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11 Social Worker Resume Examples That Worked in 2024

Social Worker Resume

• Social Worker Resumes by Experience
• Social Worker Resumes by Role
• Writing Your Social Worker Resume

Social workers protect vulnerable populations, support families, and help people solve and cope with problems in their everyday lives, all within different settings.

Since social workers support numerous communities, work in various environments, and develop different scopes based on their licensure, creating your social worker resume to target the right job for your career goals can be challenging. (It’s also why  social worker job descriptions  tend to be rather vague.)

We’ve analyzed hundreds of social worker resume samples from all populations, environments, settings, and licenses to  attract the attention of a hiring manager or recruiter so you can get more interviews in 2024 . We created eleven resume samples to help you  build an eye-catching resume  and  check your resume  using AI-powered tips. 

or download as PDF

Why this resume works

• Make sure to mention the facility settings where you’ve worked, whether it’s a hospital, school, rehabilitation center, group home, or community facility, so hiring managers see your expertise.
• Social workers typically have high volumes of cases to manage, so you should highlight the number of cases you managed per day/week/month.
• If your case management included court documentation and appearance, be sure to discuss this in your social worker resume.

Social Work Student Resume

• As a social worker, you’ll interact with people from all walks of life. List any experiences that exposed you to diverse backgrounds on your social work student resume to show that you’re prepared to work with complex clients.

Social Work Intern Resume

• An advanced degree in social work and volunteer involvement prove that you chose this career mindfully.

Entry-Level Social Worker Resume

• In your  resume skills section , include skills like “verbal communication,” “case assessment,” “and counseling” to reassure employers of your abilities.
• If you’ve participated in any internships, include those over other positions. The goal is always to include the most relevant experience if at all possible.
• Don’t discount any administrative or supportive tasks; hiring managers understand (and want to see) that everyone starts somewhere.  

Associate Social Worker Resume

• Consider including work-related projects, activities, or  hobbies on your resume  to demonstrate your abilities.
• Start strong with a  resume objective  that immediately shows the reader who you are as a professional.
• If you choose to use an objective, always tailor it to the specific role and  job description .

Hospital Social Worker Resume

• For instance, tossing in a LICENSE or CERTIFICATIONS section in your masterpiece could be just the ticket to nudging the hiring manager’s decision in your favor. After all, who doesn’t love someone who goes the extra mile in their craft?

Hospice Social Worker Resume

• Begin every resume bullet point with punchy action verbs like harnessed, managed, negotiated, or persuaded rather than the all-too-familiar phrases like tasked with and responsible for. The point? To paint a vivid picture of your direct contributions to company goals—why would you even risk coming across as a sideliner?

School Social Worker Resume

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• In your work experience bullets, mention your areas of expertise ( for example, ADHD, grief counseling, teenage pregnancy) to create a targeted  school social worker resume  that will gain a recruiter’s interest.
• Within the experience of your school social worker resume, be sure to focus on the programs you implemented or supported. This will support the statements made in your resume objective.

Clinical Social Worker Resume

• Be sure to discuss how your responsibilities and leadership abilities resulted in  positive changes  at your workplace.
• If you have a license designation, put it after your name in your contact header so recruiters can immediately see your expertise. 
• Your  resume summary  should list also the settings where you’ve worked or the clinical settings you want to target for your next clinical social worker role. 

Nursing Home Social Worker Resume

• Include the patient types you worked with, such as end-of-life/hospice or memory care patients, and mention how you demonstrated collaboration and communication in your work experience since those are vital skills for nursing home social workers.
• Highlight your experience educating patients and their families, as well as any community initiatives you implemented, to improve the nursing programs you supported.  
• Be sure to  check your resume  to ensure there aren’t any grammar, punctuation, or spelling errors so you can put your best foot forward. 

