Social work associate skills for your resume and career

The "change theory" used in social work practice follows several steps, including engaging, assessing, planning, intervening, evaluating, terminating, and following up. Soft skills are most likely to occur in engagement, intervention, and termination. Social workers are trained to "start wherever the client is," understanding that clients can be individuals, families, groups, communities, or organizations. Social workers are trained to respect the client as the expert in their needs, honor self-determination, use a strengths-based approach, and respect difference while using inclusion. The training turns into soft skills such as being empathetic, warm, genuine, and respectful. Social workers also develop skills in knowing when to listen and when to nudge the client toward action. Social workers are trained to intervene and, when change is completed, to terminate. Helping clients know when to end services also requires soft skills of talking about hard topics, seeing a brighter future and setting goals, recognizing when change is happening, and saying goodbye respectfully.

We are a dynamic evidence-based profession that requires specialized skills in order to effectively complete the demanding work that our profession entails. The soft skills described above are all intertwined with the hard skills required in the social work profession. Below are examples of hard skills required in the social work profession (note, this list is not exhaustive):

a. Client Evaluation Skills-All social workers, regardless of practice setting, must possess competency in client evaluation. This requires the ability to complete thorough and accurate assessments of our clients and their environment.
b. Diagnosis-While not all social workers will go on to diagnose, those who obtain full licensure often do. Having the ability to diagnose has many lifelong implications for the clients we work with, so it is vital that social workers possess the knowledge, skills, and critical thinking required to provide accurate diagnoses.
c. Intervention- This is often at the heart of what we do as social workers, and this will look different for each client. Social workers need to be skilled in providing evidence-based interventions for patients. This requires sufficient education and training in various evidence-based techniques. Intervention can also come in the form of connecting clients to necessary resources and collaborating with other professionals to help meet the unique needs of clients.
d. Crisis Management- All social workers will likely encounter a crisis situation at some point. We must possess the skills to respond accordingly by making swift and ethical decisions while simultaneously collaborating with other professionals involved.
e. Cultural Competency -Social workers will encounter clients from diverse backgrounds, and therefore need to be mindful and educated about various cultural beliefs and practices. We must also be willing to self-examine our own beliefs and biases and acknowledge what we have yet to learn.
f. Advocacy: All social workers uphold social justice and work to empower our clients and communities through advocacy efforts. Possessing advocacy skills allows us to support our clients, especially vulnerable populations, and ensure they have the opportunities and resources they need.
g. Documentation- Sound and professional documentation is critical in social work. Each encounter we have with a client needs to be documented to ensure accuracy and to ensure appropriate services and interventions. I tell my students to always document as if their records would one day be read aloud in a courtroom.

Dialogue and compromise. There are many apparatuses in today's society which are designed to pull people apart. Cable news and online news sites are famous examples of this. Add to this the echo chambers of social media where people largely associate with like-minded people while looking negatively at those with a different world view. This silo-ing of society is the antithesis of dialogue and compromise. Instead, it creates a class system of those who agree (the favored class) and those who disagree (the unfavored class).

On a macro level, the more the social worker dialogues with all stakeholders (those in favor and those opposed) the more that person gains knowledge and goodwill. This is at the heart of compromise - winning being defined as doing the most good for the most people.

On a clinical level, social workers work mutually with their clients. Learning about a client's values begins with dialogue (even when our values are different) and creating treatment plans is often-based on compromise (agency policy/goals, and client goals).

Indeed, the way we work is changing. The skills that young graduates will need are diverse. Transferable skills and soft skills will certainly be marketable. These include traditional crafts such as communication, but I also think the world expects more empathy from its employees. Young graduates with an understanding of racism, sexism, and environmental responsibility will become increasingly important.