Can volunteering really lead to a job?

Last week the Corporation for National and Community Servicereleased a study on volunteering as a path to paid employment. (“Volunteering as a Pathway to Employment: Does Volunteering Increase Odds of Finding a Job for the Out of Work?”) Those who volunteered were 27% more likely to find work. Impressive, but not surprising. I’ve always thought of volunteer opportunities as one possible route to take in reaching your career goals. 

While the study focused on lower-skilled job seekers, I think volunteering can be good for job seekers at any level.

For those who are more educated and skilled, I think finding the right volunteer situation is critical. By "right," I mean something that might add a skill you need for your targeted career goal, or might reinforce an existing one. If you're an events planner, for example, getting involved in fundraising activities for a non-profit would be a great idea. Or if you're in finance, why not offer services in the financial area? Even though the circumstances might be very different from what you're used to, it's something you can point to when going out on the job market.  

And on a purely emotional basis, volunteering is a great idea for building structures into your day. That's always a big problem with people who are out of work all of a sudden - their regular structures, and people, disappear.  

But. I don't encourage clients and students to seek full-time volunteer positions, though, because it would disrupt their regular search activities, and they’d risk losing their momentum. So I advise them to go for part-time. Three days a week tops. Otherwise you won’t have enough time for a reasonable job search.

Negotiate? For volunteer work?

Most people don’t realize that if you're going to offer your services for free, you can negotiate! Yup, negotiate. Obviously, not about salary, but about the position itself.

Here are a few items you might want to negotiate before you start:

• Ask if you can be called a consultant, rather than a volunteer. Looks better on the resume, and sounds better in networking and interviewing.
• Make sure your role is clearly defined so that you don’t run into a bait and switch situation. For example, you've been told you're going to help design a new system for membership, and then you find out after you start you're doing data entry. You don’t want to be stuck in a position that won’t help you further your overall goals.  
• Ask if they'll provide excellent references for you (calling you a consultant, of course), assuming you do a terrific job.
• Also, if you're going to do that terrific job for them, ask if they would assist you by providing some help in building your new networks -- names of contacts, affiliated organizations.
• And . . . if things work out well on both ends, ask if it’s possible that any positions might become available (if you're interested, of course).  

The report shows that volunteers get a boost in terms of increasing their social connections and professional contacts. They often increase their skills. Two years out, they’re more likely to have landed jobs. All good. But, based on years of professional experience, I’ve seen that the best way to get the most out of a volunteer experience is to combine it with a targeted job search. There’s no reason you have to trade one for the other, if both will help you find a job that fits. 

You can find out more about volunteering and bridge jobs in In Search of the Fun-Forever Job: Career Strategies that Work

© Pepmiba | Dreamstime.com

Success, Loyalty, and Finding a Job that Fits

I don’t measure career success by job title or salary, but rather by how satisfied you are with the work you’re doing. If you don’t have a job that fits your life, that suits your personality, that provides you with work you find challenging, you’ll never feel quite at home. But how much time should you give a new job before determining you’re in the wrong place? That’s a question I hear often from clients. Usually it’s along the line of, “I really hate this job but do I dare quit in this economy?”

The easy answer is: It all depends. . .

Let me give you an example. I just heard from a reader (Ask Ellis) who thought she had found her media dream job. Only as soon as she was hired, the job changed. Bait and switch? Possibly. But it’s also possible the employer genuinely didn’t realize what he/she wanted. Happens all the time. And when it does, the decision to quit becomes a little easier. 

In the case of my reader, things were further complicated. A friend had brought her on. And the contract was only for two months. Shouldn’t it be easier to just wait it out? Wouldn’t she be letting her friend down?

Believe it or not, this one was actually simple. Because the position description had changed so dramatically, and because it was a consulting assignment, I don't think she should have any qualms leaving. The employer didn't live up to the arrangement. 

Yes, she should tell the friend who referred in advance, and explain her quandary, thank profusely for the lead, but that the gig didn't turn out to be what was described and had turned into something entirely different. 

