Volunteering abroad to boost your CV
Volunteering abroad is a great way to gain life experience but also experience for future job prospects. Adding volunteering abroad to your CV can enhance your CV and potentially help you get that lucrative interview.
Adding Volunteering Abroad to your CV
Volunteering abroad is an impressive addition for prospective employers, it shows a sense of adventure, an ability to adapt, a caring personality and is a great talking point in interviews.
At Globalteer, we have a range of different projects which you can choose from to suit your interests. From Animal Care, Conservation projects to Communirty programmes. You will be able to find a project that helps give you experience and skills for your chosen career in the future. We also have internships abroad for those with more time and some skills or education in their chosen field.
Before even getting to the interview stage, you will be able to include your experience on your CV. This is a great idea because it highlights something that you could later be asked about in your interview. Mentioning the type of volunteering experience you had and what you learnt from it is a great way to integrate your experience into a CV. An employer would surely want to chat about your time Volunteering with Elephants in Asia!
You can also add a section describing your interests where you can further discuss your passion for volunteering.
Adapting to new situations
In an interview, you might be asked questions about how you would cope with certain probable situations. It is always impressive to use past experiences to tackle the question. Mentioning a previous instance whilst you were volunteering to provide a solution to the situation is a great idea.
You could adapt the situation given to a problem you faced whilst volunteering. For example: “How would you be able to adapt to a situation where you had no background knowledge on how to approach it?”. In this instance, you could mention coming to a completely new country to become a volunteer and the need to adapt to the new situation. If you can’t speak the language in the country where you’ve volunteered you could mention that to further explain how you are able to adapt in sometimes very difficult situations.
Leadership ability
Another question they might ask you is about being a leader. Volunteering is a great way to practise skills like leadership by taking initiative at one of your projects. For example, running a class at one of our educational projects is a great way to showcase your leadership abilities. It is important to not only give an instance where you had a leadership role, but also what you learnt from it. I always think that giving an example, followed by how it helped you develop is the key to a good response. You could mention how your past leadership experience would help you in the current role you’re applying for.
How suitable am I for the role?
Interviewers will also probably ask why you think you are suitable for the job they have advertised. There are lots of ways to respond to this. You could definitely include some aspects of your volunteering experience to support your answer. By participating in a volunteering project, you have shown a drive to learn new things and develop your skills. If you’ve volunteered abroad, it also shows an understanding of other cultures. On top of that, volunteering usually involves working with others thus improving your communication skills! There are endless benefits of volunteering. You can use any of these new skills to back up your responses as to why you would be a suitable candidate.
Now you know some ways to use your volunteering experiences in an interview. Here are some tips about how to present them to your interviewer!
It’s a good idea to start by mentioning the relevant part of your volunteering experience. By talking about specific parts it shows that you recognise the individual skills you’ve learnt and how to apply them to different situations.
After that, you can tailor the description of the experience to answer the question. You can also focus on certain parts and reiterate them, giving a stronger connection to the question asked.
After this, I think it’s a great idea to explain what you gained or learned from the experience. This demonstrates your ability to reflect on your own growth which is important in showing how you’ve made the most of your time!
These are just some tips to better integrate the things you’ve learnt from volunteering into your interview answers. But remember being yourself and answering questions as they come is just as important as preparing beforehand. Good luck on your interview and we hope this helped!