Volunteering is a big part of the student experience, whether it’s running a society, organising a fundraising event, mentoring peers, or supporting the local community.  

For many students, it’s a chance to give something back, meet new people, and find a sense of belonging while at university. But increasingly, volunteering is also recognised as a powerful tool to boost employability. 

Employers consistently highlight that they’re looking for graduates who can demonstrate more than just academic achievements. According to the National Association of College and Employers (NACE), nearly 90% of employers are seeking evidence of a new graduate’s ability to solve problems, and more than 80% are looking for candidates with strong teamwork skills. Additionally, more than three-quarters of employers' value good communication skills when reviewing CV. Those qualities don’t always shine through in coursework, but they come alive in volunteering and extracurricular experiences.  

While the benefits of volunteering are widely acknowledged, there’s a recurring challenge: translating those experiences into something tangible on a CV.  

A student might have spent hundreds of hours volunteering, leading projects, or chairing a society, but if evidencing their skills is a challenge, the impact is lost.  

This is where structured support, recognition, and digital tools make all the difference. And it’s where the MSL Volunteering and Employability module helps student organisations transform participation into a credible career booster. 

How Volunteering Boosts Employability 

Volunteering empowers students to develop transferable skills more focused towards employability. These are the core competencies or ‘soft skills’ that employers want to see from graduates regardless of area of study.  

Some of the most common soft skills developed through volunteering include:

• Leadership: Running a project, leading a team of peers, or chairing a society.
• Teamwork: Collaborating with others to achieve shared goals.
• Organisation and planning: balancing commitments, managing events, or scheduling volunteer activity.
• Problem-solving: Dealing with unexpected challenges, often in resource-limited settings.
• Communication: Engaging with stakeholders, presenting ideas, or managing conflict.
• Resilience: Navigating setbacks, learning from mistakes, and persisting through challenges.  

For students, these experiences are often transformative.  

Just as importantly, volunteering exposes students to industries or career pathways they might never have considered otherwise.  

It’s not enough for a student to say, “I volunteered.” Employers want to hear: What did you do? What skills did you develop? How did you make a difference?  The key then, is evidence. 

The Evidence Gap 

Too often, students struggle to articulate the value of their volunteering. They might list it as a one-line bullet point with no detail or worse, leave it off their CV entirely.  

Others forget to track their hours, record their achievements, or recognise the skills they gained until it’s too late.  

For student organisations, this can be frustrating. You know the volunteering opportunities you provide are rich in skill development, but if students can’t capture and communicate that, the employability benefits are diminished. 

The solution is a structured approach. Students need a system that not only connects them with opportunities, but also helps them record, reflect, and receive recognition for their contributions.  

How to Maximise the Experience 

Volunteering can offer a wide range of rewards from personal growth and making friends to supporting causes you care about. It can also enhance employability, even if that wasn’t your main goal. Here’s how student organisations can help students get the most out of volunteering from day 1: 

1. Choose with purpose: Encourage students to pick roles that align with their interests or career aspirations.  

2. Commit and contribute: Urge students to show up, take responsibility, and be proactive. This is where the best skill development happens.  

3. Log everything: Use a dedicated volunteering management solution to track hours, skills, and achievements. Little details, like leading a team, delivering training, attending rep meetings, or solving a problem can become powerful examples later.  

4. Reflect on skills: Help students to connect their activities to core skills. For example, “I organised a fundraising event” becomes “I developed project management and communication skills by leading a team of 10 to raise £2000 for charity.”  

5. Set up your own skills framework: Create and manage custom skill categories that align with your organisation's framework. For example, under Communication you might include Chairing a meeting while under Teamwork you could list Delegating. Volunteers can then log examples of these skills, ensuring every activity contributes to recognised personal and professional outcomes. 

6. Celebrate and share: Awards, certificates, and logged hours give students evidence they can include on their CV or LinkedIn, or simply recognising their own progress. 

Beyond Volunteering; The Role of Societies and Student Leadership 

Volunteering isn’t the only extracurricular that boosts employability. Running a society, serving as a committee member, being a student rep, or managing a student-led project all build the same transferable skills that employers value.  

By capturing the full breadth of student engagement, the module helps student graduate with a rounded, compelling record of achievement. 

From Student Experience to Career Success 

For students, the leap from university to the workplace can be daunting. But those who can confidently showcase their experiences through volunteering, leadership, and extracurricular involvement enter the job market with a clear advantage.  

For student organisations, the challenge is to make sure students don’t just do these things, but that they can prove them.  

The MSL Volunteering and Employability module makes managing volunteering opportunities simple for both students and staff.  

For students: a personal profile of skills, hours, and awards that turns experience into evidence.  

For organisations: a streamlined system that manages opportunities, reduces admin, and demonstrates impact.  

The result? Students graduate with more than a degree. They graduate with stories of leadership, teamwork, and resilience recorded, recognised, and ready to impress employers. While staff benefit from transforming volunteering from a manual, admin-heavy task into a seamless, insight-driven experience. 

Beyond traditional volunteering, the MSL Volunteering and Employability module supports student leaders and reps by providing tools for recording their contributions and participation. 

This ensures that the hours spent leading a sports club, budgeting for a society, or coordinating a campus event are recognised. 

Find out more about MSL’s Volunteering and Employability module here. 

Opening Doors 

Volunteering opens doors to communities, to personal growth, and to future careers. With the right tools, those doors become easier to walk through.  

MSL’s Volunteering and Employability module ensures that every hour logged, every skill developed, and every award earned counts towards building a stronger CV with data and evidence.