Personal Advancement
Volunteer to boost your careerOn the evening of March 29, about 500 leading local business professionals and entrepreneurs will gather at the Four Seasons Hotel for a night of cocktails, live entertainment, dancing, and giving at Mount Sinai Hospital's eighth annual spring ball. Emceed by Canada AM host Seamus O'Regan, the swanky philanthropic affair, dubbed "Live from South Beach!", is designed to raise $300,000 in research funds for the hospital. SHARON ASCHAIEK |
|
 [ 2007-03-21 ] |
To find out, take this test by eCareerFit, the career assessment experts.
Jordan Sarick- Leadership Sinai
It takes a lot of blood, sweat and tears to plan this grand evening, and amazingly, the people who make it all happen are volunteers with already demanding day jobs, among them Jordan Sarick.
"Mount Sinai is a centre of excellence around the world, and it's pretty special to be associated with it," says Sarick, president of a Toronto homebuilding company by day, and president of Leadership Sinai, Mount Sinai's volunteer group of young corporate and community leaders.
FUNDRAISING
In this latter role, Sarick oversees the 25 core volunteers who plan the annual spring ball, and hundreds of members in total who help with general fundraising events. He also participates in hospital board meetings, and sits on certain committees for the hospital and its foundation.
While volunteering allows Sarick to give back to his community, it also benefits his career.
"You learn how committees work, how to plan big events and how to network," says Sarick, a Leadership Sinai volunteer since 2001. "These are tangible skills that can be taken outside of Mount Sinai and used in the business world."
Sarick is among a growing number of professionals who recognize the potential career benefits of volunteer experiences. They realize that not only does volunteering let them make a difference and achieve personal fulfilment; it also provides opportunities to enhance professional skills, raise their community profile and engage in powerful networking.
Cathy Perennec McLean of Motivaction career coaching and consulting regularly advises the professionals with whom she works to volunteer.
"The skills people develop through volunteering -- leadership, communication, teamwork, conflict management -- are transferable," says McLean, who works with individuals in areas such as high tech, communications, finance and manufacturing across the GTA. "I always try to encourage people to be active in their volunteering and see what skills they can bring back to their organization."
She says volunteering allows individuals to both contribute skills and expertise they excel in and to develop skills they may need to work on -- a win-win situation all around.
McLean says it's important that those seeking to volunteer do it with a spirit of giving, and that the benefits will naturally follow.
"Do it for the right reasons and eventually the topic of what you do in your other job will come up," she says. "People will start to understand who you are and what you do, and from there, relationships build and businesses connect."
SETTLEMENT AGENCY
That was the case for Arlene Singh, an executive coach as well as business consultant for the entertainment industry who, in 2004, began volunteering for CultureLink, a non-profit settlement agency for newcomers to Toronto.
In the beginning, Singh took part in the agency's host program and helped two women from China acclimatize to life in the city. Later, she volunteered to lead CultureLink's English Conversation Circle for new immigrants.
"My job was to create a relaxed setting in which the participants could practise their English," she says.
Singh not only greatly enjoyed the human element of the experience -- something that was sorely lacking in her day job -- but was able to enhance her public presenting and facilitating abilities, and consequently, accept an invitation by York University last year to speak to a Schulich School of Business class.
"My first thought when they invited me was, I'm not a speaker. But then I thought, why not use some of what I learned through the English Conversation Circle about standing in front of people and trying to connect with people on a topic? I found myself going back to that experience a lot for ideas," she says.
Singh has since joined CultureLink's board of directors, which affords opportunities to network with local politicians and business executives.
She has also gained the motivation to revamp her business to include more face-to-face coaching.
"It's made me realize it's very important to me have the human element in my work," Singh says.
Ultimately, McLean says, volunteering is good for your career because it's good for your karma: the more you give, the more you might gain professionally.
"Givers gain," she says. "When you give, eventually something comes back."
Do you have you a bad boss?