Volunteering - Could it lead you to your dream job?

According to Kelly Eggers, a contributing writer for www.fins.com, 'Job seekers should consider a new mantra: "Give back, and you shall receive." Including volunteer experience on your resume could help you land a job, according to a new survey.'
Some 41% of nearly 2,000 professionals said that when evaluating candidates' resumes, they consider volunteer experience to be equally as valuable as paid work experience, according to a survey from LinkedIn. "There's a misconception that volunteer work doesn't qualify as 'real' work experience," said Nicole Williams, connection director at LinkedIn and author of Girl on Top, a career guide that takes its lessons from the world of dating. What people need to keep in mind, Williams said, is that many qualities that make an applicant attractive, such as diverse, relevant skill-sets, can come from unpaid, part-time work. 
"When you have a competitive labor market, and a hiring manager has 10 to 15 equally qualified applicants, volunteering can be the thing that ends up differentiating you and getting you over the line," she said. In fact, 20% of the hiring managers surveyed said they have made a hiring decision based on a candidate's volunteer experience. Yet, only 45% of those surveyed actually include their volunteer experience on their resumes.
Nicole Kennedy, a Washington, D.C.-area non-profit industry professional, took on volunteer work after leaving a role in technology sales. "While I was looking for a non-profit job, my friend suggested I try volunteering in the interim," she said. "Some organizations have a time commitment -- such as a certain number of hours they'd like you to work each week -- but I was in such a state of flux as a job seeker that I didn't know what I wanted to commit to."  In Kennedy's case, volunteering helped her discover what she wanted to do professionally. 
After volunteering at several organizations looking for help with their social-media strategies, Kennedy said she discovered her niche. "It made me see the importance of having a social-media strategy, and that I liked doing it." Since, she has landed a full-time role with a national non-profit organization, helping with social-media, event planning and execution, volunteer recruiting and grant writing.
Aside from gaining professional skills and expertise, taking on volunteer work can be rejuvenating, and can help stave off the doldrums that often accompany unemployment. "Inevitably, looking for a job in this market is demoralizing," said Williams of LinkedIn. "Volunteering can help you look back out at the world and regain perspective." Williams and other experts say that the focus should not be on the overarching cause, but instead be on the specific role you're taking and its requisite skills, and how they translate to the bottom-line needs of a for-profit corporation.
"Most non-profits have the same kind of work that for-profit companies do, they're just not getting revenue in the same way," said Kathy Kane, SVP of talent management for international staffing firm Adecco. "If you're responsible for managing finances, developing a website or a social media strategy, those are things that are completely relatable to the for-profit world," Kane said.
Stephen Udden, a former telecommunications professional and current job seeker in the Boston area, has become an active volunteer in numerous organizations, from his church and town government to his school district's parent-teacher organization and a non-profit agency, Wheelchair Recycler, since he was laid off two years ago. Each of his these roles requires a different skill-set, he said, which has helped him keep his edge as a job seeker.
"Volunteering has kept me in work mode," he said. Through his work with his local government and planning fundraising events for the PTO, for example, he has maintained contact with high-level officials and business owners in the community, participated in executive recruitment efforts, reviewed budgets, managed spreadsheets and made decisions that affect his entire community.
"They have been some of the most enriching, fulfilling, exciting, and sometimes most intense experiences of my life, and I wouldn't change them for a minute," he said.
Since starting his volunteer work, Udden has decided to consider careers both inside and outside of telecommunications.
"One thing volunteering has given me in my job search is a strong outlook on a new path I never dreamed I'd be looking at," he said.


For more information on volunteer opportunities with Met Council click here.

The Value of Volunteering

Last week, Independent Sector released their "National Value of Volunteer Time"for 2011-- estimated at $21.79 per hour. In 2010, the national value was estimated at $21.36; in New York it was $27.32.

How did they get this number?

The value of volunteer time if based on the average hourly earnings of all production and nonsupervisory workers on payrolls (as determined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics). Then, Independent Sector increases the figure by 12 percent to estimate for fringe benefits.

What is this used for?

Non-profits use this number to quantify the value volunteers provide for their organization. It helps estimate the economic impact and scope volunteering has.

However...

Volunteering is not about the money. Is there a way to truly quantify the inspiration and hope of volunteering into dollars? How do you put a price on mentoring or saving a life? Feeding or housing a needy child?

Nonprofits and their volunteers appreciate and grasp the impact their time has, but like the sector in general, volunteering is often overlooked and an ignored economic force. Even though it is tremendous: In 2010, the Corporation for National and Community Service estimated that 62.7 million Americans or 26.5% of the adult population, gave 8.1 billion hours of volunteer service worth over $173 billion. If it were a company, it would be bigger than Ford, AT&T, or Apple!

Greg Baldwin, president of VolunteerMatch, wrote an insightful article for Huffington Post Impact on the importance of the Value of Volunteer Time.

What do you think?

Impact of Homework Helpers: Bekah Dickstein, Volunteer of the Month

Spring is in the air and flowers are blooming, all over the place, literally! As we prepare for the April showers we want to take this time to acknowledge Bekah Dickstein as our Volunteer of the Month, who comes bearing some of those flowers as you see in her photo!

Bekah has been a dedicated volunteer with Met Council since September 2011. Since that time she has volunteered with the Professional Networking Workshop, the senior lunch program, and she continues to serve as an on-going volunteer at the Homework Helpers program in Borough Park.
Growing up as a proud, suburban, Philadelphian, Bekah’s love of literature and old, dusty things brought her to work in the rare book trade for many years. As Bekah got older and began volunteering more in struggling communities, she realized that she wanted to devote more time to learning from the community development world.

When asked why she feels volunteering is important, Ms. Dickstein confidently answered that “Volunteering isn’t just important – it’s necessary and, I believe, should be required of every individual. We all have a tendency to get caught up in our own schedules and overwhelming responsibilities and I think it causes us to, very often, lose touch with our communities and as a result, lose touch with reality. Volunteering isn’t just “giving back,” it’s about recognizing that our society requires the investment of every individual, no matter their lot in life. In taking personal responsibility and investing in our world, we not only make our mark on it, but we find a home for ourselves and other people.”

As one of our more seasoned volunteers with Homework Helpers, Bekah is on her way to becoming its first Volunteer Leader. Through her inexhaustible volunteerism with Met Council, Bekah reflects that she has gained great insight from our clients, and has felt like she has been taught much by their experiences. Her favorite aspect of volunteering is being a Homework Helper. “At the Purim Party we had a variety of craft activities to celebrate the holiday. Face painting was one of them and one of the students approached me and offered to paint my face and helped me to pick out a sunflower. I was so touched (and impressed) that I kept it on for the night!”

“The most rewarding part of volunteering is the ability to expand my worldview while finding home within my community,” Bekah states. “I get to see worlds within worlds; experience people and communities that might normally be closed to me. I get to connect with kids who might not have the opportunity to experience my world understanding and through engaging with them, we understand more about each other and about where each of us is coming from.”

We are thrilled to have her as a committed volunteer at Met Council and the most rewarding part for us is when we hear the students say, “I wish Homework Helpers was everyday!” We know that happens because of volunteers like Bekah!

Celebrate Earth Day with an Act of Green!

Each year, events are held across the world to celebrate our Earth and mark the anniversary of the modern environmental movement on the 22nd of April. Growing out of the first Earth Day in 1970, Earth Day Network (EDN) works with over 22,000 partners in 192 countries to diversify and mobilize the world in the environmental movement.

Each year, over 1 billion (yes, that's right BILLION) people participate in Earth Day activities, making it the largest civic observance day in the world. Starting in 2011, EDN launched "A Billion Acts of Green," an environmental service campaign to inspire and reward individual and organizational initiatives that support sustainability. The goal is to register 1 billion actions before the global Earth Summit in Rio in 2012.

So far there is over 849,000,000 acts registered!

You can be one of them!

Met Council is offering a variety of volunteer opportunities to commemorate Earth Day this year. Here are just a few:

• "Greening" the outdoor space for our low-income seniors
  - Cleaning and planting a garden at a residence in the upper east side of Manhattan.
  - Friendly, hardworking, and ready to get dirty- volunteers needed!
• Creating take-home herb gardens for low-income seniors
  - Help clients make and take home a planter of herbs at our site in Flushing, Queens.
  - Friendly, hardworking, and ready to get dirty- volunteers needed!
  - Multilingual volunteers are a plus! (Spanish, Chinese, Korean, and Russian).

If you are interested and would like to pledge an act of green this Earth Day, contact Simone Carvalho at 212-453-9648 or scarvalho@metcouncil.org