As a volunteer on Be Collective, all your volunteering efforts, experience, skills built and testimonials are collated in your personal social record. Aside from the feel good factor of seeing all the goodwill you have contributed as a volunteer in one spot, there is another important reason for the social record. It can be exported as a Social CV.
What is a Social CV?
A social CV is as the name suggests, it's essentially a resume. This document is super handy for anyone who is keen to showcase verified volunteering effort and hours, skills demonstrated or built in addition to tasks completed. If you have never created a resume before, this is a great way to get started (it's even a nice complement to an existing resume).
Why was the Social CV created?
What's the point of it? It's particularly handy if you're:
a) a student (or anyone) considering further education. Showcasing your interest and experience in a chosen field speaks volumes when applying to join a course, college or university.
b) currently unemployed and looking for work. It's a terrific demonstration of your initiative, build current referees, skills and experience in a given field. Research conducted by recruitment platform SEEK indicated "a whopping 92% of employers said relevant volunteer experience gives candidates an advantage in job interviews".
3) wanting to change career path. What better way to illustrate your passion and commitment to a cause. It's a terrific way to build skills (whether they be soft/transferrable or those learnt in actual training), build a network in your chosen path and provide evidence you're ready!
4) looking for a promotion at work but need to demonstrate you're ready for it? Easy. Be it leadership, communication - heck, even logistics or event management skills, the Social CV will capture it all.
How do we access the Social Record?
Three simple steps:
1) When you sign into Be Collective, you automatically see your own profile page. Just below your name, there is a ribbon of hotlinks running across the page (these include: Summary, My volunteering, Profile, Social Record, Fundraising, Rewards & Recognition and Settings). You want to click on the Social Record hotlink.
2) You will then be presented with a screen showing your volunteer history. Click on the 'Download Social CV' link in the green box on the right hand side of the screen.
3) Go to the 'downloads' file on your laptop and open the file named social-resume.pdf.
You can find the full instructions on how to export your social CV on our Help Centre.
Don't see anything in your social CV?
To start collecting hours and skills, the volunteer manager in the group/charity you volunteer for needs to schedule you into the volunteer role(s) you applied for on Be Collective. Being scheduled on Be Collective will automatically curate the information needed for your Social CV.
Now, we acknowledge volunteer managers are among the busiest professionals on the planet - and not all of them have time to provide written feedback. That said, you can also receive testimonials via Be Collective - which also appear on your Social CV (making it an even more compelling read). There is no harm in asking for a short reference / testimonial on your work related to specific volunteer opportunities. Further reading on our Help Centre:
(Volunteers) Will I receive feedback or a reference after volunteering?
(Volunteer Managers) Can I write testimonials for volunteers?
