Written by Lee MacDonald, Co-founder & Co-CEO at Aboard
Would I be where I am today without my volunteer (read: not paid) experience Apartmate? No. My experience was the first domino of what would be many dominos to come that helped me get jobs, experience, and other opportunities in tech (volunteer and paid).
Here’s how I see it. You graduate with a degree in X or complete a coding bootcamp at Y. You start applying for jobs in the field you were educated in and what do the recruiters want to see? Experience.
So, you can either:
a) Bang your head against the wall applying for jobs, taking online courses and completing ridiculous interview processes (more on this later) OR;
b) Spend time working for free for a couple months at a company within the industry you’re looking to get into.
Do you know anybody who enjoys looking for a job? Do you know anybody who enjoys prepping for interviews they may or may not get? Let me share 2 anecdotes on this.
My partner was interviewing for positions in early-to-mid 2020 and her work experience primarily lied in Operations (so, pretty broad). This is how foolish application/interview processes have gotten. As a point of information, these 2 stories are with Toronto-based tech companies
Story 1
Role: Customer Service Associate
Salary: $30k to $35k (no benefits)
Application / Interview process:
- Submitted application (LinkedIn profile, Resume, Cover Letter & a personalized email)
- 45 min phone call asking about previous experience
- Take-home assignment #1: 5 scenario questions based around ‘what would you do in this case?’ or ‘how would you respond?’.
- 60+ min interview:
- Part 1: Go through our app and tell us what we should improve (ahem free user testing).
- Part 2: More scenario questions.
- Part 3: More experience questions.
- Follow up email asking for 3 references (recruiter reached out to those references on a holiday weekend).
No response from company.
Conclusion: My partner had to reach out after radio silence of 2 weeks for them to respond with: “we moved forward with someone else who had more relevant work experience”.
Story 2
Role: Marketing Associate
Salary: $35k to $40k
Application / Interview process:
- Submitted application (LinkedIn profile, Resume, Cover Letter & a personalized email)
- 30 min video call asking about previous experience
- Take-home assignment #1: Scenario questions
- Take-home assignment #2: Sign up for a free Shopify trial and build an e-commerce store. Then, create a Facebook page for your fake store, use a tool to link the products from Aliexpress to your store and then track activity on website & Facebook page. Lastly, create a re-targeting campaign via PowerPoint presentation for your fake store.
Conclusion: They reached out and told my partner they were looking for someone with more relevant experience.
After getting her to share these stories with me just recently, she said:
“I’d rather work for free on a real project with the company vs. doing imitation exercises that provide little to no value for both parties involved.”
What’s your point, Lee? My point is that I come across multiple individuals on a regular basis that are looking for work experience. By work experience, I mean that they’ll accept any form of work that’ll make their resume stronger and give them skills necessary to thrive in the tech sector. However, this experience is deemed “illegal”, and therefore it deters companies from wanting to “take the risk” of bringing on an unpaid individual.
We should be recruiting more volunteers
You know what you can’t put on your resume? “Completed 3 exercises for 8 different companies and didn’t get a job”.
Companies should be recruiting more volunteers, and if someone wants to work free, let them. There’s probably a good reason for it.
About the Author
Lee MacDonald – Co-founder at Aboard – eternal optimist and people person. Building technology to help enable deeper human connections.
If you would like to share your personal experience, HR tips or talk about why companies should be recruiting more volunteers, please reach out directly for the opportunity to publish a guest post.