Medical Social Worker II Resume

• Only include three to four positions in your work experience, and focus on your expertise from the most recent ten years of jobs and training.
• If you can, keep your bullet points solely about achievements or responsibilities that benefited the company.
• It should be just two or three sentences long to keep it brief. Include the name of the company to which you’re applying, and finish strong with a closing sentence tying directly to the role you’re targeting.

Related resume guides

• Social work cover letter
• Medical Receptionist

Tailor Your Social Worker Resume to Match the Needs of Your Clients

No one knows the demands of your job as well as you do. Working with people who often really need your help is no easy feat, which is why the list of job responsibilities in your field might seem endless. How do you pick the ones that your future employer cares about the most?

The answer is simple: follow the job description! Here are some of the most sought-after job responsibilities you’ll find when searching for a new social worker job.

• Cooperate with the care manager during the care planning process, including setting goals, establishing interventions and milestones, and monitoring client success
• Assess the members enrolled in various care programs on a regular basis and provide detailed reports
• Facilitate monthly support groups and outreach programs
• Participate in multidisciplinary team meetings to discuss cases with providers, primary care physicians, pharmacists, and care management staff
• Design and implement new tools, groups, programs, and services
• Respond to phone and email requests from families interested in being enrolled in programs

Adding skills to your social worker resume

Reverse-chronological format, functional format, and combination/hybrid format

There are several acceptable ways to present your professional experience like a narrative. Hiring managers accept the following  resume formats :

• The reverse-chronological format lists your employment experience, achievements, and education, beginning with the most recent.
• The functional format emphasizes your skills instead of your work experience. You place the most relevant achievements or skills near the top to highlight your abilities for the position you’re pursuing.
• A hybrid format blends the reverse-chronological and functional approaches. If you’ve changed industries or have ample parallel experience, you should present the most recent relative aspect toward the top of your resume.

Within the social work industry, recruiters respond best to the reverse-chronological format because it highlights the evolution of your career through progressive acquisition of skills and professional development.

Contact info and header

Your social worker resume explains your qualifications and credentials for the job you’re seeking, but if recruiters don’t know how to contact you, nothing you write will matter. As a result, you need to write and format your contact header effectively. This section should include:

• Title of the position you’re applying for (taken directly from the job description)
• Your city and state

Notice the customized header that lists the job posting title below the name.

ATS and readability

Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) are computer programs that filter out low-quality, irrelevant, and unreadable resumes. However, they’re not infallible. Sometimes they toss out relevant resumes based on a lack of keywords. Adhering to a few simple conventions, which our  AI resume builder  helps with, will ensure you pass the inevitable ATS filter. 

Beat the ATS with a few simple tips.

• Fonts and font sizes: ATS systems need to be able to scan your resume easily, so keep fonts simple and sizes consistent.
• Header: Adding headers makes your resume easier for the ATS to read.
• Save your resume in multiple formats and confirm that each version looks correct.
• Names: Your name must appear prominently with the associated contact info to make it beyond the ATS.
• Skills: the ATS scans for keywords, so you need to carefully read the job description to include the right terminology.
• Logical Order: A reverse-chronological order is the easiest for the ATS to scan; other formats may be misread.
• Length: Typically, the ATS will toss any resume that’s longer than one page.

How to write your social worker resume

Social workers require licensure, soft skills, and clinical abilities to perform their jobs effectively. Presenting that breadth of experience in an easy-to-read and tight  resume format  can be challenging.

Luckily, you’re familiar with tricky situations. So, assess your experience and determine your desired job competencies to help you write an effective resume.

Consider the following aspects of your social worker resume:

• A resume objective or summary

Work experience

Crafting your bullet points.

• Quantifying your impact with numbers and statistics
• Top social worker skills

Education, licenses, and specialized training

• Adding projects, interests, or hobbies
• Customizing your resume each job
• Eliminating errors

When to include a resume objective or summary in your social worker resume

Resume objectives  and  resume summaries  are optional, but they can be an eye-catching aspect of your social worker resume. If used effectively, they can be a deal-breaker that grants you an interview.

They should sell your value to the company within two to three sentences. This is the first section of the resume, so it must be compelling and informative to justify its inclusion.

• Above all, your objective should convey how your skills and abilities align with your prospective employer’s mission.
• “I hope to obtain a position to grow and utilize my education. I want to leverage my skills to help clients.”
• This objective is generalized, which isn’t helpful to any employer.
• Instead, tailor your objective to each job to which you apply.
• It should highlight your abilities and show off your specializations to prove you can make the next step in your career.
• “My current and former positions have enabled me to grow as a clinician and widen my knowledge base. I have progressive experience that qualifies me to supervise.”
• This summary is bland and provides no insight into the applicant’s experience or details about their qualifications.
• “LCSW-R with 10+ years of experience working with homeless populations, seeking opportunity with Seek and Save. I designed a job skills program to help clients develop interview skills. It helped 1,200 individuals obtain entry-level employment.”
• This summary highlights the applicant’s licensure and depth of experience, while noting a quantifiable achievement and mentioning the targeted employer by name.

Employers will notice you’ve taken the time to mention their company by name, as seen here.

You should be comprehensive, but use space wisely. Generally speaking, focus on recent jobs relative to the work you’re seeking: limit your positions to the last two to four jobs you’ve held. This provides enough space to give substantive details about your accomplishments.

Each bullet point in your social worker resume tells the story of your experience and qualifications. To make sure your bullet points are effective and easy-to-read,  choose active verbs  that are specific to social work,  use a consistent tense , and  use sentence fragments  without ending punctuation. 

Examples of bullet points include:

• This uses a generic verb and provides no detailed insight into the client population.
• There is no information to describe the scope or extent of this achievement.
• This fails to highlight particular clinical skills or describe the client population.
• This specifies exactly what the applicant did and the community they served.
• This highlights specific skills applicable to social work and quantifies their volume.
• This highlights a soft skill with an active verb and specifies the nature of the work.

Quantify your impact with numbers and statistics

Recruiters value statistics because they’re tangible proof of your performance and accomplishments. However, quantifying results in social work is difficult, and it doesn’t always reflect the humanistic nature of the practice. So, include metrics and statistics when you can, but don’t stress about including them in every bullet point. A good rule of thumb is to have 60 percent of your bullet points include metrics.

• Saw 25 clients weekly for CBT and check-ins
• Designed and implemented a revised onboarding system for new client intake with file integration in 6 weeks
•   Completed and submitted necessary documentation tracking for patient reimbursement at a 100% conversion rate

Top social worker skills to mention

Social work positions require very specific skill sets, like particular diagnoses, treatment methods, and clinical theories. Review the job description carefully to see what skills they need for the position and thus, what you should include on your resume. Use these terms throughout your social worker resume (when they’re applicable) to catch the eye of any recruiter.

Top social work skills in 2024 include:

• Soft skills: Empathy, active listening, collaboration, critical thinking
• Clinical positions: CBT, evidence-based practice, intake, assessment, treatment planning, discharge
• Management/Oversight positions: Program development, community organizing, budgeting, compliance, supervision

Here’s a solid list of additional soft skills you might include:

Listing your education reverse-chronologically is the best way for recruiters to see your most recent level of experience. Depending on your highest level of education, the section will descend from Ph.D. to MSW to BSW.

Be sure to list any licensures, continuing education certifications, or specialized training, either in the education section or in a separate licenses/certifications section.

If you still need licensure, there are an array of licenses available to those entering the social work field. While license requirements vary by state, most require a bachelo’rs degree. Candidates can earn certifications as a licensed social worker (LSW), a licensed independent social worker (LISW), a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW), or a licensed independent clinical social worker (LICSW) in most states.

Each level requires more education and training, with the LSW being the least demanding and LICSWs being the most stringent and intensive.

Notice the easy-to-read reverse-chronological style highlighting an evolving education.

Should you add projects, interests, or hobbies?

