Why is that companies suddenly stop caring about resumes and work experience when it's a volunteer position?

[KostasKouvalis]

Employers, at least in the States add extremely picky, but if it's a volunteer position, they'll take under qualified people with no experience. Why is this?

[scentoflavender]

I've never employed a volunteer postion. The closest I've xperience to that is ill hire high school kids during the summer to be shop hands. We don't care about their experience level because, frankly, they're not doing anything important. They're cleaning, organizing, and preping materials. I don't need them to be experienced for that. Maybe it's similar for your volunteer positions, although to reiterate, we pay them.

[KostasKouvalis]

You're an employer? One of my volunteer positions was leading tours. And for the work experience credit on my college campus I did a lot of landscaping. I did some other stuff too like plant and wildlife surveys and data collection, but mostly it was landscaping and minor maintenance stuff.

But the other one, I lead tours and then they wanted me to catalog their entire artifact collection for no pay.

[scentoflavender]

I am. And if it's for experience, I would say it's an opportunity. Yes you're probably being taken advantage of. But at least you're getting something for jt.

[KostasKouvalis]

Yeah exactly. You're getting taken advantage of. I think if people stopped doing it, then these places would be forced to hire paid workers. Old people do it out of boredom, young people are kind of forced into it. But the museum job, it was only me and one other young person. The rest were all senior citizens. The average young person isn't gonna wanna work for free. Mission work is different because you're getting fed and housed by the church and they pay for your plane ticket.

[scentoflavender]

I agree. Thats why we pay ours. If by the end of the summer they're 18, we'll put them on a jobsite for a few weeks, let them experience what our industry is like. If someone's working, they should get paid. Simple as that.

[KostasKouvalis]

Maybe volunteering was invented by White people who felt guilty about slavery

[HollyK21]

Let’s look at the definition of volunteer: a person who freely offers to take part in an enterprise or undertake a task. Key word here is “freely”. These people are not being paid or employed, so why would they go through a hiring process? Resumes and all that do not matter for volunteers.

[KostasKouvalis]

They're stupid, but at the same time, you're kind of forced to do it to get work experience because no one will properly hire you without it. But get this, there was a museum in Chicago that fired all the White volunteers and replaced them with blacks for pay.

[HollyK21]

Companies are going to pick the free route each time if they can afford to do so (like it won’t harm their reputation or business). Volunteers, for the most part, are free laborers and just like internships, sometimes that isn’t paid unless specifically stating as much. As for the whole museum thing, I hadn’t heard about that and looked it up. Online it says that shift had been in the works for years in order to have a more diverse team. Yes those fired women have great qualifications and nobody wants to see anyone out of a job. But unless more positions were available for docents there’s no choice but to let a few go as to make room for some new faces. Especially younger people and those of color, everyone should be able to see themselves somewhere, even just a museum tour, whether they are black, Asian, gay, straight, not just elderly white women who are already well off.

[provokeesmokee]

You don't say no to free labour.

Plus volunteer positions aren't as essential as paid work. Learning as you go is usually expected.