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Hello Everyone,

Thanks for your advice on my resume, and I’ve formatted my resume to your guys suggestions. My question this time, is that I’m planning to volunteer on the side and grow my soft skills for future roles. The position that I’m seeing to grow my skills is heavily in person customer service at a local hospital. Is this a good idea to use this to gain experience or should I try to get a position that’s more call centered based?? Because I noticed that alot of IT professionals interact heavily with different departments, and not just in the backend. Thanks guys again!!!

5 Spice ups
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Honestly don’t think there is much of a difference as far as customer service skills go - you’ll need to learn them either way. The advantage to a regular call center job is you’d at least be making money. On the technical side, it greatly depends upon what the hospital would let you do as a volunteer. My gut is probably less than if you were a paid employee but you never know. A call center would definitely expose you to a wide variety of issues but sometimes it gets to be a numbers game of metrics and can be very stressful.

If I had to choose I’d say go for paid experience whenever possible although volunteer experience is useful on a resume/CV as well.

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If there’s anything most IT guys need more of is good communication skills. Far too many entry-level IT folks (and even some of the old guard) are still exceptionally uncomfortable dealing with other people. Unless you’re naturally gifted with a silver tongue, definitely get all the service experience you can.

2 Spice ups
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In the IT world they may ask about "soft skills: but they really want technical skills with experience. I agree being able to talk and deal with people is a great skill to have, the hiring managers I know want experience using technical skills in a pressure situation. However if you are looking for management, people skills are important.

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Absolutely! I have always believed that volunteer gigs are good for the resume, particularly at the entry level, because they develop experience. Resumes for IT professionals nowadays should have some kind of “human element” - in my head, it looks better if an IT Professional does something besides nerd around all day.

Plus, you never know how you might network and market yourself, as well as developing those soft skills by learning how to react with people.

And even if you don’t get a single job lead from it, you will sleep better knowing you helped someone else. That has far greater rewards.

Good hunting.

Tzo

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Yes, we may want technical skills with experience, but soft skills are something that can be more beneficial. I can teach you the technical skills and give you the experience. The soft skills, that takes a lot more to learn and depending on how you have the person interfacing with your customers. Would you rather have someone be very polite, place you on hold and check with someone on something or would you rather get the answer from someone who may be condescending and arrogant, but at least they’d be right.

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One of the benefits of soft skills is that, for the most part, they’re easily transferable between fields. And they generally translate well from over-the-phone to in-person. So if it’s soft skills you’re wanting to train, I would advise trying for something that gets you paid and minimizes soul-suckage.

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I would recommend trying to find a good, privately owned company that looks to be growing. I started with an entry level tech support job and although it isn’t the best it usually pays off by having immersion in the field. Typically you will report to someone more senior who knows the systems and processes and you can leverage their knowledge to add to your own. Make sure you stay tech focused and tech savvy, read on tech and even if it is a scrub job at least you can put something I.T. related on your resume.

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I feel quite strongly about face to face interaction. Learning to keep someones eye and listen intently so you can solve their problem is a skill to be practiced and learned. Good luck! I love that you are even considering this. More people should.