How volunteering can help change your career pathway
From doing something great for your community and making new connections to being a stronger candidate during your job search - volunteering comes with many personal and professional benefits.
Mandy is one of our phenomenal volunteers, and this Volunteers' Week, she tells us how the Together Trust has helped her to change her career path while making a meaningful difference to the people we support, even without working directly with them.
As a Donations Assistant, Mandy works alongside the fundraising team between 10 am - 4 pm every Monday and deals with processing donations, maintaining the database, providing administrative support, as well as participating in fundraising events and activities.
Among all duties, Mandy shares what she appreciates most about her volunteering role:
Outside her volunteering role, Mandy has been in the process of job hunting, which is one of her motivations for joining our team:
About the challenges of being a Donations Assistant, Mandy shares that they have all been about getting to grips with the spreadsheet formulas so far. However, "since one of my reasons to become a volunteer included brushing up my IT skills, I see this as a positive challenge", she says.
Apart from polishing her Excel skills, Mandy says that some of her learning also involved lots of invaluable courses which she could add to her CV, including 'equality and diversity', 'health and safety in the workplace', safeguarding children', even a Microsoft Teams course.
To those hesitating whether to give volunteering a go, Mandy advises:
Are you looking to boost your career path or try out another industry? Or maybe you are seeking ways to keep yourself grounded, create meaningful connections, and make a difference in the world?
