What Can Volunteering Do for You?

I stared here in January doing volunteering work just to get basic, necessary skills that I wasn't picking up in college because it's so academically orientated rather than practical. All the papers I was handed, I couldn't really understand a lot of them until I came here and put them into practice and it just opened everything up for me. It's just really rewarding and you do learn new skills. Skills that maybe you might not be using in the work place but just even my mum's elderly and I can help her in the garden now. I know how to chop down trees and do things like that whereas before I knew nothing. It's completely redefined how I want to go around my career. I started off with always thinking 'I want to do a computing job, they're well paid, you can do quite a lot with it, there's a lot of diversification in it.' The volunteering just completely turned that about and made it more about enjoying what I'm doing rather than being about money. My full intention was volunteer here, finish college, keep volunteering, just treat it like a kind of apprenticeship after college. Before I finished my last day of college I was told there were jobs on the go. I was invited to come for an interview so I came for an interview, got the job and have been working here since. I think for any young person to say that, and it's voluntary, 'I've got myself up in the morning, I've got out, I've met the mini bus and done a days work', I think for an employer that's really valuable. Volunteering led me straight into a job and it's just through hard work, making yourself indespensible in the field you choose so the day you're not there you're missed and all of a sudden they think 'how do we keep him there?' We offer him a job.