Assessing Applicants: When to Seriously Consider Experience From Volunteer Work

Summary:
It is important to know when to take volunteer experience on a job applicant's resume seriously to ensure that qualified job candidates with disabilities get an even chance at your company's openings.

Volunteering: A Disabled Person's "After School" Job

What's Your Incentive to Value Volunteer Experience in a Job Applicant?

Characteristics of "Real" Volunteer Work


Volunteering: A Disabled Person's "After School" Job

When the typical job applicant hands over his resume or job application to your recruiter or hiring manager, you can expect to see part-time jobs he's held while in college, during summer breaks, and as on-the-job training or internships after college. The sharp applicant will include any substantial volunteer work he's done, too. These items under "Work Experience" are what you will go on, in part, to decide whether the applicant is job-ready and whether he has the work experience and work habits to make him the best candidate for the job.

But when the applicant sitting across the interview table has a disability, his resume might be a little thin on this type of work experience. This does not mean he cannot do the job -- just that certain barriers to typical part-time employment exist which may have prevented him from getting a chance to show what he can do. He may have had little extra time to work after studying, if his access needs (and the available tools or lack thereof) meant taking more time for his schoolwork. He may not have had transportation to work from home during breaks. And most likely he could not get hired for these typically low-paid, short term and part time jobs. How many blind people have you seen working at McDonald's during summer break?

It is the nature of volunteer work that it can be more flexible than paid jobs in terms of schedules and other work requirements. Many disabled people opt for volunteer jobs partly for that reason -- in addition to the desire to work, to gain experience and to contribute to a worthy cause. The volunteer work you see on a disabled applicant's resume may be the only work he could get.

So, volunteer experience on a resume is one way a disabled applicant can show you what he can do. As Suzanne Westhaver says to disabled students in her article, "Putting Your Best Foot Forward: Tips for Resume Building" on EnableLink.com:

"You need to have an edge if you want an employer to hire you. Something has to make you stand out from the rest of the candidates. Affirmative action doesn't entitle you to a job. Affirmative action entitles a qualified candidate an equal opportunity for employment. In today's job market, you need to be computer savvy. You need to be educated and you need to have experience. 'How do I get experience?' a voice in the back of your mind screams. Getting experience is not as difficult as it may seem. If you are having trouble gaining experience through employment opportunities, I recommend volunteer experience. A resume places your best foot forward. If you can dazzle them with your cover letter and resume and secure the interview, accommodation issues can be addressed later."

But you and I both know there is volunteering, and then there is volunteering. That is, while volunteer projects can be substantive and genuinely lend towards developing necessary work habits, skills and experience, all may not. You will need to find out more about the applicant's volunteer work history to decide whether to take it into consideration when making a hiring decision.

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What's Your Incentive to Value Volunteer Experience in a Job Applicant?

On the other hand, why bother? Why not just hire the person with the best, more traditional background? You can do that. But believe me, you will want to look at this issue. It's in your best interest. Let me explain why.

One thing I like to point out about volunteers is that most of them volunteer because they like to work. If they want to relax or hang, they can do that on their own. If they want money, they'll have to trade labor for pay. But the only incentive for someone who volunteers is to volunteer (assuming it's not a mandatory community service program.) They care about a cause and want to work for it. As far as I'm concerned, someone who volunteers is already your better applicant because they are self-starters, self-motivated, committed and value work.

The only mistake you may make is to discount volunteering altogether as not "serious work" or to believe that listing volunteer experience in a resume is an attempt to mislead you. Volunteers are the "above-and-beyond" workers you are specifically looking for. As Peg Cheng, a Seattle career coach points out, "Volunteering shows proactiveness, initiative and compassion."

Cheng spotlights internships in particular. "Often," she says, "these interns do substantial, valuable work for the organization. She explains that they are what she calls "high-end" volunteers, whose work on boards and in grant writing and so forth require professional level skills -- knocking down the common belief that volunteering generally involves low skills.

Susan J. Ellis, internationally renowned trainer, writer and consultant and owner of Energize! also speaks to this point:

"The most important thing (when describing experience on a resume) is to present the information in such a way as to document and support your career goal. If you tell a prospective employer that you want a particular job, your resume must prove that you are the right candidate to fill it. Sometimes your paid work history may not be as important as what you have done as a volunteer in demonstrating that you have the necessary job skills." (My emphasis)

Also see ServiceLeader.org's "Putting Volunteer Work on Your Resume."

Gina Ritter, the EMS Youth Corps Director for a rural health network, is living proof of what Ellis says. "All of my volunteer experience in AmeriCorps, as an EMT, with teens and non-profit programs, and as a mediator and rape crisis counselor," Ritter explains, "led to my current position. Not one former paid job had any experience that my employers wanted."

