by Noel Bell

Created on: April 09, 2008   Last Updated: February 13, 2009

Education and professional experience hold key spots in the resume, but it may be harder to show you learned other valuable skills from unpaid work. You can highlight some of these skills in interviews and resumes by making elegant parallels between the unpaid work and the work you might do for your new employer.

For example, if you served on a church or community committee, you participated in the same complex decision making processes that most organizations use. Volunteer work counts. Most non-profits work as democratic systems with boards, committees, and councils that decide everything from hiring employees to taking out the trash. Many non-profits have committees that discuss financial issues, personnel issues, physical plant issues, and costs. These are skills that can help the team. Show the parallels between volunteer work and paid work. Show them in the resume, or use these skills to answer specific interview questions about the ability to work with others or in groups. If you are a scout leader, you are an unpaid leader. Use it as an example of your leadership skills.

Owning a home, for instance, teaches us how to multitask. Washing, cleaning, ordering food, planning and cooking meals, teaching social skills to children, and managing income and expenses are skills with immediate workplace value. Work done at home translates into multiple organizational roles, and shows you can wear multiple hats. Planning construction and home improvement projects are often unrecognized skills that carry nice parallels to work tasks. Highlight these dimensions in your resume or skillfully work them into the interview to show you can take on multiple tasks and contribute to team success.

Also, we forget about hobbies and sports. If you are a runner or take martial arts, you do unpaid work. If you run marathons, you are persistent. If you take martial arts, you practice self-discipline. If you played team sports, you worked on a team. If you were the captain, you have innate leadership ability. Even if you are a model railroader or build models, you illustrate a level of patience and commitment that might not be shown elsewhere. These activities can give you easy, confident answers to interview questions about your work ethic. Interview questions are designed to find out what kind of worker you are, and most answers fall flat or sound false without specific examples. Back up a flat answer with your passion for running or your ability to show self-discipline in martial arts.

The process is not bulletproof. A person's unpaid work is not always an indicator of overall work ethic. If you can work without pay and enjoy it, it means you have the ability to work as a team player. Leaders could also come out ahead if they asked a few more questions about volunteer work during interviews, and tease out those core motivations. The outcome could be transformational.

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