Sometimes people worry that their name might get tarnished in their industry, but in this context, it doesn't sound like the reader was leaving for a frivolous reason, and the industry has so many components, it would be highly unlikely that it would do her any damage.

I've taken a much more cynical position about this topic in general during my career. Organizations over the past several years have not particularly engendered loyalty, so I always tell clients that it should go both ways. The organization would have no problem letting someone go if a market shifts in even very small ways, so why can't you do that? You can leave THEM if there's a better market for you. Why not?  

Of course, there are many contexts where it's not great to do this, especially in small industries where a reputation can get hurt or where you may burn through a significant referral. I always take this on a case by case situation, examining all the details involved. But, as I mentioned above in my moment of cynicism, I think that the work culture has changed to a point where you have to think of yourself always as an independent contractor, who moves from project to project, even in so-called permanent employment.  

Loyalty needs to be earned.

A quick postscript. Two days after quitting, the reader found a more lucrative short-term assignment. 

© Photojogtom | Dreamstime.com

Answering Job Ads - What are the odds?

Most job searchers immediately start by looking at ads or calling recruiters and hope they can succeed quickly with this reactive technique. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Except that it doesn’t work very well. Every year or so, I investigate how well the various search techniques function, and usually the ads and recruiters together, according to the research, account for around 12–13% of the overall job market. Most jobs are found through personal networks. 

       So, why do people depend so much on the 13% and not the 87%? Because the prospect of answering an ad, and then getting called for an interview sounds easier and more appealing because it is easier. 

       Why don’t ads account for more jobs? Because most people do not precisely fit into the specific skill sets the ads are primarily seeking.

       When I recruited for a large bank many years ago, I used ads in The New York Times for large projects and occasionally for hard-to-fill positions. We were opening a large data center and staffing it at all levels. There were 36 positions for which we advertised internally as well as in The Times. It was a half-page ad, a major and expensive recruiting effort, and we received 5,000 responses for the 36 positions within two days. We were only a staff of four and had to figure out a way to get the best possible candidates for the positions quickly. 

       5000 resumes! We split up the jobs and split up the resumes, 1250 per staff person. Our goal was to get five candidates to interview for each position. I cannot speak for all corporate recruiters, but I can say that what followed was fairly typical of many I’ve met over the years. I had responsibility for seven of the positions and actually ended up reading maybe 250 of my 1250 resumes in order to find enough initial candidates for each position. Basically this means 1000, or 80%, of the resumes were never even read on this first pass. Later on, I might have read an additional 100 if I’d been unable to find enough qualified candidates for a specific position or two. 

       You have probably had the experience at some point of reading the perfect ad practically screaming, “This job’s for you!” And you write a great cover letter to accompany your brilliant resume that fits the job perfectly. And you send it to someone like . . . me, at the big corporation, the guy who only needs to read roughly 20% of the resumes he receives. In other words, there’s a high probability that yours will never receive so much as a glance.

       You end up feeling terrible because either you get a form rejection letter (from the better companies who are conscious of their public perception) or nothing (from the organizations who don’t think that way). You may also end up feeling that something was wrong with your resume, cover letter, or credentials, when in fact that was not the case. This is only one reason, among many, why answering ads is essentially a gamble. But in a comprehensive job search, it’s a technique not to be ignored because even in a gamble, there’s a chance for success. 

       One technique that often work is to answer the ad twice. First, answer it immediately, and then . . . answer it again, maybe 10 days later. The second response will be received in a batch of maybe three, rather than the hundreds elicited earlier. Even in a small organization, an ad will draw many responses, even if only placed in a specialized trade publication. Don’t worry that someone will notice the two responses. First of all, it would be surprising to me if someone would actually notice a duplicate, and, even if that were the case, so what? Would it be perceived as a negative if two responses were noted? Does it appear desperate? My take would be that the candidate was extremely interested in the position. What could be wrong with that? 

From In Search of the Fun-Forever Job: Career Strategies that Work

© Jiri Hera | Dreamstime.com