► Enhancing your Employability
Enhancing your Employability through Volunteering
What Employers Say:
There is no doubt that employers highly rate volunteering:
"When recruiting graduates for Marks and Spencer we look for the skills to help make them and our company successful. Volunteering can be a great way to develop these skills."
Helen Feltham, Direct UK Retail HR
"Put aside preconceptions: volunteering is work experience with the added possibility that the act of choosing to be a volunteer can show even greater initiative and commitment."
Mike Killingley, Senior Manager Executive Education, HSBC Bank
"It doesn't matter if it's paid or not but voluntary work would count just as much as paid work in our eyes."
Accenture
"Volunteering adds to the whole person. Volunteers take an interest in others without expecting financial benefits. Just because it's not paid, it doesn't mean you're not getting experience."
Mairi Vodden, Recruitment Manager
The above quotes are supported by a survey carried out by the volunteering charity TimeBank through Reed Executive that showed among 200 of the UK's leading businesses:
- 73% of employers would recruit a candidate with volunteering experience over one without
- 94% believe that volunteering can add to skills
- 58% say that voluntary work experience can actually be more valuable than experience gained in paid employment
- 94% of employees who volunteered to learn new skills had benefited either by getting their first job, improving their salary or being promoted
What Volunteers Say:
Many volunteers recognise that volunteering enhances their employability and builds skills such as leadership, problem solving, team working, initiative and self-awareness.
In addition, volunteering opens up new opportunities and challenges, giving you the chance to trial or confirm potential careers:
"In my final year I realised I wanted a career that was closely related to my volunteering and counselling. I'd gained vast skills and was shocked by the amount of relevant experience I'd built up. This earned me a place on a social work course and it was very clear that without the volunteering, I would not have gained the place."
Karen Arden, volunteer at York University
"I loved volunteering. It reinforced that I wanted to do teaching as a career and the interpersonal skills I developed made me more employable."
Katie Marl, volunteer at Edge Hill University
Volunteering demonstrates to potential employers a real commitment; it provides contacts and gets you on the inside track
"Employers have always found volunteering unusual and admirable as well as an indication of good character."
Matt Bush, volunteer at University of Newcastle
Volunteering improves your job prospects and employability
"I volunteered to start planning for my CV; with volunteering you have the chance to explore areas not always available through paid work. I relied on my volunteering in interviews as my only experience of working directly with children."
Neelam Tanday, volunteer at Sheffield University
Volunteering enhances your CV
Community action impacted most on my life because I could put it on my CV; the community action coordinator wrote my first reference.
Mike Whitall, volunteer at Nottingham University
N.B. All quotes courtesy of The Art of Crazy Paving, Volunteering England
Linking your Volunteering to Employability - Sources of Help.
Just V can offer help re: volunteering and employability in several ways:
- Training & Recognition opportunities, enhancing volunteers' personal and professional development through training workshops and certification.
- Offering 1-1s and optional review sessions to V-Base volunteers, which highlight skills to develop.
- Providing links to other organisations that can help in your career development or planning.
- You might like to take advantage of BSU's careers service; appointments with a careers adviser can be booked online.
BSU also has a placements officer - Ian Rowe - who can arrange work placements for students and of course, there is Job Shop, a free service offering part-time jobs for students.
Finally, if you wish to consider in greater detail how personal development planning might enhance your volunteering and future career, Just V highly recommends that you 'Google' the publication 'The Art of Crazy Paving'
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