There are a lot of unpaid positions being advertised here lately. Leaving aside the issue of personal fulfilment and so forth, I'd like to know if volunteer positions actually make a difference to HR managers or hiring committees.
When I was in high school, I was strongly encouraged to volunteer by my guidance counselor, so I served as a volunteer for several years with a local museum, and later with a community NGO. I was given to understand this was useful for college applications and for the résumé in general. That habit stayed with me, and I volunteered off and on throughout college and beyond. By the time I was applying to jobs out of grad school, my advisor told me to not even bother listing the volunteer positions--that no one in academia could care less, and presumably no one in major NGOs or the corporate environment would either. So the question is, does volunteering really offer any advantages to anyone past the high school stage? If so, what are they? And if not, who ends up filling these positions, and why? - J. A.
