3 Expert Tips for Adding Volunteer Work to Your Resume After a Career Break

When it comes to updating your resume after a career break, your volunteer work can be valuable experience. Here’s how to leverage it.

During a career break, many stay-at-home moms turn to volunteering as a way to make an impact, engage with the community, and forge new relationships. But volunteer work has plenty of potential to serve you in your next chapter, too. Sharing your expertise and energy with a cause you believe in gives you the chance to sharpen your skills, gain more experience, and expand your network. This is valuable experience you can put to use if and when you choose to rejoin the traditional workforce.

But how can you articulate the impact you had while volunteering, and showcase the skills you’ve gained during your career pause to future employers? Julia Lynch, a New York-based career coach and resume writer, shows you how to update your resume to include volunteer work.

Meet the Expert

• Julia Lynch: A New York-based resume writer and career strategist who coaches clients across industries.

How to Make Your Volunteer Experience Work Hard on Your Resume

1. Get Specific

Grab a pen and paper, and jot down everything you were responsible for as a volunteer. Did you assist with any special projects? Interface with the organization’s leadership? Raise money (and if so, how much)? Establish community partnerships? This will enable you to narrow down exactly what you’ve accomplished as a volunteer—rather than speaking generally with a few loose bullet points. 

Here are a few examples of how you can translate your volunteer experience for the workplace: 

If you ran the parent committee at your child’s school…

Lead, Parent Committee | Led committee of 20+ fellow parents dedicated to enhancing student learning outcomes; pitched new classroom technologies, implemented monthly guest speaker program, and streamlined process for receiving special education services.

If you fundraised for a charity…

Volunteer, American Cancer Society | Raised $10,000 for organization through targeted pitches to personal & professional network, social media outreach, and community advocacy.

If you mentored children…

Mentor, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America | Worked one-on-one with fourth-grade student to improve academic performance, foster hobbies & interests, and seek out enrichment opportunities within their community.

2. Create ‘Core Skills’ for the Top of Your Resume

Now that you’ve crafted robust bullet points for each of your volunteer experiences, think about what skills you leveraged during your tenure. If you fundraised for a charity, your ‘core skills’ list could encompass fundraising, partnership development, strategic communications, multi-channel marketing, and donor outreach. Incorporating this list of ‘core skills’ into your resume will enable the resume-scanning software that many companies use (ATS) to properly screen your resume and send it along to hiring managers.

3. Ask for Testimonials

On LinkedIn, there’s a section for recommendations—where previous colleagues and clients can speak to your expertise and why others should hire you. Recommendations are extremely powerful additions to your resume and LinkedIn profile—so ask your fellow volunteers or leaders at the organization you volunteered with for recommendations! They are always a nice accompaniment to the “telling” you’re doing on your resume, as they’re “showing” exactly what you accomplished through someone else’s eyes.

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