the massive growth of mobile technologies around the world, subsequently, the need for mobile and web developers has seen a major increase as well. Most companies are more aware of how having a good mobile app and user interactive websites can affect brand positioning in a growing competitive market. So people talk more about mobile and web development. Some Nigerian companies continue to require in-house software developers to help with several customizations on their off-the-shelf software, there will always be the need for traditional core software developers in Nigeria for the next five years.

Project Manager Jobs in Nigeria

Project managers, scrum masters, product managers, product owners, agile coaches, and software development managers are management or business-related roles associated with software development. They perform best when they have a technical background but there are also many efficient managers without a technical background. There have always been project managers in Nigeria, but the growth will come from the new agile frameworks. More companies will hire scrum masters, product owners, and agile coaches over the next five years.

Data Engineer Jobs in Nigeria

Also, we have data engineers (sometimes called data scientists) who venture into several sub-areas including big data specialists, artificial intelligence, etc. It is an emerging field in Nigeria, but I am concerned that the professionals in the sub-industry talk more about the processing side than acquisition. There is still a whole lot to be exploited in this field due to the relatively little available database in Nigeria. There is not even definite data for censoring our population, crime rate and even real unemployment levels, etc.

Quality Assurance Jobs in Nigeria

Quality Assurance (QA) engineers are also not often talked about in Nigeria’s software development industry. Yet it is perhaps one of the major reasons why software products from the West tend to be less devoid of problems than local software products. For local software to become more successful, QA needs to be taken more seriously. So if you are a recent engineering graduate that loves coding but does not have the flair or skills in coding, QA is a good area to consider as there will be more jobs related to QA in the next few years.

Team building refers to the activities undertaken by groups of people to increase their motivation and boost cooperation. Many people use the phrases “team-building” and “teamwork” interchangeably. However, they are two distinct concepts. While team building emphasizes the creation of groups, teamwork emphasizes the functions of these groups.

Although team-building activities are meant to increase cohesiveness and cooperation, many employees don’t understand how spending a day playing games can help them bond. The truth is, how managers use team building in their organizations helps to shape their employees’ attitudes towards the process.

As such, leaders should seek to understand team building better as it will help increase their effectiveness. More specifically, leaders should be interested in learning the characteristics that make great teams and the techniques and relevance of team building.

What Makes an Effective Team

Defining the Primary Goal

The main function of forming the group should be made clear right off the bat. The best way to define this purpose is by setting solid and measurable targets. This way, every team member knows exactly how his or her work contributes to accomplishing the organizational goal.

Frequent Communication

Another aspect that makes up an effective team entails open and free channels of communication. There should be constant communication not just among the team members but also between the team and the whole organization. This way, team members will always have the information they need to undertake their roles.

Responsibility and Dedication

When team members are aware of what expectations need to be met, they are more ready to be held accountable for their decisions and work. Similarly, these team members are willing to undertake proactive measures to finish the assigned tasks within a given timeframe.

Overall, members of a good team are not only aware of the objectives, but they also commit themselves wholeheartedly to achieve the set goals.

Laissez-faire Form of Leadership

Another trait of an effective team is that it practices delegative leadership. What this means is that members are ready to take up leadership positions when situations call for it. This style of communal leadership fosters a shared responsibility, and it helps in boosting the members’ motivation and productivity.

Types of Team Building

Activity-based Team-building Technique

An activity-based type of team-building exercise gives your employees a break from the daily usual work routine. It helps the team to step out of their comfort zone. Here, the team members indulge in various mental or physical activities carried out both indoors and outdoors.

Organizing team lunches and company outings enhance communication amongst team members. It connects them personally and discovers hidden traits. Outdoor activities need the teams to step out of the office, which is not feasible at all times. Indoor team-building games such as a Football tournament or round table games like chess are excellent mood boosters too. This type of activity helps form or foster relationships and subsequently increases productivity/output.

Communication-based Team-building Technique

The key to every social networking is communication.

Perfect for a new team with new members, a communication-based team-building approach can be a great ice breaker. These types of group-building activities for the workplace allow the team to get to know their colleagues a little better and share a personal bond. It can help break communication barriers, improve interpersonal skills and build trust among the employees.

Personality-based Team-building Technique

A workplace can be a mix and match of all sorts of personalities. Hence, managers need to identify and nurture the various personality types.
Team leaders can carry out a personality test, such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). Then they can coordinate tasks accordingly to bring out the best in all the group members. It helps employees to know their coworkers on an individual level. They can appreciate the uniqueness everyone brings to the table.
Some may perform better working with a large group of people, while the rest may prefer small groups.
Managers can assign tasks according to personality types. It will lead to better understanding and increased effectiveness in the team.

