Logging your skills should be more than just recognising the skills you have used or learnt. Instead, recording your skills should be seen as an opportunity to self-reflect on how the skills you have used and learnt have made you successful, how you have overcome challenges and how you have improved your skill set. But why is this useful?

Learn more by reading how your skills will help you become more recruitable and how you can use your Skills Transcript to utilise all your skills reflections by reading our news article:

Becoming more 'Recruitable' - How to use your Skills Transcript

How to log a skill

First you must add your volunteering role to your profile. If you have done this already, please skip to the next section to learn how to log skills more effectively.

1. If you have not done so already, create your Volunteer Profile with the Volunteer Centre. Simply click the 'Create Your Profile' link on the Volunteering homepage and fill in all the details.

If you are a rep or club/society committee member, it will still ask you your volunteering interests. This section will automatically filter community volunteering roles to your interests in the Browse Opportunities webpage. Look here to discover any related volunteering roles that you may be interested in. 

2. Once you have created your Volunteer Profile, go back to the volunteering homepage (or click the links on your new profile) and click the 'Log your hours and skills' link.

3. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the relevant volunteer role to add to your profile. Fill in the relevant details. In most cases, you will only need to add the date you started your volunteer role.

Please note that the start date can be no earlier than 1st August. If you started your role earlier, use this as your start date.

4. Once you have added your role, it will appear at the bottom of the 'Log your hours and skills' page. Click on this for your option to log hours or add skills.

5. Click on 'Add Skill' and choose a skill category that you would like to record. Once you have chosen a category, select a specific skill within that category. Then, in the box below, write your skill reflection. Use the guide in the next section to help.

The skills available to record are specifically skills that current employers seek most in graduates.

How to log skills effectively

Logging skills is a personal process. You can write as much or as little as you wish. However, logging skills effectively can have a large impact on your professional and personal development.

To help, please see our Skills Logging Worksheet to aid your skills logging using the process below. It is not expected that you use this table for every skill you want to log, but it will help you get into the logging mindset when you come to log your next skill - hopefully this process will become second nature to you!

1. Think about a role responsibility you have, or an activity or scenario you have completed in your volunteering role.

2. Look through the different available skills categories you can log and list those you have used during your chosen activity.

3. For each skills category, list the specific skills that you have used in your chosen activity from the available list.

4. We can now write our skill reflection. For each skill, use the following process to ensure your reflection is well rounded:

• Describe the activity / experience / scenario you used this specific skill in
• Describe how you used this skill
• Describe how this skill enabled you to make the experience successful or how you overcame a challenge
• Describe what you have learnt from this experience

Here is an example:

The organisation I volunteer for: The National Trust

My volunteering role: Volunteer Gardener

The activity/scenario: Working as a team to cut down small trees and clear an area of overgrown bushes. Some volunteers were excellent but others were less engaged and slowing down progress.

Identified skill category: Communication and Literacy

Identified skill: Listening

Skill Reflection: Working as a team, we had to cut down some small trees and clear an area of overgrown bushes. Although we were working well as a team, I noticed that one of the volunteers was not as engaged and slowing down our team progress. I decided to approach the volunteer to see how I could help them. I took the time to introduce myself and get to know a little bit about them. The volunteer was new and shy and she felt awkward asking for help on how to use some of the tools. By taking the time to listen to her and make her feel welcome, she integrated with the rest of the team and we completed our task on time and she went home with several new friends. Making all members of the team feel welcome and taking the time to understand their problems meant that the task was successful and everyone enjoyed the experience. I will ensure that I take the time to do this at all times in the future.

You are now fully prepared to log your skills with style! Start logging your skills here.

Did you know that your logged skills and reflections automatically appear on your Skills Transcript? Learn how you can utilise your Skills Transcript and how they can help you prepare for your first graduate job interview below:

Become more 'Recruitable' - How to use your Skills Transcript

Learn how you can further utilise your logged hours and skills and why it is important below:

Check out our other news articles:

Why you should log hours and skills

Why you should download your Skills Transcript

What are 'Soft Skills'?