An outstanding social worker resume that shows your strongest skills and most relevant achievements increases your chances of landing a job.
As a social worker, you know that your job requires a unique combination of compassion, problem-solving skills, and a knack for paperwork. Therefore, putting together the perfect social worker resume that shows all of these qualities may seem like an insurmountable task.
But fear not, because that’s precisely what this article is here to help with!
We’re going to teach you how to create a clean and professional resume that will grab the attention of even the most indomitable hiring manager.
Since we know that you have people to help and problems to solve, let’s not waste time anymore and dive deep into the matter at hand!
Hiring managers often have to go through numerous social worker resumes in a short period of time. Most likely, they won't pay much attention to ones that are badly formatted or don't look good. That’s why you need a proven resume format that will give them information in a clear and concise way.
One of the most popular formats that the majority of candidates use with great success is the chronological resume format. It’s designed to showcase your professional and academic progress while emphasizing your latest accomplishment.
By listing your work history and education in reverse-chronological order, you give recruiters all the information that they want to see. Plus, that arrangement also works well with the ATS.
The functional resume format is another one that’s commonly used, and it’s best for entry-level social workers. This format emphasizes your skills section, which is perfect if you have little to no professional experience. The only trouble is that it might run into issues with the ATS.
On the other hand, if you have more experience than your average candidate, you can take advantage of the combination (hybrid) resume format. As a blend of the previous two formats, this one also makes your skills the focal point of your resume, but it strengthens each skill with impressive workplace accomplishments.
A human brain processes visual data much better than text. That’s why it’s crucial that your social worker resume features a strong layout in addition to a professional format. Giving recruiters pages of dense paragraphs, even if the information they contain is great, is a surefire way to get your resume discarded.
For starters, your resume should be one page long. That’s usually more than enough for all but seasoned veterans with decades of experience. To achieve that while including all the important details, you should use concise bullet lists instead of blocks of text.
Moreover, you need a clean and professional font that’s easy to read (e.g., Arial or Helvetica). Avoid stylized, unprofessional, and script fonts like Comic Sans or Papyrus.
Speaking of fonts, an optimal font size for text is 10–12 pt with 14–16 pt headings. That, in combination with 1-inch margins and white space between sections, will make your resume neat, organized, and easy to read and skim through.
All the information in your social worker resume should be split into sections for readability and ease of use. There are two types of sections, and they are:
