How to showcase your skills-based volunteer experience

Skills-based volunteering can help you find and earn your dream job. While gaining the experience is the first step, it’s also vital to communicate it clearly on your resume or CV and professional profiles. Before deciding how to list your experience, let’s first look at what volunteering tells employers — and their hiring managers — about you. It proves that you: ● Have grit and can deliver results ● Can take initiative and operate in ambiguity ● Have the ability and desire to make the people around you better ● Are a team player that can support key initiatives Knowing that these are highly valued traits in employers, you can now make sure to demonstrate all of these while volunteering, and then highlight them on your resume. How to highlight volunteer experience on your resume There is no right or wrong way to highlight your experience. As volunteer projects and roles vary greatly person-to-person, there are some helpful guidelines to help you decide how to best share your experience. If you have lots of disconnected volunteer experience that isn’t directly relevant to your skills and the organization you support, keep it in a separate, brief section that shows you take initiative and care about others. If you have volunteer experience that is very relevant to your job, helped develop skills and has a proof of impact, show that as part of your work experience. Be sure to indicate that is was voluntary, and be specific about skills used and impact created. It is OK to have volunteer experience listed in both areas. When posting your volunteering experience, make sure you do: ● Explain the need of the organization and how your skills were important to its mission ● Highlight the initiative you took ● Provide relevant data points of how you made an impact ● Articulate how you also spent time developing the skills of the people you were volunteering with When explaining your volunteer experience, make sure you don’t: ● Take up too much space. Be concise with your projects. You don’t need to give a full background of your motivations, the nonprofit story and how you ended up working there. ● Use flowery language. Avoid words that express opinion like “awesome,” “happy,” “touching” and instead focus on demonstrable results and facts. ● Go on tangents. All volunteer work is good, but if it’s not related to the job you’re applying for, just stick to high-level details. Only skills-based projects should take up resume real estate. --Only skills-based projects should take up resume real estate. Here is an example of highlighting volunteer experience for a specific project of notable interest: ● Volunteered marketing skills with the American Cancer Society for a national training event rolling out new guidelines to volunteer and staff leaders ● Worked with senior team to develop messaging and slides for a live broadcast to 1,000+ in-person attendees and 10,000+ online viewers. ● Additionally, helped coach other presenters on PowerPoint best practices and speaking tips. ● Video of presentation here: http://youtu.be/DpJYkbcg2h0. Notice how the summary was factual, focused on a specific project, linked to a relevant example and demonstrated how I used skills to support a specific program. As an example of highlighting volunteer experience that was part of a long-term volunteer role: ● Currently volunteer on American Cancer Society’s Nationwide Leadership Training Team as a volunteer ● Develop content and training guides for staff and volunteer leaders on topics related to community building, fundraising, leadership ● Have keynoted 15+ events, led 50+ trainings, and volunteered 1,000+ hours in last 5 years, reaching approximately 15,000 trainees. ● Led training sessions for new members of training team ● Videos and work available upon request Notice how the summary was factual, indicated commitment, showed growth in the role and provided relevant statistics. How to highlight skills-based volunteering on your professional profile Thanks to the LinkedIn For Good program, volunteering experience can now stand out on your resume — and it even has a dedicated section, much like your awards, certifications, and degrees. You can also post a volunteer experience as part of your work history on your Devex profile. Similar to your resume, I recommend posting notable volunteer roles that are skills-based and long-term as part of your work experience. In addition, I recommend adding the volunteer and causes section where you can highlight specific projects and smaller volunteer tasks that aren’t as relevant to your skills. Other tips to make your volunteering experience really stand out Volunteering is proven to help you develop new skills, so it’s important you have a place you can demonstrate that. While sharing it on your resume and professional profiles is a good first step, you can do more by publishing proof of your work. Here are a few ways to do that: 1. Keep a personal blog or Medium collection reflecting on the work you did, the things you learned, and the impact you made. As an example, here is a summary of a recent Microsoft team that went volunteering in Kenya with the Red Cross. In addition to being a great portfolio piece, reflection can help you maximize the impact of your experience, so it pays off to create a comprehensive summary of your work. You can also add links to your blog to your Devex profile for prospective employers to find. 2. Partner with your hosting organization to create a video, slideshow or article summarizing the project you worked on. 3. Ask the people you worked with while volunteering to endorse you for key skills on LinkedIn. An easy way to do this is spend time on LinkedIn endorsing them first — many will reciprocate. 4. Ask your contact and/or team that you volunteered with to provide a written recommendation on your LinkedIn profile. Here is the link on LinkedIn to do that. If you need help making the ask, here is a template message: While most of us engage in volunteer to simply give, more and more employers are realizing the people with volunteer experience are especially valuable. As such, make sure to highlight your experience appropriately. In addition to helping you stand out in your job search, it can also get more attention to the causes you care about, including recruiting more volunteers to join you. In other words, don’t wait until your next job search to edit your profile, instead update your professional profiles on sites like Devex with your latest experiences on a regular basis. Looking to make a career move? Visit our career center for expert advice on how to navigate your job search - all you need is a Devex Career Account to get started.