You should omit these optional sections unless you are a recent graduate or applying for an entry-level position. These sections provide color to your resume, but they’re generally considered excessive for higher-level positions. Highlighting and quantifying your professional accomplishments is far more important to recruiters.

If you choose to include  hobbies on your resume , they should exhibit your suitability for the position. Social workers should also consider including relevant volunteer experience. If you’re applying for a school social work position, describing volunteer experience with a children’s literacy program would be more suitable than listing your participation in a food pantry.

Customize your resume to each job

Generic social worker resumes sent out for multiple jobs isn’t the way to go. Job postings are highly detailed and reflect the values and mission of their respective companies. As a result, you should tailor your resume directly to the open position.

Read job postings carefully to parse out the active verbs and terminology the recruiter will expect to see. You should  check your social worker resume  to ensure it mirrors their language and speaks directly to the company you wish to join.

Eliminate errors

Typos and grammatical errors can grab attention  as much as an excellent objective statement or well-crafted bullet points. Always double-check your resume for grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors.

Ask relatives, friends, or classmates to review your social worker resume for misspellings, awkward phrasing, and punctuation errors. 

Go land your next job!re

A resume that addresses your potential employer’s desired skills is your best chance to land an interview for your new social work position. While using a resume maker , be sure to:

• Strive for a logical and readable format that appeals to both recruiters and ATS
• Communicate your skills and achievements by highlighting how they directly relate to your desired position
• Quantify your performance whenever possible to show measurable achievements
• Customize your resume for each position to assure employers you are passionate about their business

When you’re ready to submit your resume to potential employers, it’s time to start learning how to write a resignation letter to plan a smooth exit from your current role and launch into your dream job.

Social Worker Resume Template and Examples for Job Applications (2024)

October 30, 2024

Being a social worker requires compassion, strong communication skills, and the ability to handle complex emotional and social situations. Social workers help individuals, families, and communities cope with a wide range of personal and societal challenges, making it essential for your resume to showcase these critical abilities to stand out in job applications.

In this article, we’ll cover social worker resume examples and resume samples, detailing what makes a resume effective in this field. You’ll also find downloadable resume templates that you can customize and use in your job search.

Looking for general resume tips and tricks? Check out Bandana’s 101 guide to writing the perfect resume .

Social Worker Resume Examples

Social workers play an essential role in helping vulnerable populations navigate challenging situations. They provide support in a variety of settings, including schools, healthcare facilities, and social service agencies. The job requires strong interpersonal skills, active listening, empathy, and an understanding of policies and procedures that affect those in need.

Successful social workers are able to manage casework, advocate for clients, and collaborate with multidisciplinary teams. They must be organized, patient, and highly adaptable, given the varied nature of the issues they address.

A well-crafted resume is crucial for social workers, as it highlights your ability to balance multiple cases while offering client-centered solutions. In the next section, we’ll explore resume examples and downloadable templates that cater to different experience levels.

Ideal Social Worker Resume Example:

This resume is a strong example for someone with relevant experience in the social services field, showing a well-rounded mix of skills, experience, and education.

• Strong professional summary : The professional summary clearly highlights 3 years of social work experience, directly reflecting the candidate’s understanding of client assessment and care plans.
• Diverse work experience : The work experience section demonstrates a range of responsibilities, from managing client portfolios to coordinating community outreach, showcasing the ability to handle both casework and large-scale initiatives.
• Clear skills and certifications : The skills section offers a balance of hard and soft skills, like "care planning" and "problem-solving," making it clear that the candidate is well-prepared for various social work responsibilities.

Overall, this resume stands out due to its clarity, structured format, and well-documented experience in key areas of social work.

DOWNLOAD THIS EXAMPLE: Click to download this specific example social worker resume.

Experienced Social Worker Resume Example:

This resume is a great fit for a social worker with significant experience, even if not all of it directly matches the exact role, because it highlights versatility and the ability to manage diverse responsibilities.

