Volunteers are critical to most nonprofits, supplying valuable human capital that organizations otherwise cannot afford. Their contribution, however, is only as strong as the volunteer skills that they bring with them.
A volunteer's skills differ from the qualifications employers look for when they hire someone. They're the "soft skills" that make a person valuable to a team. People may have these skills with little or no work experience, or they may have developed them over time.
Managers need to be aware of the strengths and weaknesses in individual volunteer skill sets when assembling their teams. From the volunteer's perspective, developing these skills can help make them more attractive to employers. Volunteers can highlight their top soft skills honed through volunteer work on a resume or on volunteer platforms like Golden.
First, it is important to differentiate between qualities and skills. Workplace and volunteer managers identify both in the hiring process. Simply put, qualities are inherent traits that a person has (you're born that way), while you learn skills through some sort of training or experience.
Examples of valuable volunteer qualities are:
Sometimes, qualities and skills overlap. A person may not be born patient but learns to be patient through practice. People can also develop more positivity through work and volunteer experiences. We can all learn to be more helpful, too.
There are many different types of volunteering, each requiring different skills and capacities of volunteers. In general, however, these 17 volunteer skills are always useful and sought by managers. They also are highly sought after in the workplace.
Volunteer managers depend on everyone showing up on time to work assignments. This is simple to do, but also very important. It not only helps the whole team accomplish the job more efficiently, but also shows respect to everyone involved.
Teams only work well if everyone involved communicates effectively. Being able to express oneself and communicate ideas to others in direct and efficient ways for understanding is critical for any work or volunteer situation. You can use your volunteer experience to demonstrate effective communication skills on your resume or in interviews.
Volunteers need to be able to work together with other volunteers, a nonprofit's staff, and community beneficiaries. Often, that group is diverse, too. Volunteer experience is a great way to explain teamwork skills to employers in an interview process.
Volunteer managers and event coordinators are overtaxed with work assignments. Then, things always go wrong! The person who can find the new light bulbs in your storage closet and fix the wifi connection is precious to any organization.
Many volunteer roles are front-facing, and volunteers need to have high-level customer service skills to make experiences run smoothly for beneficiaries. Employers may look for these skills even if they are not part of the technical qualifications for a job. Showcasing how you manned an event table for three days at a career fair for a nonprofit can be a great way to demonstrate customer service skills.
Many volunteer jobs are outlets for developing creativity or require a strong creative background. Designing invitations or event flyers, decorating a space for a banquet, or developing ideas for games and recreation for children are all examples of valuable volunteer skills.
Leaders take initiative, set an example, and help guide a team. Many volunteer events require someone to be in charge of a team. Volunteering is a great way to build leadership skills and show employers that you're capable of leading work groups and taking on more responsibility.
Volunteer recruitment and training is very time-consuming for managers. It's important to look for volunteers who are committed to roles to ease that burden. Scanning resumes or social media for the length of work assignments and signs that the person completes tasks (earning degrees, for example) is part of the vetting process. On the flip side, volunteers can use their steady commitment in a volunteer role to demonstrate that skill to employers.
Many volunteer roles require steadfast time management skills. For example, a volunteer may be tasked with leading a canoe trip with children. They'll have to follow a set time schedule to ensure the children complete the course and return to an encounter point with their parents.
Some people are energetic and enthusiastic by nature (a quality). Others learn the trait as a skill. No one wants to work with a volunteer or an employee who is not up to the task!
Volunteers need to be able to switch their skill sets quickly. Too often one team member doesn't show, or schedules change. They might have been assigned to sit at the registration table, but now the event manager needs them to lead a children's game instead. Volunteer managers look for people who have the resiliency and capacity to be adaptive.
Interpersonal skills are the capacity to relate well with others, even if they are from diverse backgrounds. This is an important tool for any person to have in their box! Getting along well with others takes us all much farther in life.
We actually learn how to learn. This is a very important skill for humans, and likely the first thing your primary school teachers focused on in the classroom. People sharpen their ability to learn over time, and some are able to learn much quicker than others. People that can onboard rapidly and move through the volunteer landscape of an organization in a heartbeat are very attractive to managers.
Volunteer roles often require high levels of compassion. Empathy is a quality that drives a person's capacity for compassion. How well does a volunteer sympathize with others? And can they turn that compassion into action? Often these skills are desired in a workplace but difficult to show on a resume. Volunteer work with seniors, or with sick children, can demonstrate high levels of compassion.
Volunteers often have to use their interpersonal skills to develop relationships with their team or with the broader community. Board volunteers, for example, need to have high-level relationship-building skills, as they are the liaisons connecting an organization to donors and partners.
Being organized makes everyone's life easier. Volunteers who finish all of the required administration steps (i.e., logging hours and completing evaluations) in a timely and efficient manner are highly valuable.
People build confidence over time by successfully completing jobs and garnering more experience. It is important to try new things in life, too, which can be accomplished through volunteering! Showing a potential employer that you had the confidence to go to a foreign country in a volunteer role, for example, can work wonders for your employability.
If you don't have a great skill set for volunteering, don't worry! Anyone can build these skills and improve their resume in the process.
After you have developed all of these wonderful skills, you will want to put them to use. Everyone should know how to put volunteer work on a resume to demonstrate soft skills to an employer.
Volunteer platforms like Golden are a great way to showcase your volunteer skills and be invited by volunteer managers to new roles. The platform can help you link your volunteer experience to any of a number of third party sites, too, like Linked In, to update your volunteer work continuously and showcase all your new skills.