CV advice re. voluntary work

maryroberts

I’d like some CV advice please! Basic situation is that I returned to UK in Jan this year, after living & working abroad for 8 years. I’ve been busy renovating a house since March but will need to apply for work when we move in November. I decided to do some voluntary work from Aug onwards in order to improve my customer service & admin skills and show on my CV that I’m actually doing something.

So at the moment my 2 voluntary jobs are the most important & current thing on my CV. On my CV I have a Profile section, Objective, Career History, Education, then Other (to include a current online Essential IT Skills course which I’m also doing to enhance my CV).

Should I put the Voluntary Work either

• as a separate section near the top, before my Career History
• Incorporate it within my Career History section (with no separate Voluntary section)
• as a separate section underneath my Career History

It seems to me that it should go right at the top, as it’s what I’m doing right now. But other advice I've read online seems to dismiss voluntary work as not being so important as paid work!

Please let me have your thoughts!

maryroberts

Just moving this up in case anyone can give advice!

westv

Well I would suggest if it's relevant to the job you are going for then put it however you want as long as it's clearly visible and near the top.

denla

I put voluntary work in my career history section along with my paid jobs, sorted by date. If it's voluntary work I'd put (voluntary) beside the job title so employers know it's not paid.

Voyager2002

Personally, I would describe voluntary and paid employment in the same way. After all, what counts is what you learn and achieve in each role, not what you persuade the employer to give you for doing it.

theoretica

I think it depends on how relevant or prestigeous it is compared to the work you were doing abroad. If you think the three months volunteer work is a better selling point for a particular job than 8 years of whatever you were doing abroad I would put it at the top. If you think the work abroad is stronger put that at the top. The order of your CV may well vary for different jobs.

Bayblue

I think more than anything potential employers want to see that you can do the job that they are advertising. So I would say that it depends on how much the voluntary work you have been doing relates to the job you are applying for. If it's directly related and uses transferable skills then yes, I'd include it in your work history- in it's correct place. I did that and it worked for me.

As long as you don't lie on your CV, or pretend that it's paid work then I can't see any problem with voluntary work being included and indeed it could very well get you the interview over someone who hasn't had direct experience, paid or otherwise.

maryroberts

Thank you for the replies, which all make sense! I got a bit confused after reading online advice, most of which seemed to suggest that voluntary work should be listed separately at the bottom somewhere. But in my case I think it is very relevant to potential jobs and should go at the top.

Now what is confusing me even more is what to put as an Achievements section. I know no-one can tell me exactly what to put, but I don't think I've done anything outstanding in my work, apart from being reliable and getting on with it! My CV looks too bland - I'm no good at selling myself!

System

There is no right or wrong way of writing a CV, and it should ideally be targetted specifically at the particular job.

Remember you have about 5 seconds to grab an employer's attention before he bins the application. You need something to stand out, and however you do it, it must scream out I HAVE THE EXPERIENCE YOU NEED !

dancingfairy

Am sure there are loads of careers/job hutning books out there and they all have samples of cvs etc and various wording you can use. I'm sure they'd have something you can borrow from the library as well.
Also have a search around google, there must be plenty of websites out there.
Just make sure you don't copy too much stuff and make sure it is relevant to what you've done. Try not to repeat the same words over again like 'organised', the second time maybe use 'planned' or 'executed' etc. Try and be dynamic. Also try not to put something too wooly/generic if possible and have an example to back it up. For example great team player is a bit generic but supported my team of 10 through a merger would give a bit more context/useful info.
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theoretica

Also it is likely that your life abroad could be made a selling point - flexibility to different culture, maybe language, initiative to go and return...