Why you should invest in Team Building

To build face-to-face interactions

Whenever employees are asked to work together on a task, they often communicate through email or online chat forums. While this can be efficient, face-to-face interaction often has valuable benefits. Not only does it help to reduce confusion, but it also makes working together with a more social experience.

To foster competition

Nothing motivates an underperforming team to work harder than healthy competition. Most team-building activities involve different teams competing to achieve a specific goal. Whether a team loses or emerges triumphant, the odds are that members will be driven to give their best. This not only motivates employees, but also encourages them to apply this principle at work. Competition has been proven to improve workers’ productivity.

Furthermore, Team building is the process of increasing a team’s cohesiveness, productivity, and efficiency by coming up with activities that require members to work together. This process relies on a range of aspects to guarantee its success. These include factors such as good communication skills, clarity of goals, shared leadership, and a sense of accountability.

In addition to the abovementioned traits, leaders need to be careful when selecting teams. More specifically, they should pick teams based on diversity and skill levels. Overall, team building helps companies achieve goals and foster healthy competition.

Once every decade or so, something new comes along to transform the marketing industry. If you draw a through-line from radio and television to the advent of the internet and, most recently, digital channels like search, social and mobile, you’d find one common principle: that early adopters’ advantage pays off handsomely for the businesses who master new, paradigm-shaking channels early enough.

Perhaps, then, we shouldn’t be surprised to see so many companies diving headfirst into the metaverse. Although at this early stage it shouldn’t be a surprise to see some of them stumble and fail in their attempts, the potential of the metaverse to define the winners and losers of digital marketing for decades to come is too enormous to ignore. And it seems more likely than not that the eventual winners will be found among brands who are already testing it out.

Even though the concept for the “metaverse” is hard to pin down, as of yet it exists mainly as a loose and amorphous web of 3D gaming platforms, VR worlds, and AR experiences—brands like Nike, Gucci and Disney have signaled their intention to commit to it.

And they’re not alone. Hiring for metaverse-related jobs had already spiked more than 400% this year even before Facebook went all in and changed its name to Meta, with the overall market size of the metaverse projected to grow at nearly 44% over the next seven years.

Why all the fuss? What is it that makes the metaverse so alluring to brands, and why do so many feel that it’s worth taking such large bets on?

One major reason is it merges the best of the physical and digital worlds to impact the way people work, play, learn, socialize, shop, and generally communicate with one another. Beyond that, there are several other important reasons that the metaverse stands to reshape digital marketing.

Consumers crave experiences

Today’s consumers have grown tired of the static display and video ads that permeate the web and social media. They crave rich, interactive, immersive experiences. With most consumers no longer content to just sit back and be marketed to, they prefer to play a role in defining a brand and to have a say in what it means to them.

The metaverse is built on such experiences. By its very nature, you don’t necessarily watch or view the metaverse but you’re also an active contributor. Your very presence in it helps change it in ways both large and small. The metaverse replaces the flat, two-dimensional world of the web with a 3D (or in some cases even 4D) experience that is much more real lifelike, but this time only without any of the pesky rules of quantum physics. Brands are flocking to the metaverse because the types of experiences that can be created there are practically limitless. This is the most creative world brought to life and brands want to be a part of it.

The entire customer journey can happen within the metaverse

Previous paradigm-shifting channels such as search and social generally catered to just one part of the customer journey. The AIDA (awareness, information, decision, and action) model. For example, search is great at identifying mid- to low-funnel prospects who are already in the information and evaluation stage, but very poor at helping raise awareness and shape perceptions at the top of the funnel. On the other hand, social has always been very good at the latter but, at least until “social commerce” became a recent trend, relatively poor at the former.

However, the metaverse contains opportunities that affect the entire customer journey in a streamlined way. The metaverse allows brands to reach new audiences in new and inventive ways while enabling them to dig deeper, learn more and ultimately make purchases, all in a single, cohesive experience.

It takes co-creation to the next level

Marketers have been striving to involve consumers in the co-creation of user-generated content for practically as long as the term has existed. It is a marketer’s dream to have consumers creating, publishing, and sharing content featuring their brand, but one major challenge has always been how to encourage co-creation in a way that feels authentic and meaningful.

The metaverse enables brands and consumers to co-create content in ways that we haven’t even discovered yet. The metaverse enables brands and consumers to co-create content in ways that were never possible before—and in ways that we haven’t even discovered yet. As the metaverse unfolds, the co-creation of virtual environments, avatars, and experiences will define a new era of UGC (user-generated content)

It powers inclusivity, diversity, and representation

Within the last year or two, there has been a movement to bring more inclusivity and diversity to marketing. A survey from Meta found that 71% of consumers expect brands to promote diversity and inclusion in their online advertising, and yet that same report says the majority (54%) of consumers do not feel fully represented in online ads.

