Skills you picked up from volunteering, hobbies, public services, family duties, matter. You should value them as much as you would value a degree, diploma or certificate.
Exercise: Skills to Count in
How you can position volunteer work, unpaid extracurriculars, or self-taught skills. As we just spoke about in Step 2, all experience is legitimate, and you get to decide what's relevant. Just because you weren't on the payroll doesn't mean you don't get to 'count' what you learned or how you contributed. For the rest of your working life, your most valuable weapon will be the ability to understand and articulate why the experiences you had in one job are transferable to another. You get to start using that weapon right now, today.
My first portfolio featured, almost exclusively, work that shouldn't count. I was trying to score a junior social media management job, and the person who ultimately became my boss asked me if I had any experience running social media accounts. 'I run my own Facebook page, actually; I said in our initial meeting. 'I mean, it's a really tiny project, it's just for my music. I use it to promote my gigs, tell people about my new recordings, stuff like that.'
To my amazement, he said that sounded great and wanted to see examples. I went home, screenshotted the best of those Facebook posts, and put them up online next to the few pieces of work that I had to show from my one 'legitimate' internship. I screenshotted a couple of posts from my Twitter and my SoundCloud that felt relevant, too. I got the job.
Just because you're not getting paid doesn't mean you're not getting valuable experience. It's not against the rules to talk about this kind of work on your CV or during your job search. Relevant experience is always, always, always valid.
#ENTRYLEVELBOSS, STEP 2: HACK YOUR OWN SKILLSET, page. 88
What un-official skills can you count in, now?
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