Volunteering in current times and why it’s more important than ever!

Starting out in the professional world is always a mammoth task, where beefing up your résumé and making yourself seem ‘hire-able’ becomes a priority. However, coming across as impressive on paper isn’t a task one should engage in superficially; it requires accumulating quality experience and building on one’s soft skills and professional character. Hard skills allow you to enter the professional world and scale your job opportunities, but the key to a long-lasting career is to use your soft skills which can help you to leverage on your technical ones. 

Volunteering in the social sector checks all those boxes! While ensuring a better environment for those in need, giving back to society and making an impactful change in the lives of others are the biggest rewards of volunteering, you also learn time management, leadership skills, team work, the ability to handle difficult people and situations amid professional courtesy along the way. Volunteering exposes one to a variety of situations and scenarios, packing in a wholesome and educative experience that can prove to be important in one’s profession in the future. Stellar work ethic, compassion, communication skills, confidence, and public relations too are common across seasoned volunteers. Hard skills such as learning how to use various online domains and accounting too can be learned with variegated volunteering opportunities. 

Thus, whether you are a school or college student looking for an enriching experience or starting out in the social sector, volunteering is definitely your best foot forward. It can help get out of your bubble, and help you to experience something different, very different; something that challenges you and your self-created comfort zone. It teaches you passion and perspective, foresight and unity. It teaches you invaluable skills such as organization, leaving a lasting impression on others (something that comes in very handy in the corporate world), making every opportunity a meaningful and memorable one and so on.

While knowing the ins and outs of coding or Microsoft excel are definitely pre-requisite factors of employment, holistic skill development outweighs your ability to tap at a keyboard. Technical knowledge can get your through the doors of an office but an eclectic mix of soft and hard skills can take you above and beyond. Volunteering does all of that for you with the added bonus of changing the lives of others and finding a new purpose for yourself. It will make you feel like you are a part of something larger than yourself, a lesson we all need to show upon every once in a while. 

Before you consider volunteering, Ask yourself the following questions.
1) How do you get involved? 
2) What are the requirements? 
3) What organization would best suit my schedule and current skills 

The answers to all these inquiries can be found on GoBarefoot. You can download the GoBarefoot App and check out the amazing volunteer opportunities.

Make your volunteering experience a rewarding one.