How to Find Social Work Jobs

If you’re a qualified Social Worker, one of the great advantages is that you have the chance to define your own career. Social Workers are very much in demand in every area and in all kinds of discipline, so as long as you are prepared to put the work into gaining the experience you need for the job you want, you should be able to map out the ideal career for you.

To begin with, you shouldn’t expect to walk immediately into your ideal job upon completion of your training. To qualify as a social worker you will need to complete a Health and Care Professions Council approved degree course, either a three year undergraduate course or a two year postgraduate one for those with a relevant degree or experience. These courses incorporate work placements to give students the on the job training they need and can lead into full employment once the students graduate. This could be directly, with the services that took the students on placement welcoming them back into employment or indirectly, with the services acting as references for students looking for work elsewhere.

Either way, your first job is a chance to gain more experience and ‘prove yourself’ after your training. If you have an aim for your future career, you can make that known and try to pursue that interest within the confines of your first job. If you’re interested in managing a service or unit, for example, you can discuss that with your existing manager and look for opportunities to develop that ambition within the scope of your job, or even simply pay attention to the management techniques and structure the Social Services use.

When you’ve acquired more experience and have impressed one or two people who may be able to act as a reference for you, you can start to apply for jobs that match your dream. It’s important to look in the right places: specialist recruiters like Sanctuary Social Care gather jobs from around the country, and from different services into an easily searchable database, that’s tailored to people looking for specialist work. Working with agencies like this make your search more efficient, as it saves you the effort of having to check multiple sites for job listings.

If you’ve used your early jobs and placements as an opportunity to show your commitment and pursue skills that relate to your ideal job, there’s no reason you cannot find yourself in precisely the career you’ve planned for within five years.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 13th, 2017 at 6:12 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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