The Role of Volunteer Work and Internships in Career Development: How to Make the Most of These Opportunities

The Role of Volunteer Work and Internships in Career Development: How to Make the Most of These Opportunities

Both voluntary work and internship offer invaluable experience and a chance to upskill your abilities. Along with the practical experience you get to work on real-world projects, which is a golden opportunity to boost your professional development. However, this is not the extent to which these two activities help newcomers towards a successful career development plan. This article will share in-depth information on how volunteer work and internships build careers.

What is Volunteer Work?

To define it simply, volunteer work is a free service or jobs by skills that you offer to an organization for the common good that helps you work around professionals and the community of brilliant minds in your field to hone your skills, make your CV strong, and master new techniques.

Why Do Organizations Hire Volunteers?

The very valid reason for organizations to hire volunteers is that there is ample work to be done over the available budget to hire more paid employees. That's why volunteers and companies get into a mutual relationship, offering professional experience and skills in exchange for their support to help achieve the company's objectives. Moreover, even many startup companies initially need more operational funds, let alone hire professionals to handle projects.

How Much Time of Volunteer Work is Enough?

Every profession requires a different level of commitment. The profession you are targeting may require a prominent experience of a month, a complete quarter, or even six months. Moreover, varying with every role, your commitment towards your goals also defines how much time you will develop skills and techniques for professional development.

The convenient part is that the companies offer much more flexibility to the volunteer to work with efficiency with the existing schedule. But even if the companies are not paying you, they expect you to work with professionalism and dedication.

What is an Internship?

The internship is a short-term employment that companies offer to eligible candidates. It is the best opportunity for career development for students. These candidates get entry-level experience, skills, and techniques required to advance in a particular field or industry. Internships are cost-effective, allowing a business to hire candidates for much less than an experienced employee. Moreover, Internships can be paid or free, and ultimately allow candidates to learn relevant skills and real-world experience.

How Many Months of Internship is Enough?

Companies can offer an internship lasting a couple of weeks to several months, with a maximum of six months period. For instance, a three-month internship is enough for career development in HRM. There are different types of internships and their time period depends on what time of the year you have applied. You can always look for Jobs by Category to look for internships and jobs.

  • Summer: students opting for internships in summer often end up doing it for 10 to 12 weeks.
  • Winter: During winter internships mostly last a month only.
  • During the Academic Year: in this period internships can last around 12 to 16 weeks.

How Volunteer Work and Internships Help in Career Development?

Here are the 11 points to understand how volunteering and internships help to boost your career:

Good For Resume

Your tedious efforts, quality time, and hard work offered to an organization in exchange for nothing but pure experience make your resume stand out from others. Giving back to the community or showing a strong commitment to gaining skills to excel in your career shows an employer how good of a candidate you are for the organization. Just make sure you enter precise information about your volunteer work or internships.

You Gain Professional Experience

During your volunteering period and internships, you learn hands-on experience to handle real-world projects and coordinate with others to achieve a common goal. Employers will definitely consider you over others as they know you have job ready skills and potential of becoming a valuable asset.

Helps Identify Your Career Goals

Volunteering and internships help you practice, work, and search for the profession that you are best at. You find jobs by skills, apply, get hired, practice, and develop your skills. It does not take long for you to understand if it will work for you or not. Internships offer you opportunities to find the position or role that excels toward your career goals.

Offer Interview Practise

Exploring and applying for volunteering and internships is a similar process to find jobs Vacancy in India. You find work, fill out the application, and go through a multiphase hiring process with clear interview rounds. The exchange of questions and answers will help you learn how to act, behave, and answer during interview rounds. Moreover, large organizations might also consider conducting a background check and cross-verification of your provided documents.

Helps Refine Skills

Both these programs help you refine your skills and learn new techniques to handle professional tasks, making it easy to search job by Industry. For instance, working on a real-world project will help you master great communication skills, presentation skills, time management, problem-solving, and even strategy-making if the opportunity gives you a chance.

Helps Build Connections

As someone who is trying to build his presence in a particular field or industry, you must create connections, and networking is the right term for this process. Meet new people in your field, try to converse with them, and exchange a few iconic words to develop a connection. So what type of people should you meet? Well, you might want to connect with colleagues, managers, board members, other volunteers, clients, etc.

Finds a Mentor

Throughout your professional journey if someone can encourage you to go against all the odds for career development for employees is your mentor. A mentor is someone who thinks of you as a student and guides you toward achieving your career goals.

Get You References

With your dedication and hard work at the workplace as a volunteer or intern you can get new references. You can take advantage of their references to get hired into organizations. In major companies, referred applicants are prioritized over others because the company trusts their employees to find a potential candidate.

Helps You Check Compatibility With Industry

Candidates spend a lot of time, even years, to understand that finding jobs by industry and just applying can’t provide them the satisfaction and career expectations they want. So, it is better to check whether you are compatible with the work or industry as an intern or volunteer in the initial stage. You will get to analyze all the factors including, work culture, responsibilities, roles, rewards, etc.

Builds Self Confidence

Self-confidence is the key to success in every field of work. Volunteering and internship programs are especially known for helping students and newcomers build self-confidence to perform their job efficiently.

Helps Know Yourself

Both these activities can help you learn very crucial facts about yourself professionally. You will know how better you can solve problems, handle responsibilities, face challenges, etc. Ultimately you will have your strengths and weaknesses in check.

Also Read: Effective Tips To Find Job Location to Advance Your Career