Let me just start by saying, I’m lucky, very lucky!  I have a great job in a great company doing great things for people and for business. My boss and friend, Bruce Marler, started a company LocalTek, helping bring small business online and we are having amazing success. One of the business owners we built a site for and driving traffic to started getting sales over the phone before the site was even finished.

So what we do in the company works, great…what’s the point. No this isn’t a post about how we do what we do so don’t go there. This is a post about what lead me here and what I believe can help you too. What to do now though is the question isn’t it?

To start, I want to let you know, if you are unemployed I know what you’re going through. I was unemployed for close to two years and taking odd jobs to make ends meet the whole time. I sent the resumes, when that didn’t work, I started going door to door. If that doesn’t work keep trying.

While looking for my dream job, I took a just above minimum wage job in a call center but had hopes they would promote me to a position I felt they desperately needed me for to help them improve efficiency and performance, but it didn’t turn out that way. So I kept looking.

While I was looking for work, I had a thought that made a lot of since. There were some days when I just didn’t have anything to do, but rather than sit on the couch watching TV or playing video games I thought why don’t I volunteer. Immediately, I felt great about that concept. So I volunteered to teach computer classes to the unemployed at the local unemployment office, or Career Center, as they now call it. I’m talking about teaching the basics here, how to use a computer, how to use documents like word documents, excel spreadsheets, how to navigate the internet and send resumes via email. And to be honest I felt great about it. I wasn’t getting paid, but I felt amazing, like I was contributing to society.

In return, you could tell the people working there were fond of me and when a company called for interviewees, I was on the list to call asap. Truth is, it didn’t matter, I found my dream job through another employment center but I was helping people instead of sitting at home and I felt fantastic about what I was doing.

Of course if you don’t know computers it really doesn’t mean you cant volunteer. Volunteer for the YMCA, volunteer for the local soup kitchen, volunteer as a foreign exchange student coordinator. My advise is to volunteer somewhere you can do what you love to do and help people at the same time. When you do this two things will happen for sure and possibly two others.

One, you will fill better about yourself and where you are headed. Two, you will be helping someone who needs your help. Three, you may do such a good job that the organization may ask for a resume to hire you. Four, you may meet someone else also volunteering who has a lead on a good job and can get you “in the door”.

Point: People hire people willing to work! Volunteering proves you are willing to work, it can lead to a job, and looks great on a resume too.

Of course there are no guarantees, but either way, I’m hearing on the radio and news that 11% of the US is unemployed who are receiving workers comp or unemployment and the true unemployment rate maybe be as high as 17%.  Can you imagine how much this great country of ours would benefit if 17% of the people in this country volunteered on a daily basis. Help others, help yourself, volunteer and it will pay off one way or another I promise you.