Student Volunteering week: How Volunteering Can Improve Your Career Prospects!

Last week was Student Volunteering Week. A week where students all over the country are positively encouraged to take the plunge into voluntary work in their local areas. ReachOut! was out on The University of Manchester campus all week spreading word of the important work we do in the community and encouraging students to be a part of it.

Here at ReachOut! our fantastic stock of committed volunteers make a continuing difference to young people all around Manchester and east London. As an organisation we often emphasise the positive effects volunteering has on the community, and quite rightly too! After all, who does not want the world to know the fruits of their labour?

A less explored consequence of volunteering is how beneficial it can be for the volunteers themselves. We constantly hear back from ReachOut! alumni how powerful a tool their volunteering experience has been in finding a job. With the job market being the most competitive it has been in living memory, volunteering experience is a brilliant indicator of the: commitment, initiative, industriousness, and all round excellency that employers and recruiters have a taste for.

Aside from looking great to employers, volunteering is a superb way to improve your skill set. Working with young people is often very rewarding but it is not without the odd challenge. Learning how to work effectively with different characters is a great way to improve your people skills (a skill set that will be hugely important if you plan on working at a large organisation). Not only this but you will also gain practical problem solving skills. How do you get a young person interested in a school subject that they are currently underachieving in? How do you encourage an apathetic young person to think seriously about their future? These are the problems you will have to find a solution to as a volunteer at our charity. Thinking creatively and analytically about solving problems is a great skill to have in any industry.

Volunteering has gone through somewhat of a renaissance. The 'average volunteer' is no longer susceptible to stereotyping. It's easy to think of volunteering as historically being the prerogative of people who are retired or who have a lot of free time on their hands. Not so anymore. Volunteering is no longer a matter of giving up your time for a good cause, it is about investing your time in something worthy; it's about gaining skills while helping others; it's about bettering your prospects while simultaneously bettering someone else's; it's about your future as well as the service user's.

So here is the moral of the story: tell us what you want to get from volunteering with us. Let us know about your skills and how you think you can put them to good use at our charity. Let us know where you want to be in 5 years time and how we can help you get there through our events and projects. At ReachOut! we are supremely grateful for all the hard work our volunteers put in on a weekly basis. We are very proud of the great service we as a charity are able to provide because of our volunteers, and we want to provide a service to our volunteers of an equal quality.

So volunteer with us to make a  positive difference to the local community and to yourself.

Luke
Volunteer Co-ordinator
Manchester