Enhance Your LinkedIn Profile with Volunteer Experience

This week, LinkedIn introduced a highly anticipated feature—the ability to add a “Volunteer Experience & Causes” section to your LinkedIn profile. This update allows LinkedIn members to highlight volunteer positions, causes they care about, and organizations they support, enriching their professional narrative with valuable volunteer work experience.

The Benefits of Showcasing Volunteer Work

We have long recognized the importance of showcasing volunteering on your CV. Our downloadable volunteering portfolio keeps track of all the hours you have dedicated, and our Vinspired award certificates are a great way to demonstrate your achievements. It’s no surprise that LinkedIn has introduced this feature, acknowledging the value of volunteer experience.

Learn more about the LinkedIn Volunteer Experience section on the LinkedIn blog.

How to Add Volunteer Experience on LinkedIn

Based on feedback from the Vinspired community and discussions on social media, many have wondered how best to incorporate volunteer roles into their LinkedIn profiles. Previously, it was common to include these roles within the paid experience section, clearly indicating that they were volunteer positions. Volunteer work experience can be as, or even more, valuable than paid experience.

Now, with LinkedIn’s dedicated volunteer section, you can:

• Clearly add volunteering experience.
• Highlight the value of volunteer work to potential employers.
• Reposition the section to prioritize it over paid roles if it’s more relevant.

The advantages of having a separate section outweigh any initial concerns that it might be overlooked. Once employers get accustomed to seeing a volunteering section on LinkedIn profiles, it will become a sought-after feature.

A Welcomed LinkedIn Update

Overall, this is a positive and much-needed update from LinkedIn. It would be beneficial if LinkedIn allowed volunteer experiences to be listed chronologically within the section, as currently, they appear in the order entered. This is an easy improvement they might consider.

Have you updated your LinkedIn profile with your volunteer experience? If you’re under 18 and unable to use LinkedIn, do you include volunteer positions on your CV? There are numerous CV building tools and platforms for under-18s to showcase volunteer work—how are you leveraging these?

Explore how volunteering can help you achieve your career goals and consider how to sell your volunteering experience to graduate employers.