Volunteers are responsible for promoting the cause and the agenda they are working for in a company or an organization, but who is responsible for selecting, and recruiting these volunteers as well as managing all the volunteers and the related elements, yes, they are the Volunteer Coordinators who can work within and even on the behalf of a company or a non-profit organization. It takes great volunteer coordinators to lead any volunteering projects and turn them into reality. They perform numerous duties that involve everything from hiring volunteers to training them and then delegating various tasks to them. These coordinators earn pretty great, and if you are looking for a job that offers you a steady paycheck while matching your skills and interests, then we would suggest you go for this job of a volunteer coordinator.
In this article, we have a list of common interview questions for a volunteer coordinator that can help you with your preparation for the interview process.
21 Common Volunteer Coordinator Interview Questions
Question 1. What are the duties of a volunteer coordinator?
Answer: “The duties and responsibilities of a volunteer coordinator include
- Hiring the right volunteers for the right job.
- Determining the roles of the volunteers and delegating tasks to them.
- Training the volunteers to achieve the goal.
- Make volunteers feel motivated and appreciated for the tasks that they are doing.
- Creating additional opportunities and communicating them to the volunteers.”
Question 2. Name the functional levels of the volunteer coordinators.
Answer: “The functional level includes working in all the sectors including all the industries mainly private, public, and volunteer. The organization can be a non-profit organization or include the organizations which pay for volunteering. Examples of such organizations can be Academic/Coaching Institutions, start-ups, NGOs, trusts, foundations, international organizations, etc. The volunteer coordinator can function on all of these levels.”
Question 3. List the essentials for being a Volunteer Coordinator.
Answer: “As we as volunteer coordinators look for candidates with some specific skills and majorly who should have passion for volunteering, the essentials of being a volunteer coordinator include coordinators to have passion for their work as well as volunteering with possessing excellent staffing, communicating, and organization skills with the knowledge of the current affairs around the globe to be able to hire great volunteers.”
Question 4. Do you have some technical knowledge of using software and databases?
Answer: “Yes, I have all the knowledge and experience to use databases for the selection and the recruitment process.”
Question 5. Tell in a time where you gave on-the-job training to a volunteer who lacks certain skills.
Answer: “I once came across a candidate who had excellent ideas that could help us achieve the objective and he was so passionate about volunteering, he lacked some communication skills and some interpersonal skills, so to train him I organized some committee assignments that could help him open up and made him the leader of the assignment. He successfully shared all his innovative ideas with the other volunteers and the process helped him.”
Question 6. This is a non-profit organization, as you know, tell us how would you motivate the volunteers who work for no-pay?
Answer: “I would create some other rewarding parameters to motivate the volunteers, social recognition and some verbal reward systems, like announcing best volunteer tag or the star volunteer of the week are also some measures that really do motivate people to work better, some other schemes of performance appraisal can also be introduced to keep them active and participative.”
Question 7. What do you look for in an ideal volunteer?
Answer: “I look for passion in them, the zeal to help others and make a change in the society and the world. I look for good communicators who have clarity of what they want to do and how they want to do it. I look for excellent listening skills and problem-solving in them. An ideal volunteer should also have leadership skills to demonstrate his/her ideas clearly.”
Question 8. Tell us how would you handle a volunteer whose morale is low and who lacks the motivation to do a certain task.
Answer: “I think to get a volunteer back to the track, off-the-job training work wonders in motivating them. Any method of off-the-job training like simulation, role play, business games, the case study method, sensitive training methods, etc. could help a volunteer understand why he wanted to do it in the first place. These pieces of training help in motivating the employees working at any level in any field.”
Question 9. If one of your most participative and committed volunteers comes to you and tells you that he wants to quit this job, what would you say?
Answer: “Well, I would talk to him with an open mind and ask him why he wants to leave a job. We cannot make someone who is quitting for a better opportunity to stay as we cannot really make a counter-offer for a job that pays him nothing, I would ask him if he can volunteer part-time so that his ideas can still help the organization grow.”
Question 10. List two skills without which a volunteer couldn’t survive a bit in the organization.
Answer: “Communication and Organization Skills are the two skills without which a person cannot make a great volunteer.”
Question 11. How would you rate yourself as a leader?
Answer: “I cannot really mention a number, but I am a great leader. I have experience in this job and that is why I know how to switch between different leadership styles in different situations, I would surely make a great leader here as well.”
Question 12. Do you have any experience in this field?
Answer: “No, I have been a volunteer in 3 organizations before but this the first time I have applied for the job of a Coordinator, so I do not have any prior experience.”
Question 13. What type of software is needed by a volunteer coordinator?
Answer: “There already exists volunteer management software provided by the logistics, it keeps track of all the volunteers and a lot of features that help in the volunteering process.”
Question 14. How would you manage a volunteer program?
Answer: “I would use the software to find volunteers and incorporate technology. I would also motivate non-volunteers to become a volunteer by keeping a pitch, and then run a recruitment process to hire eligible volunteers while organizing different volunteering projects.”
Question 15. How would you create a volunteer work schedule?
Answer: “First of all, I would try to align the plan to the goal of the company. Then, I will create short-term achievable goals to reach the bigger objective. I will look at the skills of the volunteers and delegate them the tasks suitable for each one of them, I will design it in a way that each of the volunteers gets the opportunity to showcase their skills.”
Question 16. Tell me about a project you are most proud of.
Answer: “In my previous job as a volunteer in charge, we were working on the project that was named- ‘miles for smiles’, where we tried to supply the food necessities to the small corners across the country, where we could reach maximum citizens living under poverty in a period of 3 months, the mission was a huge success and I am really proud of myself and grateful that I was a part of one.”
Question 17. Share your thought about our mission.
Answer: “In my opinion, the vision of this company, it turns a reality which I am sure it will, it could change lives of millions and thousands of people wanting to get foreign education but couldn’t afford it. I think this initiative will help so many young minds shape their future.”
Question 18. How do you encourage diversity among volunteers?
Answer: “By teaching them multiple languages, building their interpersonal skills, encourage them to engage in youth group activities to understand the importance of social-economic status, creating mutual support among the peers and make them work as a unit.”
Question 19. How would you retain volunteers?
Answer: “With the increasing opportunities, it is really a challenge to be able to retain a volunteer, to try to retain them there is a need to create appraisal schemes to keep them motivated and feel rewarded, I will show them that they make an impact in the organization so that they feel they are important.”
Question 20. How would you attract more volunteers?
Answer: “Social media presence could be a huge help to attract more volunteers, the focus should be on how they can benefit from this volunteering.”
Question 21. How do you deal with difficult volunteers?
Answer: “I try to talk to them because volunteers are mostly generous, so they might be having a bad day or facing problems, I would ensure that each of them gets the task that best suits their skills and knowledge as well as interest as happy volunteers give better output, I would try to show appreciation to them.”
Download the list of questions in .PDF format, to practice with them later, or to use them on your interview template (if you want to crack Interview):
Conclusion
These were the 21 common questions that an interviewer might ask during a volunteer coordinator interview. Volunteer coordinators are the key to recruit those enthusiastic volunteers to do a better job which makes it an important part of this volunteer field. Remember that the employers look for the candidate who were volunteers themselves in some or other organization and who are aware of the work, so take your time to be gain experience and then apply for this job. Comment below what you liked about this article and share it.
Thank you for reading!
References
- https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3295598.3295612
- https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/2207676.2208341
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