Volunteering as a source of experience

Job adverts often say “experience required”, yet to get experience you first need a job. One of the most accessible ways out of this loop is volunteering. In this guide we look at what volunteering is and what it does not give you, where you can start, how to choose and check an organisation, how to agree tasks and hours in advance, which skills it develops and which safety rules matter. Then we cover how to describe volunteering on your CV and LinkedIn in terms of results, how to ask for a reference and how to keep an experience journal. At the end you will find common mistakes, a practical exercise and a checklist.

What volunteering is and what it does not give you

Volunteering means giving your time and skills for the good of the community, by choice and without pay. A hashar (community clean-up day) in your mahalla, reading books to children at the library, planting trees during an environmental campaign, helping a person with a disability get to the shop: all of these are volunteering.

Let us be clear first about what it does not give you: volunteering does not pay. It does not promise a job or guaranteed employment. If someone tells you “volunteer with us and we will definitely hire you”, be careful. At the same time, what volunteering does give you is far from small:

• Experience. Real tasks, real people and real responsibility. Instead of “no experience”, your CV shows concrete work.
• Skills. Communication, teamwork, organising events and sometimes technical skills such as computers, translation or design.
• Connections. Staff, other volunteers and partners: people who may later recommend you or tell you about a vacancy. This is called networking.
• Meaning. Seeing that you are useful to someone builds confidence and helps you understand which field suits you.

Volunteering is especially useful for school and college leavers, people returning to work after a long break and anyone thinking of changing career: it is a safe way to try out a new field.

Where you can volunteer

Volunteering is not only about big international projects. Plenty of opportunities are close to home.

Offline options

• Non-governmental non-profit organisations (NGOs). Organisations working in education, the environment, health and social support look for helpers at events, trainings and projects.
• Libraries and information resource centres. Reading to children, running a book club, showing older people how to use a phone or computer.
• Mahalla events. Celebrations, sports competitions, hashar days and support for families in need always call for extra hands.
• Environmental campaigns. Planting trees, cleaning up parks and canal banks, raising awareness about sorting waste.
• Helping older people and people with disabilities. Delivering groceries, helping fill in forms or simply keeping someone company. Patience and respect matter most here.
• Education projects. Helping pupils with homework, teaching children to read or to use a computer, running an English conversation club.
• Organising events. Registering participants, welcoming guests and showing people the way at conferences, exhibitions, festivals or marathons.

Online volunteering

If you are short of time or find it hard to leave home, online volunteering is a convenient option:

• Translation: putting an organisation’s materials into Uzbek, Russian or English.
• Design: making notices, invitations or images for social media.
• Social media: writing posts for an organisation’s Telegram channel or Instagram page, drawing up a content plan.
• Working with data: entering lists into spreadsheets, tidying up survey results.

Keep your results from online volunteering too: a design or translation you made can later go into your portfolio (with the organisation’s permission).

Our association also welcomes volunteers to help with its education projects: if you are interested, you can apply on the Join us page.

Choosing and checking an organisation

Most organisations are honest, but exploitation of unpaid labour and outright fraud can also hide behind the word “volunteering”. So before you start, find answers to a few questions.

Questions to check

1. Is the organisation officially registered? Does the NGO or institution have an official name, address, website or official page? Can you find information about it from independent sources (news, partners’ pages)?
2. Is its purpose clear? Can the organisation explain in one or two sentences whom it helps and how? Vague promises (“it’s a big project, you’ll find out later”) are a warning sign.
3. Is the volunteer role clear? Can they tell you in advance what you will do, with whom, where and for how long?
4. Is there a named contact? Whom do you turn to with questions? Do you know their name and contact details?

Warning signs

• They ask you for money: a “registration fee”, “for the uniform”, “for the certificate”. A genuine volunteer programme should not charge volunteers. If you hear a request like this, stop and check the organisation again.
• The “volunteering” is really an ordinary job. You work full days as a shop assistant or office secretary while a commercial business keeps the profit: that is not volunteering, it is unpaid work.
• They ask for more personal data than needed. Do not give a copy of your passport, bank card details or SMS codes to people you do not know.
• They rush you. “Answer today or the place will go”: do not make decisions under pressure.

