LinkedIn Launches “Volunteer Experience & Causes”

LinkedIn Launches “Volunteer Experience & Causes”: A new section where job seekers and professionals can share volunteer experiences

LinkedIn, the social networking site for the professional, is making good deeds known through its recently created section, titled “Volunteer Experience and Causes”, where members can emphasize their volunteer history and cause-related interests.

Within a format similar to a job experience listing, users can now describe which organizations they’ve volunteered for and include what duties, tasks and skills were gained during those experiences. Additionally, users can also identify what causes they care about by selecting from a comprehensive list of keywords, such as Animal Welfare and Social Services, and name organizations they support, such as United Way, American Red Cross or AARP.

Recently, LinkedIn, which has more than 120 million users globally, conducted a survey of 2,000 professionals and found that 89 percent of those surveyed had some volunteer experience but that only 45 percent included such experience on their resumes. Yet in today’s job market, Americans are in need of more creative ways to maximize the full scope of their professional skills and talents.

A study from the federal government’s Corporation for National and Community Service found that roughly a quarter of, or 62.7 million, Americans contributed 8.1 billion hours of volunteer effort between 2008 and 2010, pouring in a service to cash value of $173 billion. Though it also specified that more than half of these volunteers engage in fundraising and food drives, the big picture reveals the rise in the application of skills-based volunteering, which aligns pro-bono duties with specially-trained volunteers. Subsets of skilled volunteers offering free service garners attention among nonprofits desiring to amplify their efforts with help from trained professionals able to donate time and effort to support causes near and dear to them.

In the 2009 Deloitte Volunteer Impact Survey, 72 percent of 300 nonprofit executives agreed

that having skills-based volunteers and contractors can strongly help to increase their social impact, while simultaneously nearly 80 percent of these nonprofit executives agreed that pressure persists to generate more impact with less money. Having a strong core group of skills-based volunteers that can contribute in a variety of fields, such as marketing, fundraising, legal, IT, human resources and organizational development, provides nonprofits a way to minimize cost and maximize result.

To share your experiences and adventures in volunteering, log on to your LinkedIn profile. If you don’t have an account, you can sign-up for one here. Once logged on, scroll down to the field “Add Sections to Reflect Achievements and Experiences On Your Profile.”

Once prompted, select “Volunteer Experiences and Causes” and click add to profile.

When prompted, you can add causes and highlight which organizations you support and describe your volunteer experience accordingly.