• Demonstrated leadership in case management : The resume highlights managing caseloads of up to 100 clients and achieving a 20% improvement in service delivery, proving the candidate's ability to handle large-scale responsibilities.
• Strong focus on community impact : In the role as a case manager, the candidate shows success in collaborating with community organizations and developing personalized care plans, emphasizing their focus on community engagement and individualized support.
• Advanced certifications : The addition of a certification in Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy stands out, showing that the candidate is committed to ongoing professional development and specialized care.

This resume effectively combines extensive experience with a clear focus on community impact, making it ideal for experienced social workers looking to further their careers.

Less Experienced Social Worker Resume Example:

This resume works well for someone with limited experience in social work, showcasing relevant internships and entry-level roles that align with the responsibilities of the position.

• Clear progression in roles : Starting from internships to a junior social worker role, the resume illustrates growth and a clear focus on gaining practical experience through hands-on work with clients.
• Strong academic background : The educational section emphasizes the candidate's academic foundation, with a master's degree in social work, which is critical for roles requiring theoretical knowledge paired with practical application.
• Valuable soft skills : The resume highlights soft skills like "empathy" and "adaptability," which are essential in social work, complementing the technical knowledge gained through training.

This resume stands out by effectively balancing educational credentials with the early stages of professional experience, making it a good fit for less experienced candidates.

No Experience Social Worker Resume Example:

This resume is effective for someone with little to no prior experience in social work, as it highlights internships and volunteer work that demonstrate a commitment to learning and growing in the field.

• Strong internship experience : The resume shows involvement in internships where the candidate gained hands-on experience, such as working with case managers and assisting in personalized care plans.
• Community-focused outreach : The community outreach role emphasizes the candidate’s ability to collaborate with nonprofits and organize events, showcasing interpersonal skills and a focus on community service.
• Commitment to learning : The proactive learning about social services laws and regulations reflects the candidate’s dedication to understanding the field and growing into the role.

This resume stands out because it leverages internships and volunteer experience to build a foundation for a future career in social work, making it an excellent example for those just starting out.

How to Further Improve Your Social Worker Resume

Start your resume introduction strong.

The introduction to your resume is crucial because it sets the tone for the rest of your application. A strong resume introduction should clearly indicate why you’re applying to the job and highlight your professional achievements. It also gives a quick overview of your most relevant skills in connection to the job description.

Your introduction should be concise, ideally three to four sentences, and provide a snapshot of your qualifications. It’s an opportunity to demonstrate your passion for the social worker role, share any standout accomplishments, and briefly mention key skills, like case management or client advocacy, that directly relate to the position you're applying for.

Include only the most relevant work experience

When listing your work experience, it's important to highlight the roles that are most closely aligned with the job you're applying for. Including your most recent position, especially if it’s in the same field, allows employers to quickly see your relevant expertise. Make sure to emphasize any direct experience with social services, client advocacy, or community outreach, as these are key components of a social worker's role.

Even if you have past roles that are not directly related, you can still include them if they showcase transferrable skills like communication, problem-solving, or team collaboration. These experiences help illustrate your adaptability and well-roundedness, both of which are valuable in a social worker’s position.

List your education & certifications details clearly

It’s essential to include your educational background and certifications prominently in your resume. For social worker roles, a degree in social work is typically a key requirement, so listing your qualifications clearly will ensure employers know you meet this baseline criterion. Additionally, any certifications, such as trauma-informed care or counseling certifications, can make you a more appealing candidate.

Don’t forget to include other relevant skills, both hard and soft, like knowledge of social service laws, client management, and empathy. Also, listing your interests, such as volunteering or community involvement, can reflect your dedication to social service work and help you stand out.

Preparing Your Social Worker Resume for Job Applications

By using the examples and templates provided in this article, you can tailor your resume to match the specific requirements of the social worker role, increasing your chances of landing the job. Remember to customize each section to highlight your skills, experience, and passion for helping others.

Ready to continue your job search for social worker jobs or other positions? Check out Bandana job search — the best way to find a better job.

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