Does Volunteering Look Good On Your CV?
Have you ever wondered whether volunteering experience looks good on a CV? It doesn’t matter if you have experience or not. Volunteering can help you make a great, compelling, and impressive CV. Let us show you how that works.
What should find its place on a CV
When a person with no experience thinks of CV creation, they can be confused. What to list as work experience? Which companies to mention and which not? Whom to ask to give a reference? So many questions!
A good CV consists of several parts. The first and foremost is the statement. Here, you show your expectations, outline desirable job roles, and briefly introduce your prior experience. It’s important to ask yourselves the following question: “Does volunteering count as work experience?” And the answer to that is: It certainly does!
If you have already volunteered in the past, the task is a simple one. If, for instance, you are looking for a role of a marketer, you might include the following in your CV:
Julie Deepa, a dedicated marketer and keen about social media trends, would like to find a job in the B2B sector. Given her experience in volunteering organizations, Julie is capable of promoting brand awareness efficiently as SMM. Julie can prove her abilities in forming a social media plan, studying audience preferences, adjusting the previous plan, and increasing the traffic by 10%.
The second stage where volunteering is a must is the work experience part. The job description contains all the necessary information that recruiters pay attention to looking for skills needed from the candidate. For example, a company might require the following skills:
- Ability to create SEO optimized content;
- Promote products and services over SMM complying with the brand strategy;
- Use analytical marketing tools to schedule social media campaigns;
- Attract new customers and increase traffic;
- Manage a budget for PPC ads;
- Analyze if the overall performance has been effective;
-Work together with colleagues from other departments.
If you don’t know how to fulfill these duties, go volunteering! It’s easy. You find an organization and offer to do what is required from you. Surely, you get enough experience to share in your CV, after all. All you need is just to understand what volunteering means. For example, having participated in a volunteering event, dedicated to children with special needs, you can talk about your experience in a social media account:
- By creating posts and photos;
- Show-casing the basics of how to promote the volunteering organization values via social media;
- Engaging with the readers through comments;
-Attracting new visitors via organic traffic leading from social media.
This is a valuable experience and it’s worth mentioning it on your CV.
Why does volunteering give enough skills to share in a CV?
And while the above might seem so obvious, you might still be left with questions and hesitation.
“Is volunteering considered a job? Perhaps HR managers are looking for someone who has worked in a company as a full-time employee and been paid for their work?”
Your doubts are understandable yet unnecessary. As the research by Deloitte demonstrated, 92% of human resources leaders consider volunteering as an important way to grow leadership.
Volunteering is not a job. It’s much more. You go to work because you have to but you volunteer to show your passion. In a company or corporation, you are obliged to take on certain tasks. Otherwise, you’d most likely lose your job.
When volunteering, you show initiative and actively listen to your heart, contributing to a cause you care about. Whatever you do as a typical employee is provided in your job description. At the same time, you can have skills not required there. But if you volunteer, you can express all your skillset and talents!
To sum it up: volunteering gives so many skills that should find their way on any CV! That’s why the CEOs of companies really love to employ volunteers. Volunteering experience does catch the eye and spark your future employer’s interest.
If you are in doubt, just ask some people who volunteered with 1HOUR. By the way, if you are interested in getting more experience for your CV, also don’t hesitate to contact us.
