Searching for the perfect volunteer opportunity? LinkedIn, the social network for professionals, has you covered. In August, the website added a section to user profiles that allowed people to include that they’re looking for volunteer opportunities, in addition to pre-existing sections that asked for volunteer experience and participation in charitable causes. According to a LinkedIn spokesperson, more than 600,000 people added that they were looking for volunteer opportunities since August, and more than 3 million users have added volunteer experience and causes to their profiles since 2011.
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Now, Linked is going even further in its volunteer-friendly efforts. The site on January 15 opened a new marketplace for people to find volunteer opportunities that suit their skill sets. Users can search through 500 postings (more will be added in the coming weeks), including everything from board seats to pro-bono consulting.
It’s not surprising that LinkedIn would add volunteer opportunities to the site. According to the company’s research, it can benefit your career. Unemployed people who volunteer are 27% more likely to be hired, LinkedIn says, and 47% of hiring managers that the site polled said they considered volunteer work equally as valuable as paid experience. “Volunteering is not just good for the community, it’s good for your career,” Meg Garlinghouse, head of LinkedIn Good, told Mashable. “That’s just another [reason] why we feel so bullish about making this a part of the LinkedIn experience.”