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Community Question | How Can You Present Your Volunteer Experience in A Competitive Job Market?

Volunteers at work.

In Voices from the Sector—our nonprofit job-seeker and organization reports from 2012—we found that 83% of job seekers said they had volunteer experience with a nonprofit organization and that over 50% of hiring managers consider volunteer experience when looking at acandidate’s resume. So what can you do to showcase your volunteer experience and give yourself a boost while job hunting?

On Forbes.com earlier this month, a job seeker asked:

"I’m going for an ED position interview tomorrow. My experience is over 10 years in that capacity, but as a non-paid volunteer on a part time basis. Nonetheless, we had great accomplishments in those organizations, but how do I compete with other applicants who have full-time, paid experience?"

In her response, business and career expert Caroline Ceniza-Levine said, “To be competitive, you have to value the experience, unpaid or not, and outline exactly why it translates to your new employer so they value you. The job seeker above needs to provide specific examples that show she has performed Executive Director-level activities with positive, substantive results that are relevant to the prospective employer.”

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