You’ve volunteered for years, but how can you make sure your experience stands out?

2 Quantify your impact

One of the best ways to make your volunteer work stand out is to show how you made a difference. Use numbers, percentages, or other metrics to illustrate your achievements and outcomes. For example, you can mention how many people you served, how much money you raised, how much time you saved, or how much you improved a process or a situation. Quantifying your impact can help you showcase your skills, abilities, and results in a concrete and credible way.

3 Use action verbs

Another way to make your volunteer work stand out is to use action verbs that describe what you did and how you did it. Action verbs can help you highlight your skills, strengths, and accomplishments in a dynamic and engaging way. Avoid using vague or passive verbs like “helped”, “participated”, or “was involved”. Instead, use specific and active verbs like “taught”, “coordinated”, or “created”. For example, instead of saying “I helped with the fundraising event”, you can say “I coordinated the logistics and marketing of the fundraising event”.

4 Tailor your resume and cover letter

Your resume and cover letter are your first opportunities to showcase your volunteer work to potential employers. You need to tailor them to the specific job and organization you’re applying to, and highlight your relevant volunteer experience in a clear and concise way. You can include your volunteer work in different sections of your resume, depending on how relevant and recent it is. For example, you can list it under your work experience, your skills, or your education. You can also create a separate section for your volunteer work, if you have enough examples to fill it. In your cover letter, you can mention one or two of your most impressive or relevant volunteer achievements, and explain how they relate to the job and the organization.

5 Prepare for the interview

Your volunteer work can also help you stand out in the interview stage, if you prepare well and use it strategically. You can use your volunteer examples to answer behavioral questions, which ask you to describe a situation, a task, an action, and a result. You can also use your volunteer examples to demonstrate your passion, your motivation, and your fit for the organization’s culture and values. To prepare for the interview, you can review your resume and cover letter, and identify the volunteer examples that best match the job requirements and the organization’s mission. You can also practice using the STAR method, which stands for Situation, Task, Action, and Result, to structure your answers in a clear and coherent way.

Volunteering can be more than just a hobby or a duty. It can be a powerful way to showcase your experience, skills, and values to potential employers. By following these tips, you can make sure your volunteer work stands out and helps you land your dream job or promotion.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?