Diminishing Spirit Of Volunteerism And Service; A Worrying Trend For Today’s Youth

“I need a well-paying job!” “I won’t accept job offers from a company that doesn’t pay well!” Most graduates are either heard expressing this expectation or sentiment verbally or putting up behaviors that depict it.

While there is absolutely nothing wrong with hoping for better or expecting the best it is not enough to just hope or expect. In other words it is not sufficient to expect without a very solid footing.

Footing? Yes. Not just footing; but a very solid one for that matter. Let’s break down the logical semantics. What I mean in simple language is that you cannot demand anything if you don’t have solid justifications to. For instance you cannot (or should not) expect to secure a well-paying job right after national service without the necessary prior preparations.

WHY YOU HAVE NO JUSTIFICATIONS TO DEMAND BETTER PAY?

In the first place you have no work experience to handle certain positions that pay well. Of course the definition of ‘well paying’ is largely relative. My objective here is not to explain the nitty-gritty of a good remuneration so that will be left to your judgment.

The point is no good employer will gamble with key positions just for you to test the viability of your knowledge and skills. There are no dummies at the workplace for you to play around or test things with. It is serious business and other’s lives and livelihoods are at stake. So tell me why you think any serious company will hire and pay you well to experiment and toy with people’s lives?

Secondly, you haven’t proven your loyalty and expertise enough for any employer to want to pay you more. And believe me I’ve been here before. I used to think I deserved more than I was paid in my first job after national service because I thought I was talented, smart, and intelligent. After some years I realized that my pay and benefits were increasing with my experience.

I also realized I was learning better and faster over the years and the experiences significantly improved my work output. Admittedly, it is difficult to admit that experience is that necessary unless you have it. So my suggestion is not for anyone to outright admit this fact. Just appreciate that experience counts far more than academic credentials.

Thirdly, you can’t be sure of exactly who you are without experience. Indeed, education can assist you with a number of things but without experience you wouldn’t know and understand who you are. Experience helps you to identify you strengths and weaknesses which enables you to determine your career paths. It gives you the opportunity to heighten your strengths and lighten your weaknesses.

It’s only through experience that your talents, knowledge, and skills come to bare. As you identify these talents, knowledge, and skills you’re able to understand which are necessary to be honed and what you lack that need to be developed. Without experience most organizations will assume you don’t know what you want to do (and don’t scream that they’re supposed to help you develop yourself and your career; it’s not their job).

Fourthly, employers also require networks and connections. They need people who know people who can help them beat competition, increase profitability, ease access to certain facilities, expand customer base, etc. Interestingly most of these come with experienced people.

They’ve worked elsewhere and know people; they’ve tried and tested some systems and know what works and what doesn’t; they’ve worked in similar, related, or different setting and have the benefit of hindsight; and they have experienced successes and failures to know how to handle both.

Last but most importantly, people skills is required in the work of work more than several years of education. People skills are highly necessary in dealing with coworkers, working in teams, leading and managing people, managing conflicts, and so on.

Unfortunately, this cannot be taught. I’m not saying it cannot be ‘taught’ per se. My point is that people skills cannot be simply ‘taught, learned, and done’ like most things. It requires time and space. This is because it is not an exact science where certain inputs are guaranteed to generate certain outputs. It’s a complex art and craft that is very fluid and hardly fixed.

In the workplace people skills (or lack of it) determine the success of the organization and again no good employer will gamble with this. Your ability to work with people from diverse backgrounds is key; and experience has proven a sure way in acquiring people skills.

CULTIVATING THE SPIRIT OF VOLUNTARISM AND SERVICE

While in school take advantage of every vacation to do internship or industrial attachment. In some institutions this is a requirement; in others it’s optional. Whether mandatory or optional make it a point to do internship in some recognized institution every vacation.

Remember that apart from enriching your curriculum vitae with these experiences the most important thing is your own personal and professional development. If you’re paid, fair; if you’re not paid, fairer. Actually, you should rather be paying them for the opportunity. Learn, learn, and learn. The Roman philosopher Seneca defines luck as “what happens when preparation meets opportunity”. Always focus on voluntarism and service to prepare yourself; you’ll definitely be lucky before you know.

What happens after graduation and national service? Do you accept any job offer no matter how bad the pay and benefits may be? This isn’t a straitjacket. As I’ve indicated earlier, definitions of how well a job pays is very relative so again I’ll leave that to you. There’re basically three suggestions I can give.

First, accept a ‘good’ job offer when you’re a fresh graduate and focus on learning even when the pay is not so good. It has been proven that the best time to look for a better job is when you have one. It’s simple: Look for a job, accept the good one available, work and learn, find better ones, move to the best. It’s catastrophic to stay at home and complain that there are no jobs or existing jobs don’t pay well.

I dare say that there are no ‘good’ graduates and existing graduates are not good fits for work. There’re a lot of over schooled, undereducated graduates who are not ready to serve and learn. Understand that education alone is not enough to get you a job.

Second, I suggest you don’t ever believe and accept that any job is boring, uninteresting, or worse than doing nothing. Boring work, monotony, uninteresting work, frustrating work, and the likes are all part of working life. The earlier you learned to understand and adapt the better.

If your current job is any of these make sure you have appropriately learned to deal with such situations while planning to find another job that is perhaps less of those. Just don’t wish the situation away because every job has elements of boredom, monotony, frustration, and so on.

Finally, remember the essence of your education isn’t to only find jobs but also to create jobs. So if you’re not finding a job, create one (or several). Entrepreneurship is the cornerstone of this modern economy. People have problems, big and small. Entrepreneurs help solve these problems by starting businesses.

You can put the years of education into some useful practice by identifying opportunities in problems and capitalizing on them to start a business, any business. I wish everyone could taste entrepreneurship (I have tasted it and it’s not that sweet but worth it); it will help you to appreciate the essence of service and volunteerism.

CONCLUSION

It is just fair that you put your own skin in the game to some extent. Someone or some people sacrificed to build the institution you (want to) work for. You should equally sacrifice and gain some experience before reaping the benefits.

Learn to work for free. Learn to serve unconditionally. Learn to volunteer for a cause. No matter how well a job pays, your input should not match the pay and benefits. If your pay matches or is more than your input then it means you sense of service and volunteerism is diminishing. Whether working for someone or working for yourself the spirits of service and volunteerism are critical.

By: Mustapha Bin Usman

The author is a writer, entrepreneurship expert and coach, entrepreneur, farmer, trainer, and teacher. You may contact him via email: [email protected] or on Mobile/ WhatsApp: 0246134798 or visit his Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/theusmanconsulting/