Something we as professional resume writers get asked quite frequently is whether or not to include volunteer work on resumes. Our answer is usually…. well, it depends. Most of the time, it’s not beneficial for volunteer work to be included, but there are certainly scenarios when it’s useful or even necessary. Here’s a quick look at cases when you should include volunteer experience on your resume and when you should not.
Entry Level
The most common scenario where you should include volunteer work on your resume is if you’re an entry-level candidate with no or minimal work experience. In such cases, talking about your volunteer experience is a good opportunity to showcase skills, leadership, initiative, and interests. The volunteer work should ideally be recent (during college) but could be from high school as well depending on your experience level. Ideally, the volunteerism would go beyond merely participating in an event so that you can generate more content, but can be as simple as listing out various organizations that you have contributed to if need be.
Cover Up Job Gaps
Another situation where you should include volunteer work on your resume is to cover up job gaps. Let’s say that you’ve been out of the workforce for a number of years – raising a family, caring for a sick parent, or simply taking a break – but want to show that you’ve been doing something during that time. Volunteer experience is perfect! For example, if you’ve been doing a lot of work for your child’s parent teacher association, that’s absolutely something you can put on the resume, and expand upon regarding communication skills and ability to resolve conflicts. Even if the volunteer experience is not relevant to your career, having something to cover up the job gap (you don’t need to list it on the resume as a volunteer experience even if that’s fairly obviously what it is) is highly valuable.
Relevant to Professional Experience
Finally, a great scenario for when to include volunteer work is roughly the opposite of the previous situation. This is when you might have a job experience (or experiences), but it’s not really what you want to do going forward, or is something you don’t want to highlight on your resume for some reason. In that case, it’s a great idea to include relevant volunteering information! For example, let’s say you’re a digital marketing professional, but want to go into human resources/employee relations. In that case, including the fact that you coach your daughter’s soccer team, and provide coaching and mentorship to drive growth could well be more important than your knowledge of Mailchimp. Even if you do have relevant professional experience, if your volunteering is relevant as well, or demonstrates other skills not covered in your professional career (such as fundraising or event planning), it could be useful to mention.
When to Not Include
In most other cases, volunteer work is not necessary to include on the resume. If you go down to your local food bank once a month and help distribute lunches, that’s a very kind and generous thing to do – but it is not substantial enough to draw real content from, and isn’t worth including unless highly relevant to your career. Even if your volunteering is somewhat more substantial, most of the time, other resume components – professional experience, education, development, skills, and summary – are more valuable to include. It’s not a huge negative to have volunteerism on your resume; it won’t cause you to get rejected from job applications. It’s simply less valuable real estate on resumes for most people.