Getting a job: Community Connectedness as Currency

How can volunteering show community connectedness? And how can this kind of volunteering help with employment - and who should care?

Not long before Lockdown we discussed these yummy topics in our Te Paepae format (experts sharing wisdom and inspiration). Our lovely and wise guests were Michele Walls, founder and Director at People & Co, and Ben Shaw, business owner and all-round-good-human at Successful Resumes.

We discussed how connections to community via volunteering - and presenting them through Social CV’s - can create pathways to employment. 

Then came Lockdown and the universe shifted. Now that we are stepping into reimagined spaces, it's time to get to the heart of what Be Collective does even more.

One feature of Be Collective is the ability for a volunteer to export their own Social CV to show their completed volunteering roles. Their volunteer manager can also write a personal testimonial to add heart to this verified experience. This evidence of connections to community can create pathways to employment. Both Michele and Ben saw the value in this kind of CV be used in the recruitment process. 

Michele explains this as volunteering being able to show the DNA of a person, helping the hire manager get a fuller picture of who a person is.

My own CV is a mix of paid and unpaid work – I don’t value one over the other, in fact, post COVID, they have now merged more than ever. My mix of conventional and social CV ingredients show my soft skills, my desire for change, my conventional skills, and serves as a roadmap to make sure I am staying on the right path.

Ben merges social CV's with conventional CV's and says this mix of experience is in line with a move for CV’s to demonstrate skills in a tangible way. This is a change from CV's which just verify skills. In this way, a Social CV complements a conventional CV nicely to present the whole of a person.

Showing connectedness to community is also a tool to make sure the values of a person fit snugly with the values of a business. “It’s a great day when we hear staff talk about our values,” was something else Michele shared with us. 

Like all Te Paepae’s, we moved beyond tangible tools and into some wide and inspiring spaces. We talked about how the ability to show our connections to community is definitely part of The Future of Work as we bring more of our ourselves to work. 

It used to be that only quirky people did community work. It is now highly valued and absolutely expected in the recruitment world. But now, as the whole of a person is more recognised in business and other places like immigration, we are all changing the value of community and the impact we can all make.

Community connections are driving the recruitment business. Showing personal interests like gardening and reading are just not cutting it anymore. What gets us up in the morning? What do we do without calling it volunteering? What change do we want to see? Who are we? 

And what employer is going to embrace this so that the power balance in the recruitment is evened out, particularly for young people?

Connection to community is a currency: It helps us get jobs; it match-makes people with value-driven businesses; it enables community groups to do their work; and in times of crisis like pandemics, it mitigates social isolation and disconnectedness. It gives people the opportunity to do what they can, when they can, and exercise their collective responsibility. And this is something we all care about.

What community connections can drive your next move?

#recruitmentwithheart #mahiaroha #socialCV #communityconnections

PS. Thank you to our other impromptu Te-Paepae guests: Donna Robinson (Volunteer Wairarapa) and Sarah Austen-Smith (PR Guru and Be Collective Fan) – welcome to the Be Collective whānau!