NYSC to your first job

The eleven months are the cheapest career runway you will ever get. Most people spend them waiting.

• Treat your PPA like a first job, because on your CV it is one. Ask for real work, keep a record of what you delivered, and get the name of someone senior who would speak for you.
• Pick one hard skill and finish it. Not three — one, completed, with something you built. Excel to a real standard, or SQL, or Google's digital marketing certificate. A finished certificate beats three abandoned enrolments.
• Start the CV in month three, not month eleven. You will have forgotten the numbers by then, and the numbers are what make a CV work.
• Say yes to the CDS group that puts you in front of people. Most first jobs in Nigeria still come through someone who has met you.

Nigerian employers increasingly screen applications with software before a person sees them. Most graduate CVs fail there, not at interview.

• One page while you have under three years of experience. Two only when you have enough that matters to fill them.
• Lead every bullet with a verb and end it with a number. “Responsible for social media” says nothing; “grew the page from 400 to 3,100 followers in five months” says you can do the job.
• State NYSC status plainly near the top — completed, currently serving, exempted, or exclusion granted. Leaving it off invites the assumption you have not served.
• List referees in full, with permission. “References available on request” is the UK norm and reads as evasive to many Nigerian employers.
• Leave off photo, age, marital status and state of origin. They give an employer grounds to filter you on something irrelevant, and on an international application they look unprofessional.
• Use the advert's own words where they are honestly yours. If it asks for IFRS and you wrote “international standards”, the screening never sees a match.

Applying to everything is how people send two hundred applications and hear nothing. Narrow, then go deep.

• Pick three to five employers you would genuinely join and learn them properly. A tailored application to five beats a generic one to a hundred.
• Apply through the employer's own careers page wherever it exists. Aggregators lag, and a role that closed a week ago is still listed on several of them.
• Set alerts rather than refreshing. The advantage in a competitive market is being early, not being thorough.
• Use your university alumni network and your NYSC batch group. Both are underused and both are full of people one year ahead of you.

This is the section to read twice. Job scams target new graduates specifically, because they are the least likely to know the rules.

• No legitimate employer charges you to apply, to interview, to be trained, or to be “processed”. Not for a form, not for a medical, not for a uniform. If money is asked for, it is a scam.
• Be suspicious of an offer with no interview. Real employers interview, even briefly.
• Check the email domain. A recruiter writing from a free webmail address for a company that has its own domain is a red flag on its own.
• Never send your BVN, bank details or a copy of your ID before you have a signed offer from a company you have verified independently.
• Verify the company separately — CAC registration, a real office address, a website that predates the advert. Then contact them through a number you found yourself, not one in the advert.
• Meeting in a hotel lobby or a private house instead of an office is not how legitimate recruitment works.

The number in the offer letter is not the number that reaches you.

• Gross is not take-home. Under the 2026 bands, PAYE and the 8% pension contribution both come out before you see anything.
• Ask whether the figure quoted is monthly or annual, and whether it is gross or net. Ambiguity here is common and expensive.
• Find out what is in the package beyond salary — HMO cover, transport, housing, thirteenth month. These vary enormously and are worth real money.
• Know the market rate for the role before you are asked what you expect. Naming a number below the band is a mistake that follows you for years.
• If you are on or below the national minimum wage you are outside PAYE entirely — but pension is still deducted in a pensionable job.

Getting the job is the easier half. Keeping the momentum is what turns a first job into a career.

• Write down what good looks like in your role in week one, and check it with your manager. Most new-starter failure is a mismatch of expectations nobody said out loud.
• Keep a running record of what you deliver from day one. It becomes your next CV, your appraisal case, and your evidence when you ask for a rise.
• Find the person who has been there three years and is generous with their time. Every organisation has one.
• Do not job-hop before twelve months unless something is genuinely wrong. Nigerian employers read a short first stint as a risk.