There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a child protective specialist. For example, did you know that they make an average of $24.74 an hour? That's $51,462 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 11% and produce 81,200 job opportunities across the U.S.
There are certain skills that many child protective specialists have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed emotional skills, interpersonal skills and communication skills.
When it comes to the most important skills required to be a child protective specialist, we found that a lot of resumes listed 19.3% of child protective specialists included protective services, while 12.0% of resumes included child abuse, and 8.9% of resumes included social workers. Hard skills like these are helpful to have when it comes to performing essential job responsibilities.
When it comes to searching for a job, many search for a key term or phrase. Instead, it might be more helpful to search by industry, as you might be missing jobs that you never thought about in industries that you didn't even think offered positions related to the child protective specialist job title. But what industry to start with? Most child protective specialists actually find jobs in the non profits and health care industries.
If you're interested in becoming a child protective specialist, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 46.1% of child protective specialists have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 48.0% of child protective specialists have master's degrees. Even though most child protective specialists have a college degree, it's impossible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Choosing the right major is always an important step when researching how to become a child protective specialist. When we researched the most common majors for a child protective specialist, we found that they most commonly earn master's degree degrees or bachelor's degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on child protective specialist resumes include doctoral degree degrees or associate degree degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a child protective specialist. In fact, many child protective specialist jobs require experience in a role such as internship. Meanwhile, many child protective specialists also have previous career experience in roles such as case manager or administrative assistant.
Tell us your goals and we'll match you with the right jobs to get there.
As you move along in your career, you may start taking on more responsibilities or notice that you've taken on a leadership role. Using our career map, a child protective specialist can determine their career goals through the career progression. For example, they could start out with a role such as social worker, progress to a title such as therapist and then eventually end up with the title director of social services.
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Use Zippia's Salary Calculator to see how your pay matches up.
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The skills section on your resume can be almost as important as the experience section, so you want it to be an accurate portrayal of what you can do. Luckily, we've found all of the skills you'll need so even if you don't have these skills yet, you know what you need to work on. Out of all the resumes we looked through, 19.3% of child protective specialists listed protective services on their resume, but soft skills such as emotional skills and interpersonal skills are important as well.
Some places are better than others when it comes to starting a career as a child protective specialist. The best states for people in this position are New Jersey, Maryland, North Dakota, and Ohio. Child protective specialists make the most in New Jersey with an average salary of $75,200. Whereas in Maryland and North Dakota, they would average $57,847 and $56,767, respectively. While child protective specialists would only make an average of $54,729 in Ohio, you would still make more there than in the rest of the country. We determined these as the best states based on job availability and pay. By finding the median salary, cost of living, and using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Location Quotient, we narrowed down our list of states to these four.
1. New Jersey
$75,201
Avg. Salary
2. Maryland
$57,848
Avg. Salary
3. Rhode Island
$52,965
Avg. Salary
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