Dear Young Graduate,
Please apply yourself. I am currently working on a young graduate’s CV and every attempt to identify something they have done a few years after NYSC has ended in failure. They are not volunteering anywhere, they are not trading goods, providing services or trying to start a business, they are not interning or furthering their education and I am thinking of what my approach was after NYSC, I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur right from school but after NYSC, I made sure that I accepted low level freelance jobs with different organizations, was writing for magazines and my blog, even got full time employment which I voluntary left after a short while. Within two years of NYSC, I could write three different types of CVs for different career paths based on my activities. It is not like I was making a lot of money, you could easily define me as broke back then, you may even still define me as ‘broke’ right now but one thing you couldn’t define me as back then and you can’t define me as right now is “not enterprising.”
You might not be able to determine your employment status but you can always define your enterprising status, we used to call it hustle back then but these days, the word ‘hustle’ more often than not has a negative connotation.
With the proliferation of the Internet, it seems almost inconceivable that a graduate cannot add anything tangible to their CV two years after NYSC. Heck, there are online platforms that you can register on within 30 minutes and get the title of “marketer”, “associate” , “affiliate” or something similar. This is probably the least you should have after two years of NYSC. The ‘situation’ of the country or state of the economy are not cogent reasons to remain stagnant in your personal development journey if it is not that you are seriously ill or in another restricting condition that might prevent an individual from being able to function normally.
We can always improve as individuals and I hope this post triggers in you a desire to be better.
Sincerely,
Abdulkabir Olatunji
