Why volunteering is good for your career –
Introduction 👋
Volunteering your time, money, or energy to help your community doesn’t just help the community, but can also help you.
Applying for jobs can be difficult.
How will you stand out?
How can you show that you’ve got plenty of work experience?
Employers want a lot, and it’s difficult to tick every box.
Today we’re going to teach you a career hack, to help boost your career – volunteering! 🙌
What is volunteering? 💖
Volunteering is where you give up your time and skills for free, to help your local community.
It could involve doing things like:
- Setting up a community garden 🏞️
- Litter picking 🚮
- Beach clean ups 🏖️
- Planting flowers 💐
- Visiting the elderly 🧓
- Supporting animal rescue centres 🐶
- Arranging a charity concert 🎶
- Collecting donations for local schools 🏫
- Collect food/volunteering for your local food bank 🏦
- Joining mental health volunteering services 🧠
- Organising disability sports events ♿
Why volunteering is good for your career 💼
Getting involved in community work can:
- Make your CV stand out (What is a CV (Curriculum Vitae)? 📜)
- Help you to build skills
- Help you to demonstrate your skills
- Give you valuable work experience
- Help you to get work references
- Show you as a good person
- Help you to build a network
- Build your confidence
- Improve your wellbeing
Showing that you’re a good person 🥰
Getting involved in volunteering can show that you are:
- Motivated – you’ve gone out of your way to do free work to help others!
- Caring – you’re helping others for free
- Confident – you’re getting stuck into something new, with new people
- A team player – working as part of a team to help the community
Building and demonstrating your skills ⚒️
Not only this, but getting involved in volunteering can show that you’ve got valuable skills that every employer will want!
Here are some examples of volunteering activities and their skills –
Work | Skills you can build/show off |
Dog walking | Empathy, confidence, trustworthy, able to get “hands on”, patience, proactive, physical fitness |
Gardening | Teamwork, able to get “hands on”, proactive, planning, creativity/design, budgeting, money skills, organisation, physical fitness |
Helping elderly | Empathy, confidence, customer service skills, presentation skills, able to talk to lots of different people, trustworthy, relationship building, thoughtful, teamwork, proactive, staying positive |
Charity fundraising | Money management, sales/marketing, maths, customer service, persuasion, trustworthy, proactive, staying positive, resilience, planning, relationship building |
Other reasons why volunteering can be good for you ✨
Not only does volunteering help your career, but it can also help your wellbeing! 🧠
Community work can help you to:
- Feel a sense of achievement and more positive
- Feel like you belong
- Make new friends and build strong friendships
- Build skills
- Build confidence
- Keep a sense of perspective, by being aware of those less fortunate than you
- Feel gratitude
- Make others feel happy
Conclusion 👍
So, that’s it!
Volunteering can help you to:
- Make your CV stand out
- Help you to build skills
- Help you to demonstrate your skills
- Give you valuable work experience
- Help you to get work references
- Show you as a good person
- Help you to build a network
- Build your confidence
- Improve your wellbeing
Are you convinced to get started on some volunteering to boost your career? 🌍
Check out our list of 104 ideas to help your community, to help you think of ways to make your CV stand out!
Hopefully you’re feeling more confident about understanding how volunteering can boost your career.
If you know any friends or family members who might benefit from learning about howvolunteering can boost your career, share this post with them!
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