Volunteering

Last night I was having drinks with some friends. In the course of the evening, one of them mentioned that she volunteers at Habitat for Humanity. That got me thinking. I have never volunteered for anything in my life. Sure I enlisted in the “all volunteer” military, but I wasn’t donating my time, I was getting paid for that. This morning, I started to sign up to give back.

I thought long and hard about it and I realized that volunteering was more than just giving up some of your time to help someone in need. For someone in my position with no job and no call backs on any of the resumes I send out everyday, it is an opportunity. When you volunteer, the first thing it does is get you out of your house.

In this day and age when college is so accessible, candidates for employment need something to set them apart from the pack. Add some volunteer experience to your resume, and you will have a leg up on others. Nothing shows a potential employer that you care like building a house for the poor or feeding the homeless. Giving to the community will give back to you tenfold.

While you are out there working and helping others, you get a chance to meet new people. You are out networking, the person serving food next to you or helping build the house may be a manager, a ceo, a company owner. By meeting someone in a volunteer setting, it is an informal get to know you, and they aren’t judging you by what you write on your resume, all they know is that you give back.

Even if your volunteer time does not land you a full time job, at the very least, you can feel good about yourself. For those few hours that you help, you are doing something for someone else, and that brings a warm fuzzy feeling. So friends and followers, lets give up a little bit of our time, and help someone in need!