Professional advantages

First, I want to apologize for not keeping up with posts as of late; preluding a travel-intensive trip to America’s Heartland (*ahem* Oxford, Ohio) for a college reunion, I was pulling funky hours at work for two weeks. I brought back more than my Western mug for a souvenir, too; I brought back a cold. Not, of course, that this excuses anything but thank goodness for RSS feeds or the deadlines would’ve gotten to me.

Anyhow, Jessica posed a fantastic question about a week ago under the “Benefits” entry that I’ve given a lot of thought to and felt would make a great entry. She asked me, as far as I can see, whether there are professional advantages to joining one corps or the other.

This is a great question because it’s exactly what I was thinking when I came back from Peace Corps. I returned after eight months of service rather than two years, but as I mentioned to Jessica, I think it all has to do with attitude and how you interpret/what you get from your experience that job interviewers care about. One impression I did have, as did almost everyone else in Peace Corps, is that it gives you a leg up when you start your job hunt. This impression has been a motivator for PCVs who are at the height of their prolonged misery to stay in-country rather than come back and lose that prestige. However, because I find it incredibly difficult to lie or act, I presume this is true of everyone: As a general rule, if I can’t be proud of what I’ve done or speak well of it in depth, it won’t matter how long I stuck anything out.

Anyway, I wouldn’t say there was a clear and immediate advantage of being a PCV for me, but maybe it’s because I moved to Portland, Ore., the largest returned PCV location in the country. I’ve had a lot of time to think about this, and here’s what I’ve come up with in terms of the professional benefits of each corps post-service.

Besides that mystique Peace Corps carries in the mind of the American public, it is a great character builder. This is instantly recognized by nearly everyone. Although Peace Corps experiences vary drastically, PCVs tend to face possible lack of structure, isolation, cultural integration, challenges in community organizing, and working with various community-based organizations (CBOs), government branches and local citizens (basically, various stakeholders on different levels that you might never have as easy access to in the States). It really is amazing what you can do in your time as a PCV, no matter how long you spend in-country. A great way to track this is to keep a weekly log of all the tasks you wanted to accomplish in the week, from little things like chatting up the shopkeeper across the street in the local language to helping community members delegate and volunteer for tasks to install a village water pump. On a micro-level, it gives you a sense of appreciation for just how much cultural integration and mutual understanding truly entails (especially when you’re in the country with the expectation that you’re there for a longer haul than most), and on the macro, it makes it much easier to write your “description of service” (DOS) at the close of your tour.

This is not to say that AmeriCorps is lagging in the professional benefits it offers. I’m certain that the AmeriCorps experience also differs widely, although I’d venture that within certain types of program–Teach for America, CTC Vista Project, &c.–there’s a smidge less variation than Peace Corps, but only because foreign and cultural integration isn’t as tall of an order (although still an order for many). What AmeriCorps offers and Peace Corps does not is the explicit presence of structure in the workplace. With Peace Corps, that can be a hit-or-miss situation, with it mostly being a miss; the only PCVs I’ve ever encountered with structure were those under the education sector, in which they are plugged into a school system. To elaborate on workplace structure, what I mean is in addition to organizational structure, there is a work flow and an output associated with every employee. This, of course, is driven by organizations’ need to perpetuate themselves by continually turning out a product in order to remain relevant to their consumers. It applies to both businesses and nonprofits.

The clear advantage of workplace structure post-AmeriCorps service is that, especially during economic downturns, companies get very jittery about hiring people with little experience in the workplace. In other words, they look at experience rather than promise, regardless of how easy it might be to gain experience. What I’ve observed thus far in my couple months on the job is that practical, technical experience is incredibly easy to pick up in contrast to character. Character is usually what you bring with you and develop through experience. I think most people know this already, but in an economic crunch, organizations seem to put this little detail on the back-burner.

Now a couple of paragraphs on creativity. Both corps offer the opportunity to be innovative, but perhaps in different senses of the word. If you pay attention very carefully, both corps are also about capacity building and relevant actions tailored to the organization/community and its needs. It’s basically a recipe for sustainable change.

If you want to make a change in your organization or within a community, everyone knows you don’t just barge in with a holier-than-thou attitude. I know this is a cliche example, but bear with me. We’ve all seen those people who come into community service thinking they have more to offer than the community they want to serve. They go in with plans, or lead their group on crazy fundraising missions that ultimately turn up massive quantities of things the community or group they’re serving do not have a need for, simply because they did not consult the community ahead of time or did not bother to spend enough time with the community to assess their needs. It’s very much like the person who says, “I like being the leader because I like telling people what to do” (true story from my first year of college) rather than viewing a leadership position as a listening and service role.