In the metaverse, we can create our own experiences and are at the center of our digital worlds. Through the metaverse, marketers will be able to inject their brands into a consumer’s experience in a way that makes each consumer the star of their show.

Instead of seeing famous actors, models, or rap artists hawking the latest styles, in the metaverse a clothing or fashion brand, for example, can allow each of us to try on their latest looks. If we like it, we can send it to our friends, who may be more likely to engage with the content than if it featured a celebrity they don’t know personally.

If people feel underrepresented in advertising, what better way to represent them than to do so directly, by featuring them in the brand experience itself? We see this today through many of the AR experiences found on social media.

What comes to your head when you hear “Tell me about yourself”. Even though it’s one of the most common interview questions, “it almost always stumps a lot of people. It might seem like an easy win—after all, you know all about yourself!—but responding to this invitation to talk about you in the context of a job interview can feel stressful and complicated. It’s challenging because it is a broad, open-ended question. You might be thinking: Um, what do you want to know? How am I supposed to pick what to share out of my entire life story right now? should I answer what they want to hear or should I be honest?

To prevent moments like this, preparation is key. Adequate preparation will have you ready for this opening question and can help you use this opening prompt to your advantage, therefore setting the stage for a successful interview.

As with any interview, one major key to having a good answer for any question is to understand why the question is being asked in the first place and what type of answer the interviewer will like to hear.

interviewers often ask this question as it serves as a great way to break the ice, lighten the atmosphere in the room and set the direction of the interview. Oftentimes, the answer given by the interviewee helps figure out the next question. It could also build up to a set of follow-up questions that lend an easy flow to the conversation.

Other than serving as an ice breaker and transition question, the introductory question helps recruiters and hiring managers to achieve a major goal in the interview process which is getting to know you better.

Providing a good answer to this question moves the interviewer to probe questions as to why you will be the best fit for the job in terms of hard skills, soft skills as well as experience. It’s also a great opportunity for the interviewee to demonstrate good eloquent communication, connect with and react to other humans, also to conduct yourself professionally.

The question “tell me about yourself” is also another way of the interviewer saying I have your resume right in front of me, but I’ll like to hear it from you. walk me through your journey, your background, and most possibly tell me something that’s beyond what is documented in your resume.

Formula to Answering Tell Me About Yourself Question

1. Tailor Your Answer to the Role and Company

Whenever an interviewer asks this question, he/she is simply implying and expecting your answer should be perfectly relevant to the role and position of the company you’re getting interviewed for.

You should always take advantage of this opportunity but to do that, you need to be adequately prepared. Spend some time going through the job description and researching the company. figure out how you can tell your story in a way that makes it crystal clear why you’re interested and what you can bring to the table that aligns with the role and company.

So when you’re in the midst of a job search looking for a particular type of role, you might have a basic template you use for every interview, but make sure to tweak it to fit the company. It’s an opportunity to show them right away that you have done your homework. If they talk a lot about culture and behavior, weave that into your answer as well.

2. Keep It Professional

In keeping with the notion that this question carries an invisible addendum “as it’s relevant to this role and company” you’re best off keeping your answer professional. In other words, this isn’t the time to talk about your family and hobbies, unless you know something very specific about the company that would lead you to believe otherwise.

3. Practice (But Don’t Memorize)

Practice! Practice! Practice! You don’t want to wait until you get this question in a live interview to try out your answer for the first time. Think through what you want to convey about yourself ahead of each interview and practice saying it out loud. Remember there’s no such thing as over practicing.

If you can, go beyond practicing solo. It always helps to practice with other people to hear your answer and get feedback from how other people interpret what you say. Asking a trusted colleague, friend, or family member to listen and react to your answer will help you hone it. If your practice buddy is game, you can even ask them what they would say if they were being asked, and try to put yourself in the interviewer’s shoes to think about what you’d look for on the other side.

Practice will surely make your answer stronger and help you become more confident giving it

4. Know Your Audience

As with any interview question or conversation for that matter, you’ll want to make sure you understand who you’re talking to. You might get some form of “tell me about yourself” at every single stage of the interview process for a job, from both the phone screen through final rounds, but that doesn’t mean you have to give the same answer every time.

If you’re speaking to a recruiter who’s not immersed in the hard skills of the team you’d be joining, you might keep your answer more focused on the bigger picture, whereas when you speak to your prospective boss, you might get a little bit more technical. If you’re talking to a C-level executive as part of your final round, it’s probably smart to touch on why you’re drawn to the overall mission of the company they run.

5. Remember This Is Often Your First Impression, and It Matters

We only have one chance to make a first impression on anyone. I believe that most hiring decisions are made in the first minute, which includes your greeting, handshake, eye contact, and the first thing you say, which may very well be your response to “tell me about yourself.”

