I’ve heard the excuses many times.
“I don’t have the time.”
“I just can’t make that kind of commitment.”
“I don’t know what I can contribute”
However, volunteering can have tremendous payoffs at the personal and career level.
My exposure to volunteering came several years ago in the High Park area, where we had a crime problem. There was a public meeting with the police and our city councillors to get input from residents in the area and the councillor in my ward, Derwyn Shea, asked if anyone in the audience was interested in helping organize a Neighbourhood Watch program. Along with a half-dozen other, I introduced myself and said I didn’t know what I could do, but I had experience in marketing and advertising.
Next thing I knew, I was appointed chair of the Neighbourhood Watch program for West-end Toronto.
Over the next two years, our committee developed an active program to educate block captains in the area about crime prevention. We learned a lot about crime statistics and crime prevention from our police community liaison officer, who was a delight to work with.
We put on seminars each month and reviewed crime statistics and had speakers come in to inform the block captains about locks, vacation planning, burglar alarms etc. I also wrote a column every two weeks in the Villager, the local newspaper, so we could share what we learned with everyone in the community.
We got results. Break-ins declined – the biggest concern to people in the neighbourhood. Offsetting this was an increase in crack houses, but the Neighbourhood Watch program helped the police set up surveillance by getting individuals to share intelligence with the police and give them places to set up their surveillance teams.
During the period I was involved with Neighbourhood Watch, our children were 4 and 6. But they learned the value of volunteering.
Our daughter studied forensic technology at Sanford Fleming College. Before she began her program, she volunteered to work in the genetics lab my wife worked in as a way of getting experience.
That summer, she did not receive any cash compensation, but she demonstrated she was the highest performing among all the interns and was invited back the following summer with a fully paid internship.
She excelled in the DNA and lab portions of her program in both years and, on completion of her diploma, she was hired to work in the DNA lab at Hospital for Sick Children.
While the first summer as an unpaid intern was financially difficult for her, it paid dividends in getting paid jobs the following two summers in a prestigious research facility. The experience also paid off in her studies because she picked up knowledge that went far beyond the college curriculum.
Our son wanted to be a math teacher. He did a degree in computer science at Queens and a year at OISE to get his teaching degree.
The last two years of his undergrad program, Ross volunteered to work as a teaching assistant after his exams ended in April. He spent tow months working at his old high school and the next year went to another high school in the area.
While at OISE, he was sent out for his practicum to “difficult schools” such as Western Tech, but his experience from volunteering helped him a lot.
While many of his classmates had difficulty finding teaching jobs, Ross interviewed with Peel Board of Education and landed a job.
I remember he came back from the interview saying he didn’t think he’d done well. However, he got a call back from the Peel Board indicating they liked how he had volunteered and he was hired to teach Grade 10 and 12 math at Lorne Park Secondary, a very prestigious school in Mississauga.
Along the way in his job hunt, he had a couple of coaches to help. One of our neighbours was a retired superintendant from the Peel Board and the keyboard player in my band was a principal at another high school in southern Mississauga. The networking also contributed to his success.
This year, Ross was placed on the hire list for Toronto District School Board.
The message from these experiences is that:
Volunteering gives you an opportunity to gain experience in a field in which you have interest. For new Canadians, that can help overcome the “Canadian experience” issue. For others, it can be a helpful strategy if you are changing careers or industries.
Volunteering gives employers a low-risk opportunity to assess your abilities before making an offer.
These first two worked big-time for our son and daughter.
Volunteering gives you some positive experiences that help motivate you and help you maintain your enthusiasm while you are in transition. My volunteer work with HAPPEN helps keep my presentation skills sharp and it keeps me involved with people – both of which have helped me maintain a positive attitude in my job search.
Volunteering can also be an excellent way to develop a network. For example, serving on the board of a NFP organization brings you in contact with other like-minded business executives. Demonstrating your skills and developing such contacts with them can help you uncover job opportunities.
The first time I was laid off, I joined HAPPEN’s sister organization, EARN, in Toronto. At my first meeting, one of the members gave me advice I will never forget. He told me, “The best way to find work is to volunteer to work on one of the committees”. I joined the marketing committee and all eight of us got jobs within three months of each other.
By volunteering, you’ll feel more involved in the organization and the volunteer work you do looks good to a recruiter or potential employer because it speaks to teamwork and initiative.
Regardless of the organization, get out and volunteer your way to your next job.
Showing posts with label volunteering. Show all posts
Showing posts with label volunteering. Show all posts
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
MAKING INTERNSHIPS WORK
When we hire students for summer jobs or internships, how many of us really challenge the students with work assignments? How often do we give them “safe” assignments or menial work just because it is easy and risk-free to do so.
My last summer job, before graduating with my engineering degree, was working in a process control laboratory for a large multinational. Technically, my job was to fill in for the regular chemists while they were on vacation. The plant relied on the data from the lab to control its operations, so it was an important role in keeping the plant running efficiently.
I was especially excited because my employer trained me to operate a million dollar mass spectrometer to analyze the ore samples for trace minerals/metals. It was a new technology we hadn’t really learned about in school, but the actual operation was really not that complicated, since the machine did virtually all the work.
However, one evening, when I was on night shift, the mass spec would not operate. The chemist who had been working with it during afternoon shift told me he’d been having problems with it.
The tests needed to be run somehow to keep the plant operating, and the only alternative was to use “wet” analytical chemical tests, for which we had a manual, but on which I’d had no training or experience. I called in to the main lab at headquarters and explained the situation and asked if they could send someone to check my results because I was unfamiliar with the wet tests and wanted to be sure I was providing reliable data to the plant.
About halfway through the shift, a chemist finally came over from the main lab and began to check the results of my testing by duplicating the procedure. Fortunately, his findings corroborated mine, and I felt very relieved and we worked together for the balance of my shift. Afterwards, my supervisor commended me for coping with the challenges of that evening and ensuring the plant had reliable data to operate by.
What I took away from this experience was that, by entrusting me with an important function and leaving me to operate an expensive piece of equipment, my employer was taking a big risk. I think this instilled a sense of responsibility in me that helped drive me to ensure I didn’t let them down. Something did, in fact, go wrong, but they had a backup plan and it was well enough documented that, even without training, I was able to follow it.
Dealing with a challenge such as this one built my self-confidence, and the commendation from my supervisor reinforced this.
Now fast-forward to about 30 years later, and our design department was hiring a summer intern.
Our design department manager wanted to assign the student to “assist” the other designers with some pretty safe tasks. However, during our interviews with the student, we discovered she has learned how to operate the same CAD software we used, so I told the design manager I wanted her to be able to produce workable designs on our CAD system.
As the summer progressed, she started out by doing some basic designs and we gave her opportunities to do more creative projects. Most importantly, on one project for our parent company, we used one of her designs and she got to see the project through to completion. She became very proficient with our software and was pumping out basic designs faster than the permanent staff. We were very pleased with her work.
As the summer came to a close, we took her out for an interview over lunch. During this, she mentioned enthusiastically that she felt she was the luckiest member of her class because she actually got to produce real designs. Most of her classmates were given menial tasks and never got the hands-on experience she got with us. She would have no hesitation about coming back with us for her next work term.
Internships or summer jobs are supposed to help students apply the skills they have learned in school and hopefully learn some new skills as well. These positions are an excellent way for an employer to assess a student as a potential permanent employee – but only if we take some risks and honestly give them the opportunity to apply their skills.
From the example I cited at the outset of this posting, that summer job in the lab helped me develop as a person as well as learn some very new technology. I suppose that experience influenced me, as a manager, to give our student designer a similar opportunity. That risk was rewarded with a very productive, motivated employee who exceeded our expectations.
Isn’t this what we all want?
My last summer job, before graduating with my engineering degree, was working in a process control laboratory for a large multinational. Technically, my job was to fill in for the regular chemists while they were on vacation. The plant relied on the data from the lab to control its operations, so it was an important role in keeping the plant running efficiently.
I was especially excited because my employer trained me to operate a million dollar mass spectrometer to analyze the ore samples for trace minerals/metals. It was a new technology we hadn’t really learned about in school, but the actual operation was really not that complicated, since the machine did virtually all the work.
However, one evening, when I was on night shift, the mass spec would not operate. The chemist who had been working with it during afternoon shift told me he’d been having problems with it.
The tests needed to be run somehow to keep the plant operating, and the only alternative was to use “wet” analytical chemical tests, for which we had a manual, but on which I’d had no training or experience. I called in to the main lab at headquarters and explained the situation and asked if they could send someone to check my results because I was unfamiliar with the wet tests and wanted to be sure I was providing reliable data to the plant.
About halfway through the shift, a chemist finally came over from the main lab and began to check the results of my testing by duplicating the procedure. Fortunately, his findings corroborated mine, and I felt very relieved and we worked together for the balance of my shift. Afterwards, my supervisor commended me for coping with the challenges of that evening and ensuring the plant had reliable data to operate by.
What I took away from this experience was that, by entrusting me with an important function and leaving me to operate an expensive piece of equipment, my employer was taking a big risk. I think this instilled a sense of responsibility in me that helped drive me to ensure I didn’t let them down. Something did, in fact, go wrong, but they had a backup plan and it was well enough documented that, even without training, I was able to follow it.
Dealing with a challenge such as this one built my self-confidence, and the commendation from my supervisor reinforced this.
Now fast-forward to about 30 years later, and our design department was hiring a summer intern.
Our design department manager wanted to assign the student to “assist” the other designers with some pretty safe tasks. However, during our interviews with the student, we discovered she has learned how to operate the same CAD software we used, so I told the design manager I wanted her to be able to produce workable designs on our CAD system.
As the summer progressed, she started out by doing some basic designs and we gave her opportunities to do more creative projects. Most importantly, on one project for our parent company, we used one of her designs and she got to see the project through to completion. She became very proficient with our software and was pumping out basic designs faster than the permanent staff. We were very pleased with her work.
As the summer came to a close, we took her out for an interview over lunch. During this, she mentioned enthusiastically that she felt she was the luckiest member of her class because she actually got to produce real designs. Most of her classmates were given menial tasks and never got the hands-on experience she got with us. She would have no hesitation about coming back with us for her next work term.
Internships or summer jobs are supposed to help students apply the skills they have learned in school and hopefully learn some new skills as well. These positions are an excellent way for an employer to assess a student as a potential permanent employee – but only if we take some risks and honestly give them the opportunity to apply their skills.
From the example I cited at the outset of this posting, that summer job in the lab helped me develop as a person as well as learn some very new technology. I suppose that experience influenced me, as a manager, to give our student designer a similar opportunity. That risk was rewarded with a very productive, motivated employee who exceeded our expectations.
Isn’t this what we all want?
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