Why you should add volunteer experience to your resume?
Listing volunteer experience in your resume demonstrate to recruiters and hiring managers your passion for the work. In fact, a LinkedIn survey says that 41% of hiring managers in the U.S. hired a candidate because of their volunteer experience.
According to Deloitte Volunteer Impact Research, 82% of managers love to pick a resume with volunteer experience. So, putting volunteer experience on your resume is the chance of getting ahead of other applicants.
Can you list volunteer experience as work experience?
That depends. You should list volunteer experience as work experience if:
- Have limited or no paid work experience
- Are switching careers and your volunteer experience is relevant to your new career
- Have employment gap
- Want to showcase your skills that haven’t developed through paid work
Volunteer experience is as important as work experience. You put your time into it, your performance is tracked, and you learn new skills.
Volunteer Experience Samples
An outstanding volunteer experience template is similar to your work experience section template. You should include the organization you volunteered for, its physical location, dates of tenure and a sharp bullet points summary. Outstand your resume from other candidates by including your achievements in numbers.
That’s a strong volunteer experience summary in the work experience section. Doesn’t matter if you were paid or not but you did the same tasks and fulfilled the same duties which a paid software engineer do.
What if volunteer experience is irrelevant to the job you are applying for?
In such a case, you should put your volunteer experience in a separate section (Volunteer section or Additional Activities) and use a summary of one or two lines instead of using detailed bullet points.
Example
Note: You should also add your volunteer experience in a separate section with a summary if you have a lot of paid work experience.
When not include volunteer experience on a resume?
Only 32% of job applicants list volunteer experience on their resumes. Volunteer experience conveys the following skills loved by hiring managers:
So, never, ever leave volunteer experience off your resume.
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Do you have questions about how to put volunteer experience on a resume? Still not sure what volunteer work on a resume really counts? Give me a shout in the comments! I love to help!