Even if the powers that be aren’t making an irreversible determination shortly after the conversation begins, a first impression can color the rest of the interview. If you have to spend the rest of the time making up for a bad opening, you’re in a very different position than if you gave a succinct, confident, and relevant answer right off the bat.

Be prepared for this question and show interviewers you prepared for it.

As technology continues to evolve, getting a job in the industry is a viable one for many people. Tech allows you to grow in almost all aspects of your life including your career, as it’s a field with many sectors that give professionals the chance to grow their knowledge and abilities. However, it’s also a highly skilled field that often requires employees to adapt to changing technologies and meeting set deadlines for important projects on behalf of your organization.

If you visit the #1 job website in Nigeria that is solely focused on IT jobs, you will always find different types of software developer positions remain unoccupied. This clearly shows there is a growing demand in the field that is not sufficiently matched with adequate supply at the moment.

One major misconception about this industry is that while a lot people believe you need a degree in computer science, mathematics and other related subjects to venture into Tech, that is not necessarily the case. Although an adequate background knowledge in the above fields are really appreciated, it is not a prerequisite for having a successful career in the field. Tech is such a broad term and there are various departments associated with it. I would name a few categories that aspirants can vie into with little or no key knowledge in Computer science and mathematics. I will discuss a few of them as follows.

Other Non Engineering Tech Roles

Design:

The concept of design in tech is pretty broad, but when people talk about design, they tend to mean user interface (UI) design and user experience (UX) design. These two aspects of design are quite broad themselves. They involve pretty much everything that has to do with how the product will look, feel, sound and function.

In larger organizations, especially in more developed tech ecosystems, you’ll find more specialized roles under UI and UX. Some designers, who often start as generalists, are solely responsible for illustrating icons, while some only deal with animation.
This kind of specialization is uncommon in Nigeria, as the industry itself isn’t mature enough to support that at any meaningful scale. In Nigeria, you’re more likely to find design generalists who do everything related to UI and UX.

It’s also common to find designers who are also front-end engineers. This is changing though. As more companies become more successful, they’re able to afford specialists and now have entire teams dedicated to designing. Because of this, simply learning how to become a designer, and nothing else is a perfectly reasonable path towards a lucrative career in the Nigerian tech space.
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Project Management:

Pretty much every industry needs project managers (PMs), so you can transfer experience and knowledge in other industries to project management in tech. Of course, not everything is transferable and tech PMs will need a good understanding of the technical details of the project being managed. If you think managing people, communication, and designing efficient processes are your strong suit, then you should consider becoming a PM.

Growth and Marketing:

Growth can be broad, too. In a tech organization, these are the people who are laser-focused on making sure there’s growth — be it the growth of subscriptions, orders, ads viewed, or whatever metric that best captures the core value that the product or service delivers. It also involves quite a cross-section of skills; marketing, design, statistics, written and spoken communication, project management, and more.

Customer Support:

This is often the most overlooked role for people considering working in tech. My theory is that this is because, generally, people in non-tech customer support jobs in Nigeria don’t earn much. This is a second-order effect of Nigerian establishments not valuing or investing in customer support because we have a deeply ingrained culture of “Manage It Like That.”
What are the advantages of having a career in Tech?

The tech industry has been immensely progressing and expanding over the years. And no doubt, it’s an industry that is the most in-demand today. Because of this, there is a great need for tech professionals to create and execute technical processes.

Work Flexibility

In many of the IT companies, it’s not all about a 9 to 5 desk job. Most of them offer work flexibility where you can work at your preferred time and place. This has been a crucial step in the tech industry to induce agile working along with productive outcomes.

Work-Life Balance

Not being tied to a desk or in an enclosed office area is the most significant perk of working in tech. By working in tech, you can indulge yourself in something productive while carrying along with your life routine.

Working as a freelancer has been the most preferred option by the tech geeks currently. With this, you can even get to work higher than those who do a 9-5 job

Discovering New Aptitude

With the continually changing technology, you can never acquire enough knowledge for this niche. However, you might get a chance to work on various projects with different roles to play in each. You can get to switch between other areas of interest as well. Furthermore, this will assist you in learning the course of your work along with discovering and attaining new skills.

Career Growth and Development

Pursuing a career in tech offers you a chance to evolve and polish your skills with each task that you get to perform. Using specific tools and working with creative people enhances your work results.

While many jobs make you stuck in a single job description, working in the tech industry will open other opportunities and will introduce you to new career options.
The best part about working in the tech industry is experiencing persistent changes. You don’t get to sit still in front of your device, working on the same project for months. There are always new ventures to take up, and that makes you more efficient in your work.

However, these changes will rather be challenges, requiring thorough assessment and processing. With each research, you’ll evaluate a different finding, and that leads you to discover something new each time. Thus, with earning, will come the learning.