Is volunteering the Milli Vanili of job experience?

Welcome to this week’s Discuss HR, the HR blog written for and by members of Human Resources UK.

I am delighted to welcome this week our latest guest writer Susan Mburu.  Susan is new to blogging but on the strength of this post I’m sure you’ll all agree with me that she should pursue this further!  (Ed Scrivener)

Is volunteering the Milli Vanili of job experience?

Anyone who was alive in the 80s and early 90s remembers the scandal that was the German pop group, Milli Vanilli when it was revealed that the music that had launched them into fame and won them a grammy was not actually theirs. It was discovered that for the length of their very successful career, Milli Vanilli had been lip synching. The media backlash and fan fall out was immensely loud everywhere you looked.

Perhaps equating anything to that is a tad severe but hear me out.

In my role, I deal with volunteers a lot of the time. Sometimes it is older volunteers who are retired and seeking to give back to the society, but more and more the volunteers are younger individuals 'in between jobs' or looking for first time roles after education, either college, university or in some instances their GSCE's.

On many occasions, I have encountered articles advising young job seekers to be more responsible with the time they use to look for work. This is in relation to having large chunks of unaccounted for time on your CV. A lot of these articles suggest the same thing to ensure these chunks of time are limited: If you can afford it, volunteer.

The recession has made it so that we have many equally qualified individuals seeking out the same roles and it is only safe to deduce that considering the numbers, some job seekers will have to wait a while before they find the role they want to fill. As a result young people seeking first time roles in specific fields are opting to volunteer. Volunteering affords the candidate a chance to gain some hands on experience and keep busy while they seek out paying work.

Another demographic pushed into voluntary roles to gain experience are non-graduates. A CIPD unemployment report shows that six in ten companies do not have routes into their organization for non-graduates.

Granted, voluntary work is will not always be a viable option for young jobseekers and others either have to take up work they are not particularly interested in or compliment volunteering with a part time job to pay their bills.

I am an ardent believer in gaining experience whichever way you can in order to get the opportunities but how truly helpful is voluntary experience? I will note that this question is not posed in reference to random volunteer experiences but rather volunteer jobs directly in line with the role the job seeker is seeking to find e.g. a volunteer project manager in the third sector for someone seeking a paying project management role.

Given two individuals who interview exactly the same (give or take small personality nuances) , whose academic background is mostly similar and who have the exact same experience, except that one performed his tasks as a volunteer. How likely is it that the volunteering candidate will lose out?

Does this passion for a profession exhibited by a volunteer count in their favour or do the words of the Joker in the Dark Knight “If you are good at something, never do it for free” define the trajectory of the choices made while recruiting?

How highly do recruiters grade initiative and willingness to work and the commitment needed for voluntary roles when viewing a voluntary job noted as experience on an application or a CV?

Is volunteering the Milli Vanilli of job experience?

About the author

Susan is currently a HR Administrator for the Trussel Trust Foodbank in Coventry. She holds an Msc in Human Resource Management from the Universityof Sunderland and a Business degree from Strathmore Universityin her native country, Kenya. She is passionate about personnel development and particularly mentorship and coaching.

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Discuss HR is the blog for Human Resources UK, the leading LinkedIn group for those involved with HR in the UK.  Next week's post will be written by employment law specialist Annabel Kaye.

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