Working for free a valuable tool

Volunteer centres are being flooded with people who have lost their jobs and are now willing to work for free.

Volunteering Auckland reports an 85 per cent increase in new volunteers in the past three months compared with the same time last year. Volunteers who are seeking work, most of them made redundant, have almost quadrupled from 34 to 124.

Tauranga-based Volunteer Western Bay of Plenty has seen a 72 per cent increase in the past two months.

"I would say for about 78 per cent of them it's because of redundancy," says manager Di Walters.

Volunteering Auckland chief executive Cheryll Martin says there is no sign of a drop-off despite official figures pointing to a slowdown in redundancies.

"We are not seeing a drop. It's more than it was six months ago," she says.

Her agency, which matches volunteers with non-profit groups that need help, had to get help itself from the minister in the Khyber Pass Presbyterian church where it rents offices to calm one volunteer who broke down.

"We've noticed a number of stress incidents where the person has come here and they are just about shaking, they are so stressed with money," Ms Martin says.

For some, volunteering simply eases the stress by providing something to do. But for many it does also lead to paid work. Ms Martin cites two volunteer interviewers in her own office who have recently found paid work with her references, one in a full-time customer service job, and one as a part-time secretary.

All the experts interviewed for this series recommend volunteering and generally networking as widely as possible, both to avoid the depression that comes with sitting at home and to make contacts that may lead to work.

Tom O'Neil of cv.co.nz says only 25 per cent of jobs are advertised.

"The other 75 per cent are filled through contacts and networks."

Garth Nielsen, who had to close his custom-made car business in March when the market dried up, told everyone he was looking for a job for the first time in 25 years.

"I just did a really good CV and sent it to everyone I knew on my email list and asked them to forward it to everyone they knew," he says.

"Someone forwarded my CV to the company I'm at now. They didn't have a position. They asked me to come and see them about some projects, I did some consulting work, and they said, 'We'd like to have you on board fulltime'."

Dave Kane, who ran a small recording company for seven years until the NZ office closed, had been unemployed for three months and applied for hundreds of jobs until he finally called an old colleague at the bank where he had worked seven years before.

"They gave me a six-month contract that turned into nine months," he says.

Richard Parsons, an information technology project manager, found that he was up against 60 to 70 others in most jobs he applied for after his last contract ended in May, and finally got a job last month through a friend who works there.

"They were looking for a project manager. That person put my application in. They did advertise the role on Seek and got 70 applications. He cut that down to 12 and rang those and invited me in to an interview and I was offered the role."

While out of work, Mr Parsons attended a Jobseekers Network which meets in West Auckland on Wednesdays to hear speakers and share tips about finding work. He also went to the library most days to read the Herald and access the internet.

In Manukau, local libraries have teamed up with Career Services to run a job club every second Friday at Botany and a free six-week career planning course with business consultant Jim Huse which started yesterday at Pakuranga.

Mr Huse says that when businesses cut back they want to keep their passionate workers and let go of their "stale" ones. If you're "stale", it's time to rethink.

ON THE WEB:
* www.volunteeringnz.org.nz
* www.jobseekersnetwork.org
* www.manukau-libraries.govt.nz