As HR Practitioners, we tested the recruitment waters early in our business and quickly and definitely decided it was not a business we wanted to explore. However, as our business continues to grow, we have come to recognise that recruitment is a specialty we have to provide to our customers should we deliver the value we are about.
In essence, we pore through thousands of CVs, résumés, profiles and the likes and although the CV format has largely stayed the same, there seems to be a new trend describing the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) as an education. My emotions have run the gamut from irritation to confusion and then incredulity as an anomaly is becoming the norm. Perhaps it was me that was unaware and so I decided to research the matter.
Education: The dictionary describes education as ‘the process of receiving or giving systematic instruction, especially at a school or university.’
This description is apt for the purpose of this discourse as education on a CV or résumé refers to schooling.
NYSC: National Youth Service Corps was founded after the Nigerian Civil War (6 July 1967 – 15 January 1970) in a bid to foster development amongst the country’s Youth. In the ‘About Us’ page of the NYSC website, article 7 humbly retains the task of education with our universities and other higher learning institutions and describes the primary purpose of the scheme in article 9 as fostering unity amongst ALL Nigerian youth and encouraging selfless service to the community.
The NYSC is, therefore, a full-service year dedicated to community service in a 4-step process:
- Orientation: 3 weeks in a para military environment where one is exposed to courses about your new environment as well as physical training drills.
- Primary Assignment: a Corp Member is assigned responsibility for the year, usually dependent on how you can apply your course of study.
- Community Development Service: innovative individuals are free to express their creativity in any community development project of their choosing.
- Passing Out, which signifies the end of the year with a closing ceremony and award of certificates and prizes.
By inference, deduction, presumption, extrapolation, conjecture (you get the gist), the closest the NYSC appears to me is an internship of sorts where you showcase the skills you have learnt from education and should therefore be described on your CV or résumé as work experience.
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