If you have doubts, talk to the organisation’s former volunteers or ask your parents or a teacher for advice.

Agreeing tasks and hours in advance

Many misunderstandings in volunteering begin with “we never talked about that”. Before your first day, clarify:

1. The task. What exactly will you do? For example: “Teaching computer basics to 8 to 10-year-olds at the library every Saturday.”
2. The hours. How many hours a week, on which days and for how long (a one-off campaign or a three-month project)?
3. The place and the journey. Where is it, how will you get home and when does the event end?
4. The contact person. Who gives you tasks and who will help you?
5. Preparation. Is there any training or dress code?
6. Confirmation. Can you get a letter confirming your experience, or a reference, at the end?

Put the agreement in writing, even as a simple Telegram message. For example: “Just confirming what we agreed: October to December, every Saturday 10:00 to 12:00, at the library, a computer session with a group of children. Contact person: Dilnoza opa.” A message like this helps both sides.

Do not overstate what you can do. Take your studies or job into account and start small: reliably giving 2 to 3 hours a week is far better than promising 10 hours and then disappearing.

Skills you develop

Volunteering is a good place to practise soft skills, the skills of working with people. These are exactly what employers test at interview.

• Communication. Talking to people of different ages and views, explaining things and listening.
• Teamwork. Sharing out tasks, respecting other people’s work and settling disagreements calmly.
• Organisation. Planning an event, making lists, working out timings and making quick decisions when something unexpected happens.
• Responsibility. Turning up when you said you would, even though nobody is paying you, is one of the strongest signals to an employer.
• Patience and empathy. Especially when working with children, older people and people with disabilities.

Technical skills often grow too: keeping spreadsheets, preparing presentations, running social media and translating.

Safety

For volunteering to be useful, it first has to be safe.

• Parental consent for under-18s. If you are under 18, your parents or guardian should know where, with whom and when you will be, and agree to it. Serious organisations will ask for this themselves.
• Evening events. If an event finishes late, plan in advance how you will get home. Try not to travel back alone and let your family know where you are.
• Physical work. For a hashar or tree planting, bring gloves, comfortable clothes and water. Do not handle heavy loads or dangerous tools without experience.
• Personal data. Protect information about yourself and the people you help. Do not photograph children or older people and post the pictures online without their consent (for children, their parents’ consent).
• The right to say no. You can turn down a task that was not agreed, that makes you uncomfortable or that is dangerous. That is not irresponsibility.

Showing volunteering on your CV and LinkedIn

Volunteering is real experience, so do not hide it. But a single line saying “I was a volunteer” tells an employer nothing. They want to see what you did and what the result was.

On your CV

When writing your CV, list volunteering in a separate “Volunteering experience” section or, if you have no other work experience, under “Experience”. For each entry give the role, organisation, dates and 2 to 3 lines with results. Only include numbers you actually counted. The numbers in the example below are illustrative:

Volunteer tutor, district children’s library, October 2025 – May 2026
— Ran weekly computer basics sessions for 12 children aged 8–10.
— Created a handout of 10 simple practice tasks for the sessions.
— Set up the library’s old computers and brought two of them back into working order.

The same entry for a CV in Uzbek (a CV in Russian follows exactly the same structure):

Volontyor-o’qituvchi, tuman bolalar kutubxonasi, 2025-yil oktabr — 2026-yil may
— Har hafta 8–10 yoshli 12 nafar bolaga kompyuter asoslari bo’yicha mashg’ulot o’tkazdim.
— Mashg’ulotlar uchun 10 ta oddiy topshiriqdan iborat qo’llanma tayyorladim.

Start each line with an action verb: ran, created, organised, set up. Avoid the vague “helped”: say what you helped with.

