Networking for a Job Through Volunteer Work

Volunteering can be a great strategy for networking for a job. As you may know, approximately 80% of jobs are never advertised, and finding those hidden job leads hinges on developing effective networking strategies. Volunteering can be a great career builder and a good way to find unadvertised job leads.

Volunteering provides plenty of benefits to job seekers. Volunteer work can provide opportunities to:

• gain practical work experience in a new field or industry.
  
• keep up to date professionally and protect your career if you are going to be out of the workforce for an extended period of time.
  
• build a network of business contacts.
  
• develop current, related experience if your experience is out of date and reduce the impact of employment history gaps on your resume.
  
• feel a sense of accomplishment and build your self worth.
  
• get out of the house on a regular basis and avoid the isolation of job searching.

Avoid going into a volunteer situation with the assumption that you will get any job that becomes available within the company. Very likely, your volunteer work will give you an advantage if a job becomes available within the organization, but it's not a guarantee.

Ensure you get the most out of your volunteer experience.

When you initially meet with the person who coordinates volunteers, first let that person know the skills that you have to offer so they will see how the organization will benefit from the proposed arrangement. Taking on volunteers can initially mean more work for staff because they will need to invest time in training. If you let them know that you have valuable skills to offer and they will benefit from that time invested, you will have a better chance of securing a great volunteer opportunity.

Once you have established the skills that you can offer the organization, be very clear about your own goals for taking on the volunteer position. You may want to meet more business contacts, you may want to improve your technical skills or you may want to stay active in your field of work. Whatever your goals are, communicate those to the volunteer coordinator at your initial meeting and ask whether they feel you would be able to meet that goal with their organization.

If, for example, you are good at facilitating workshops, but you are new to the area and want to make local business contacts, you may say to the volunteer coordinator, "I have a lot of experience facilitating workshops, and I'd be happy to help your workshop facilitator in any way. I am new to the area and looking for work in this field, so I'm hoping this volunteer position will provide opportunities for me to meet people in the industry. Do you think that would work for your organization? Would you be able to use my facilitation experience, and would I have opportunities to meet people within the industry?"

With a little bit of negotiation, a volunteer position can offer great benefits to job seekers. It can provide good opportunities for networking for a job, building new skills and keeping existing skills up to date.