At this point, you’re probably wondering how this applies to the two corps. PCVs have more of an explicit role in sustainable progress than AmeriCorps volunteers, although I would wager they have equal opportunity for that. The reason PCVs as change agents is so explicit is because of the stark contrast between Third World countries and the Western world. Not to say that what PCVs should be doing is to bring Third World countries up to First World standards (note that I didn’t use the term “developing” countries). But it is simple things like finding a local solution that becomes a grassroots movement for clean drinking water or helping community leaders develop a program to bust myths on HIV/AIDS and sex. It’s empowering community members to come up with solutions to local problems instead. In the case of PCVs, they really and truly are the resource. Everything should be approached from the idea that the PCV won’t be there in two years, and presuming that there will be no PCV after, how will the community initiate change on its own? It really isn’t that locals aren’t creative enough to come up with this on their own, but that they may have never been empowered to think beyond what’s directly in front of them. Ben Sheldon put it this way:

I personally feel like the value of Peace Corps is the provisioning of someone who grew up with a good education, a high caloric diet, adequate health care and (for the most part), freedom from abject want—and continues to receive those benefits from abroad (or the safety net of them) once placed. I give these reasons NOT because that person intrinsically *has* better solutions, but because that person is better-suited to *create* better solutions. To put it crudely, there is less baggage. I believe that is the driver behind the mythical American innovation and ingenuity.

I totally agree with this. Since PCVs have had the privilege of growing up in what I’ve heard of described as a “post-scarcity society” (disclaimer: I do have problems with that term), their time spent abroad should be as a catalyst for speeding up what are ultimately organic, community initiatives. It is truly a humbling experience.

Both corps offer the opportunity to be creative, but in my opinion, because many basic needs are already regulated to some degree with government laws and/or funding to enforce them, AmeriCorps actually offers much more innovation in the workplace.

AmeriCorps volunteers can be in very awkward positions in that their hosting organization might look at them as a way to pawn off their workload (a.k.a. the intern). However it seems that most organizations can appreciate that at the salary AmeriCorps volunteers receive, they could make more money being a part-time server at any restaurant, and that as AmeriCorps volunteers, they are not allowed to work outside of the 40 hours/week their hosting organizations hoard.

The possibility for innovation is made possible first by the fact that the AmeriCorps position is not necessarily as incorporated into the organization as a salaried, full-time job. Why? Because organizations are not necessarily granted a volunteer every year, they can’t rely too heavily on the position; to maximize the advantage of having a volunteer, every job function must be formed with the purpose of having a sustainable outcome once the volunteer leaves. In addition, there’s no financial incentive to stay should another opportunity come up. Not to give the impression that this is a one-way street. The AmeriCorps Vista program is an easy foot-in-the-door. There are countless AmeriCorps programs for applicants to choose from; thus you’re more likely to end up in a field of your affinity than with Peace Corps, which offers a handful of programs that vary from country-to-country.

I don’t know if this is true for all Vistas, but I was the first volunteer in the position I’m currently filling, so my first several weeks on the job were boring. They were filled with self-directed training on social media and refresher courses on computer programs. After a while, I was running out of ways to train myself. Now that I’m three months in, I can appreciate all the time I had because I also spent it learning about the technical aspects of the organization as well as the narratives that long-time employees have attached to the group. I’ve listened to various people debate the mission of the organization till my ears bled, learned of desired target groups and researched demographic trends in Portland. At first, I was jealous of all the people who seemed to have something to do, who didn’t feel frantic about coming up with ways to fill their hours. Now I realize that it’s an advantage not to have your position mired in the organization. Nearly every person working for a nonprofit holds a college degree, so it’s not a question of smarts; it’s a question of time. Assuming that your organization doesn’t look at you as a long-term intern and is very supportive of you, you have a lot of time to really listen, and when you do, you can get very innovative in a field that interests you.

Each corps offers different experiences that can be applied to professional life. If professional advantage is a big question for you, then keep in mind that people sign up for Peace Corps with the expectation of a cultural rather than a job experience. AmeriCorps can be both, and AmeriCorps Vista is a much more explicitly career-oriented program in social service. Both corps are great at proving potential. Peace Corps can be a hiring advantage depending on where you are. AmeriCorps is an advantage where employers need a certain threshold of workplace experience in order to feel comfortable with potential. Really though, the ultimate asset you can hone for yourself in any situation is flexibility and application. In all interviewing, qualitative skills, experience and character can be worded to the point of a good fit.

Happy job hunting!