The field instructor plays a central role in student learning and acquisition of social work competencies. They facilitate student understanding and application of social work values, skills, and ethics. Naturally, they are licensed social workers who provide a social work student with one hour of supervision per week for the practicum duration.
Becoming a field instructor isn't that easy. There are some pre-requisites you must have to fulfill in order to achieve this role. First, you will need an MSW degree or else three years of experience after your master's degree. Additionally, it is equally important to have a social work license as required by your state where you practice.
Concerning such demanding nature of the role, the subsequent payout for the position is also quite remarkable. The average salary for a field instructor is roughly $42,465 per year, which boils down to $20.42 per hour.
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a field instructor. For example, did you know that they make an average of $21.01 an hour? That's $43,700 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 8% and produce 27,200 job opportunities across the U.S.
There are certain skills that many field instructors 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 analytical skills, compassion and listening skills.
When it comes to the most important skills required to be a field instructor, we found that a lot of resumes listed 9.4% of field instructors included crisis intervention, while 9.3% of resumes included emergency, and 8.0% of resumes included cpr. 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 field instructor job title. But what industry to start with? Most field instructors actually find jobs in the education and health care industries.
If you're interested in becoming a field instructor, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 40.2% of field instructors have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 38.1% of field instructors have master's degrees. Even though most field instructors have a college degree, it's possible 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 field instructor. When we researched the most common majors for a field instructor, we found that they most commonly earn bachelor's degree degrees or master's degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on field instructor resumes include associate degree degrees or doctoral degree degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a field instructor. In fact, many field instructor jobs require experience in a role such as internship. Meanwhile, many field instructors also have previous career experience in roles such as social worker or social work internship.