- Jo Faragher
It seems slightly ironic that – for all the complaints about how graduates don’t have the right soft skills or leadership potential – employers themselves are failing to look at candidates’ experience of volunteering during the recruitment process.
A new campaign from the CIPD, called #iwill, is urging hiring managers to turn this around, encouraging candidates to talk about the skills they have gained outside of education – skills they’re unlikely to acquire during a week’s work experience making tea at their uncle’s manufacturing company.
Volunteering for charity, for the local neighbourhood or even far-flung communities can imbue anyone with valuable experience, young or old. Volunteers are often thrown into situations where they are out of their comfort zone, perhaps having to direct others or come up with solutions on their feet. Back in the work environment and on the career ladder, the skills acquired in these situations help those individuals better manage change and engage with new projects.
As the CIPD points out, the key skills employers can unlock from volunteers are teamwork, communication, and understanding the local community – yet only 16% of employers ask about experience in this area. After all, it could help inform how they develop someone once they do come on board – do they need the same focus on training for leadership skills as someone without the same experience, for example? Could they help the employer reach out to its own communities through local outreach projects?
In order to make the most of candidates’ experiences, companies need to embed questions about their volunteering stints into the recruitment process – in conjunction with other qualifying criteria such as A-level and degree results.
CIPD chief executive Peter Cheese says that “social action has a huge role to play in terms of skills development”, and he’s right. More than two-thirds of those who’d taken on entry level candidates with voluntary experience said they were more employable.
With formal work experience and internships tougher than ever to access, learning about working as a team and making decisions as part of a volunteering programme could provide some of your brightest candidates.