Volunteering, and the ANU+ award

Volunteering is one of the few things you can put on a resume before you've had a real job — but only if it's the right kind for what you want it to say, and only if ANU actually knows about it.

Skilled vs unskilled volunteering

Both count, and both matter — they just demonstrate different things to a future employer. Neither is "better": pick what fits the time you actually have, and what you want to be able to talk about in an interview later.

• Unskilled (general) volunteering — event support, working bees, op-shop shifts, food bank sorting. No specific qualification needed; shows up reliably, works well in a team, contributes without being asked twice.
• Skilled volunteering — using what you're actually studying: tutoring, treasurer or committee roles that use financial or legal literacy, building a website for a not-for-profit, peer mentoring in your discipline. This is the kind that reads most directly onto a resume for a related job, because it's the same skill, just unpaid.

The ANU+ award

Completing ANU+ gets your volunteering formally recognised — an official award on your academic transcript, built through guided reflection on what you actually did, not just a line you mention in an interview.

Join through Career Central: log in there and select the undergraduate or postgraduate ANU+ pathway before you start counting hours. It's open to all enrolled undergrad and postgrad students, and run out of the ANU McCusker Institute.

• Internal volunteering (ANUSA clubs & societies, ANU services and teams) has to be registered and approved through the ANU+ team first — register the role before you start it, not after.
• External volunteering — unpaid work with not-for-profits or co-ops outside ANU — also counts, generally with lighter registration overhead.
• Training hours don't count. Onboarding and induction time is preparation, not the volunteering itself — only log hours once you're actually doing the role.
• A supervisor signs off every 10 hours. Get that sign-off as you go — trying to reconstruct months of hours at the end of the year is much harder than it needs to be.

Along the way it's meant to build resilience, leadership, and cultural awareness through the reflection component, not just the hours themselves. Not sure whether a role you're considering would count, or how to get it registered? That's worth booking a query about, or raising directly with the ANU+ team.

Sources: ANU's Volunteer Fair coverage and the ANU+ procedure document published by the University.