Volunteering is a great way to highlight your skills, your role, and your capabilities. Volunteering is the place where you can keep trying different things to find your perfect role and fit. With the opportunities available today, it is very difficult to find a good fit for a job role. So, instead of trying different job roles, it is better to volunteer in different roles and find your fit from now on. This blog is all about adding volunteer experience to your resume. You will know where and when to add them. Let’s explore this.
Can Volunteering Count as Work Experience?
Yes, volunteering can be considered work experience if it is linked to the job you are applying for. Volunteering shows transferable skills, commitment, and responsibility. This is a great way to fill the employment gap, especially for individuals who have recently graduated or are making career switches, and to strengthen professional profiles. Hence, volunteering experience can be added to any of your work profiles. Medical volunteering in Tanzania helps you a lot to gain real time experience in handling patients. This will show a very good profile when you apply for jobs after your studies.
Even if you want to switch careers, the best way to do this is to try the career you want to switch to by volunteering in that field. In this way, you can try multiple career options and choose the right one for you.
Why Volunteering as Work Experience Matters
Volunteering as work experience works as a tiebreaker in competitive job roles. This way, you show your skills, and international volunteering also shows that you can adapt to different workspaces and work with people with different ways of perceiving the world. Below are a few of the reasons why volunteering work experience matters to employees:
- Volunteering shows that you are passionate and proactive about your work, and that it is your dream to work there. This shows that you have a really strong work ethic.
- You learn many technical soft skills through volunteering, such as leadership and project management, that you can apply in your current workplace.
- Volunteering is a great way to add continuity to your professional life. This bridges the gap between your job switch.
When You Should Put Volunteer Work on Your Resume
Volunteering as work experience should be added to your resume when it is relevant to the job profile you are applying for. This experience should fill career gaps, showcase relevant skills, and strengthen your professional profile. Here’s when you can add the volunteering work to your resume:
- When you have limited work experience, you can add a volunteering experience to showcase your skills. If you are a fresher who has recently graduated, you can definitely go for volunteer work experience.
- When you are switching careers, volunteering can add significant value and experience. This will help you in maintaining a good work profile.
- When you have employment gaps, a volunteer experience will help you a lot in filling these career gaps and also add extra skills to your career.
How to List Volunteer Work on Resume
Volunteering will not pay you, but you will work just like an employee there; hence, it adds a lot of value to your resume. You can list the organisation, title, your responsibilities, and accomplishments in a bullet list.
You can place the volunteering experience in the experience section or community involvement section, or under work experience if the volunteering is highly relevant to the job you are applying for. Here is a detailed view of how you can list volunteer work on resume:
- A structure to list volunteer experience on a resume is very important. Mention the organisation name, your work title, and the time period.
- Use high-impact words like ‘managed’, ‘organised’, or ‘trained’ to describe your role. This should highlight the impact you made on the group of people you volunteered for.
- Mention the number of people in a group you handled during your volunteer work. This will showcase your management skills.
Tips to Present Volunteer Experience Effectively
If you want to present your volunteer work effectively in your resume, treat it as professional experience and add it accordingly. This will help the recruiters understand that you treated the volunteering experience very seriously and worked accordingly. Here are a few of the tips to present your volunteer experience effectively:
- Volunteer work is unpaid, but don’t list it on your resume; instead, highlight the responsibilities you handled and your skill set. In this way, you can properly highlight your skills from your unpaid volunteer experience.
- Highlight the number. Numbers represent trust and elevate your skill set to a new level. Also, it is easier to place your resume apart from others.
- Align the volunteer experience with your present job format. This will help you to highlight those skills that are highly important for the job you are applying for.
Common Mistakes When Listing Volunteer Work on a Resume
One of the greatest problems with volunteer work is that most individuals do not include it on their resumes, and even if they do, they do not highlight it as professional work experience. Here are a few of the common mistakes made when listing volunteer work on your resume:
- Not treating the volunteering experience as relevant work experience, and not adding it as professional work. You can add it in the internship format as well and highlight it.
- Do not just describe the volunteer experience vaguely. Mention it to highlight the impact you created with the volunteering opportunity you got.
- Placing volunteer experience in the hobbies section can overshadow your professional skills, even hiding the responsibilities and professional skills you gained through volunteering. Hence, highlight all your work experiences in the experience section of your resume.
Volunteering is a great way to highlight your skills for the job you want to pursue. This will highlight your skill set and will project you as an experienced individual. This is the very criterion the recruiters look for. So this holiday, don’t just enjoy them, make use of this time to volunteer and put volunteer work on your resume.