“… the greatest reward is to manage to remove all suspicion and convince hesitant applicants about UNICAF’s integrity, so that they proceed to sign up for the course they have set their eyes on, and eventually benefit from the new qualification gained, both in their career and life.”
Opakunle Ismail Raimi, Student Adviser at the UNICAF Learning Centre in Lagos, Nigeria.
“As a UNICAF Student Adviser, our main priority is to guide every applicant through the application process, giving them full details about the programme they are interested in, requesting the required documents for admission to the programme, and then forwarding everything to the admissions office.
Of course our job is never finished. As advisers, we need to provide the necessary support to applicants throughout the application process, and to continue to do so after they are admitted on their chosen study programme, if we are contacted to to provide answers to questions they may have; generally speaking we need to be there for them anytime they need our assistance or advice, throughout their studies and even after they graduate.
From my experience, an adviser must be calm and dedicated to the job. We need to be polite, patient, knowledgeable about study programmes on offer through UNICAF, courageous and always available to give our best care to the needs of our applicants.
Sometimes we may deal with enquiring students who misunderstand what UNICAF does, or have different expectations, or do not believe us because they have been victims of scam in the past. All we can do, on our part, is to keep our cool, remain polite and patient and find ways to solve the misunderstanding. One of the funniest moments I have experienced on this job, was when an applicant called me a ‘thief’ because I was enquiring about his financial situation. But we must not let such incidents pull us down. The greatest challenge is having to explain to suspicious minds ‘why UNICAF offers scholarships covering up to up to 80% of the cost of normal tuition fees’ . And the greatest reward is to manage to remove all suspicion and convince hesitant applicants about UNICAF’s integrity, so that they proceed to sign up for the course they have set their eyes on and eventually benefit from the new qualification gained, both in their career and life. ‘