On LinkedIn

Your LinkedIn profile has a dedicated section for this: on your profile click Add profile section and pick Volunteer experience from the list (the labels and layout may change slightly as the interface is updated). Fill in Organization, Role, Cause (for example, Education), the dates and Description. Paste the result lines from your CV into Description. If the organisation has a LinkedIn page, select it: its logo will appear and the entry will look more credible.

References and an experience journal

Asking for a reference

One of the most valuable things volunteering gives you is a reference from someone who has seen you at work. Ask for it as soon as the project ends, while memories are fresh. Send the contact person a short message: remind them when and what you did, say what job or course the reference is for and, if helpful, list the key facts. There is a step-by-step guide in our article on reference letters.

An experience journal

A year later, most people cannot remember exactly what they did. So keep a simple journal: in a notebook, in your phone’s notes or in a spreadsheet. After each event, 3 or 4 lines are enough:

• Date and place.
• What I did: the specific task.
• Result: how many people, what output (a handout, a post, an event).
• What I learnt: a new skill or conclusion.
• A difficulty and how I solved it: later this becomes a ready answer to the interview question “Tell me about a difficult situation”.

Example: Akmal’s path

This story is illustrative, but it resembles the path of many young people. After finishing college, Akmal spent several months unable to find work: everyone wanted experience. He went to the district library and offered to teach children how to use a computer. He agreed with the head librarian to come for two hours every Saturday. In the sessions Akmal showed the children how to use a mouse and keyboard, save files and stay safe online; he also sorted out the library’s old computers and wrote up each week in his journal.

Six months later he added a “Volunteering experience” section to his CV, got a reference from the head librarian and applied for a vacancy in an IT support team that looks after office computers. At the interview he was asked, “How would you explain a problem to a user?”, and Akmal described a real situation with the children and older readers at the library. He got the job. Volunteering did not “guarantee” anything here, but it gave him a real story to tell, someone willing to recommend him and confidence in himself.

Common mistakes, an exercise and a checklist

Common mistakes

• Not checking the organisation. Giving your time and personal data to an organisation with a fine name but a vague purpose.
• Promising too much. Committing to lots of hours and then not turning up leaves a bad impression instead of a reference.
• Starting without an agreement. If the tasks and hours are unclear, the volunteer ends up doing work they did not want or feeling unneeded.
• Not recording results. A year later, all you can write on your CV is “I was a volunteer”.
• Exaggerating on your CV. Listing work you did not do or numbers you did not count. One interview question will expose it.
• Forgetting about safety. Going home alone after an evening event, not telling your parents, handing a copy of a document to a stranger.
• Going “just for the certificate”. Putting in the time but learning nothing. The value lies in the experience and the people, not the paper.

Practical exercise

1. Write down 3 areas that interest you: for example, children’s education, the environment, social media.
2. Find 3 organisations near your home or working online.
3. Rate each one against the “Questions to check” and choose one.
4. Send the contact person a short message: who you are, what you can do and how many hours a week you can give.
5. Agree the task, hours, place and contact person in writing.
6. Start your experience journal and make the first entry.
7. After a month, add 2 to 3 result lines to your CV and fill in the Volunteer experience section on LinkedIn.

Checklist

• The organisation genuinely exists; its purpose and contact person are clear.
• Nobody has asked you for money or unnecessary personal data.
• The task, hours and place are agreed in writing.
• If you are under 18, you have parental consent; your journey home from evening events is planned.
• You are keeping an experience journal.
• Your CV has honest lines with results; the volunteering section on LinkedIn is filled in.
• You asked for a reference at the end of the project.

Volunteering is a good start for anyone looking for their first experience. If you have recently finished college, also read our article on what to do after college, and you will find opportunities for young people gathered on the for young people page.

If, alongside volunteering, you would like to gain the skills for a new profession, take a look at our association’s free training programmes. When you are ready, submit an application and our specialists will get in touch.