Often the only way to get experience in a field where you plan to work is through volunteering. Many after-school and summer paid-jobs are in high-turnover, low-skill positions. A school would not hire a teacher without a teaching certificate, but it would "hire" a volunteer to run study groups or to tutor. In Work in Washington: Two Interns Share Their D.C. Experiences, you will meet a volunteer whose internship in an inner city school revealed him as the most qualified person to develop a literature program for the school.

For anyone still doubting that volunteer work can be substantive, Jayne Cravens, online volunteering specialist for the United Nations Volunteers, has this succinct observation: "A non-profit is a business."

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Characteristics of "Real" Volunteer Work

The quick answer to "How do I decide if a volunteer job really means this guy has work experience?" is: same as with a paid job. You know what sustained, substantive work looks like. Stability, reliability, responsibility, performance all can be revealed in work of any kind.

Some paid summer job experiences allow these characteristics to surface, but others do not. Even within the same job, for example, summer camp counselor or lifeguard, you will find goof-offs and responsible kids as well as supervisors who are lax and supervisors with firm hands. You already have procedures for sorting these applicants out. Apply the same standards to those with volunteer experience only.

You may be tempted to dismiss volunteer experience on the basis that "there are no volunteer jobs relevant to our industry." You may be surprised at the breadth of volunteer projects available today. Not every one involves stuffing envelopes or answering phones.

Here are two good places for getting a sense of today's volunteering opportunities: VolunteerMatch and Idealist. Look at the variety of fields and job responsibilities and check the complexity of many of those opportunities.

Besides, in a lot of cases, it's the work -- not the industry -- that counts on a resume. Does it matter to you where an applicant got his experience building a network -- or will a senior services program do? On a lark, I looked on Idealist.org for volunteer projects that involved two that are very unlike stuffing envelopes: plumbing and tax accounting. I found fourteen plumbing projects and 64 that were related to tax accounting (and that does not account for the hundreds of individual IRS tax help center volunteer positions).

As with any other applicant, you can ask the fellow providing volunteer projects as experience to describe the work he did as a volunteer in terms applicable to the work you will have him do at your company. Volunteer work can be assessed right along with paid work when you know what went into it. For instance, if you read or hear the following, do you really care if pay was involved?

Managed marketing events with up to 2,000 in attendance which required coordinating registration, topics and speakers with 12 committee members, including the Marketing Association President and Dean of Business Administration program.

In fact, it is more likely he performed this work on his own initiative and drawing from his own talents. In a paid job, he may have only been an aide to a team performing the work and under the direction of a higher-up. The Resume Resource Center specifically recommends that job seekers take steps to identify job titles that most closely reflect the work they did as a volunteer and to describe the work as they would for a "real" job.

The University of Rhode Island community service program instructs students to document their volunteer experience well. In a study module called "Turning Your Volunteer Experience Into Quality Material for Your Resume and Interview", it recommend that students compile portfolios of their volunteer work with samples of their work, reference letters, evaluations from supervisors, and even photos taken of them volunteering. You certainly can ask for just this sort of evidence from your job candidate so you can evaluate for yourself his volunteer work experience and how "serious" it was.

Beware of discounting volunteer experience because the "job titles" don't match those used in paid jobs. Even the paid professional running the program most likely is "under-identified" as a "volunteer coordinator" when, in fact, he does a great deal more than just schedule the work. Remember that many volunteers will have no title at all. I found one resume-writing site which recommends listing responsibilities and then giving the volunteer work the equivalent title to that done in more traditional work settings.

Below are several more characteristics of a substantive volunteer project more than worth your consideration -- gleaned from the professional volunteer resource managers involved in the CyberVPM online discussion network. These professional volunteer resource managers recommend looking for experience in well-organized programs with:

• A paid professional volunteer resource manager in charge of the program.
  
  
• A volunteer screening and training procedure.
  
  
• Position descriptions for volunteers.
  
  
• Written volunteer performance evaluations.
  
  
• Volunteer hours tracking.
  
  
• Evidence of providing substantive work experience that uses and develops the volunteers' work skills.
  
  
• Other evidence that the organization makes the most effective use of community involvement in pursuit of its mission.
  

In fact, when you encounter volunteer programs with potential to provide you with great job candidates, give them the list above and tell them you expect them to develop this level of substance in their volunteer programs.

Look for service learning programs and internships and other volunteer programs that are dedicated specifically to substantive work. AmeriCorps and similar programs have high standards for performance and responsibility.

But, more than anything, look for the applicant who is inspired and enlightened by his volunteer experience and is able to demonstrate this energy and commitment in an articulate and illustrative manner.

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