Using and boosting your experience

I learned lots about myself and met lots of people and got to try things that I didn’t have enough experience to get a job in. It was such a great feeling when I helped run successful fundraising events for charities I volunteered with, as well as being a great boost for my CV. My volunteer experiences gave me something I could confidently talk about in interviews, and the interviewers found my experiences interesting, which was a massive boost to my confidence.

Slowly I built the courage to apply for college, and I was so excited when I got in. At times I thought I couldn’t do it. It was a great feeling of achievement when I completed the course and got a job that I love and that fits around school hours for my daughter. I now realise it is possible to be a better version of yourself. Sometimes stepping out of your normal is what needs to be done. When you are at your lowest you really have nothing to lose, but you have everything to gain. Don’t give up!

You might be telling yourself you don’t have much to offer as you’re out of work or you’ve trained for a job that’s out of date or doesn’t fit with your family life. Even if you’re well qualified, it’s easy to undervalue yourself. The good news is that people build up skills whatever they do, not just in paid work.

There’s lots you can do to add to your CV, and to talk about at interviews or when you’re setting up for yourself. You might be surprised by how much you already have to offer if you think about the value of what you’re doing every day. 

What you already know and can do

  • Write down everything you can think of that you’ve done: education, qualifications, experience.  
  • Look at this list to see what jobs, and what level, you could go for.  
  • Re-write your CV from scratch. 
  • Include everything you’ve done and all the skills you’ve acquired.  
  • Compare it with your old CV to see how much you’ve got to offer. 
  • Ask a friend, family member or work colleague to describe you and to tell you what skills and qualities they see in you. 
  • Look at our tips and links to help you do your CV
  • Look at our tips for boosting your self-esteem. Often the difference between getting work or other opportunities is down to confidence and enthusiasm.

Transferable skills

What do you want and what are you good at? Once you know the answers to these questions, you will have a much better idea of what you want to do.

A skill is something you can do. It’s something you’re good at. It can come from any aspect of your life. You’ll have all sorts of skills and experience from raising children, and managing a household like communicating, planning and teamwork.

These are ‘transferable’ skills. Employers want these skills.

  • Write down three, five or even ten things that you do that would be useful to an employer.
  • Write down all the things you are good at. You might discover all sorts of skills you didn’t realise you had.
  • Instead of looking at how to sell yourself to potential employers, you could use these transferable skills to build your own business. Look at your skills and see if you could use them to benefit yourself and your family directly.
  • Many single parents have made successful careers using skills built up as parents: selling baby clothes, running a catering or cleaning business, running baby yoga classes. It doesn’t need to be child-focused! Working for yourself from home can be more family friendly. But, depending on the age of your children and the nature of your business, you may still need childcare.

Useful links

Volunteering and work experience

Volunteering is a safe way to try out different roles while gaining skills and experience.

  • Get involved in volunteering for experience and a feel for what a job might be like. This can be as low key as getting involved in local clean-ups or putting out toys at a playgroup. Whatever fits with your family life.
  • Often when you try your ‘ideal’ thing out, it can turn out not to be the right thing at all.
  • Some organisations put their volunteers through accredited training programmes which help for CVs and when applying for paid work. 
  • You may find that volunteering leads to paid work in the same organisation. Get in touch with organisations that you’re interested in. Check with your nearest volunteer centre or with local groups on Facebook.

See more on volunteering in our pages on opportunities

Useful links

  • Websites such as Volunteer ScotlandGet Involved! or Volunteering Matters can tell you about opportunities in your area.
  • My World of Work has information on how volunteering could help you, and what to do if you’re claiming benefits with job seeking requirements and you want to volunteer. There are also links to opportunities.
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You may not want other people to know that you’ve been searching for information or help from OPFS.

When browsing the internet whether on a mobile phone, tablet or computer, you leave a ‘history’ trail of pages and sites you’ve visited.

It’s impossible to completely avoid being tracked online but if you’re worried about someone knowing which sites you’ve been looking at, there are some things you can do to help cover your tracks.

If you’re using a laptop or desktop computer, try keeping another document or website open in a new tab or window while browsing. If someone comes in the room and you don’t want them to see what you’re looking at, you can quickly switch to another window or tab.

Deleting browsing history

You can delete the history of websites you’ve visited, but it’s important to know that if you delete your browsing history, someone else using the same device may notice.

If you share a tablet, mobile phone, laptop or computer with someone, they might notice that passwords or website addresses have disappeared from their history.

Find out how to remove your browsing history and other data from some of the most commonly used browsers:

Browsing in Private mode (incognito)

When browsing ‘incognito’, the internet browser won’t store cookies or record your browsing history on the computer, mobile or tablet.

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Toolbars

If you use a search toolbar in your web browser, remember that your searched items can be saved as part of your history. Find out how to delete your searched items from the following search engines: