Speech and language specialists treat people of all ages with many types of speech, language and communication problems. They first assess the problem through tests, observations, and one-on-one talks with individual patients. They then prescribe an appropriate treatment plan depending on the needs of the patient. This may involve activities like exercising.
Communication skills are essential in this role. A speech and language specialist needs to communicate well to evaluate patients' speech level, language skills, and swallowing difficulties. They must have compassion in order to teach patients how to improve their conditions. They also perform counselling to their families to help cope with communication and swallowing disorders.
Most speech and language specialists work full time 40 hours a week, but some work part time. Speech and language specialists work in the education and healthcare sectors and private practice.
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a speech and language specialist. For example, did you know that they make an average of $28.09 an hour? That's $58,434 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 27% and produce 41,900 job opportunities across the U.S.
There are certain skills that many speech and language 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 analytical skills, communication skills and detail oriented.
When it comes to the most important skills required to be a speech and language specialist, we found that a lot of resumes listed 13.7% of speech and language specialists included slp, while 10.1% of resumes included caseload, and 9.3% of resumes included ieps. 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 speech and language specialist job title. But what industry to start with? Most speech and language specialists actually find jobs in the education and non profits industries.
If you're interested in becoming a speech and language specialist, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 24.2% of speech and language specialists have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 65.8% of speech and language specialists have master's degrees. Even though most speech and language 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 speech and language specialist. When we researched the most common majors for a speech and language specialist, we found that they most commonly earn master's degree degrees or bachelor's degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on speech and language specialist resumes include associate degree degrees or doctoral degree degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a speech and language specialist. In fact, many speech and language specialist jobs require experience in a role such as speech language pathologist. Meanwhile, many speech and language specialists also have previous career experience in roles such as student clinician or speech-language pathology internship.