Developing Employability Skills: A Self-Assessment for the Role of Voluntary Witness Support Worker

Introduction

A job description, which is also known as a job profile or a job specification, is a written internal document that understandably outlines the vital job demands, the duties necessitated in the job, job obligations, and skills required to meet the goals of the job (Cochran, 2014). Details in the job description show how success is achieved in the job and how the skills detailed in the job description are used to meet the job's success. A job description is essential for any job because it defines the roles and skills that a particular job needs (Cochran, 2014). With a clear definition of a job's roles and skills, organizations can recognize job candidates suitable for different roles. Organizations can also summon qualified candidates if they fail to achieve the specified objectives in the job description document (Cochran, 2014). In this discussion, the paper aims to develop employability skills through self-assessment and self-evaluation of skills needed for a voluntary witness support worker.

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Personal profile and Self-evaluation of skills

I am an astute social support with over three years of experience working to provide social support to individuals in different fields across East London. The skills instilled within me have been supportive in utilizing the proficiency that is needed in social support. I have been of crucial importance in my duties to ensure that social support is achieved in the fields that I have worked in. I am an adept individual in offering care, support, and empathy towards others. Additionally, I am an approachable and friendly individual who easily socializes with individuals from different backgrounds. The core skills that I possess include care, maturity, support, empathy, good listening, and verbal eloquent individual in communication. Equally, I am a flexible individual as it is a required vital skill in the social support sector.

People skills and qualities.

Being a friendly individual, I have the skill to get on with people from different backgrounds and societies. Friendliness is a vital skill for any individual working in the social field (Frisch et al., 2014). A friendly person can socialize and communicate with different people regardless of their backgrounds or their socio-economic status. The friendly trait builds a meaningful impact on the social field as the friendly social support worker can get different views and lifestyles (Frisch et al., 2014). The friendly individuals can be relied on as there would be positive feedback from their surroundings. In return, they can offer emotional support that gives positive feedback on the psychological well-being of others. Socialization is a part of social development (Frisch et al., 2014). It is important that as a social support, individuals connect with an incredible number of people and support the persons they connect with emotionally to the point that they can share their life interests and views.

Additionally, understandability is important in social support. An understandable individual can meet and analyze people's emotions and predict their needs (Frisch et al., 2014). It is important to have a support worker who understands as they are required to gather different information from society and present the information in a quite understandable way. The skill of understandability also aids the employer with the knowledge of the employee's needs, therefore giving an understandable individual priority over individuals that cannot be easily understood. Understanding others also makes a social support individual efficient in his/her duties as they can interpret some information that people cannot express verbally (Frisch et al., 2014). Understandability gives the skill of understanding body gestures such as frowning and nodding. Therefore, the social support team must understand others as that can help make sense of people's different reactions.

Teamwork is a special skill that I also believe in. Working in teams has propelled me to success in the social support field. Teamwork is described as the collaboration of a group's efforts to achieve a particular goal in a task (Frisch et al., 2014). It ensures working together to achieve a common goal. With an adequate number of individuals, success in teamwork can be achieved, and tremendous results can be obtained from the team's work. As a social support worker, it is important to possess teamwork skills as they have various merits. Some of the merits that teamwork provides include; it makes work efficient (Frisch et al., 2014). Working as a team gives room for a division of labor (Frisch et al., 2014). With divided labor, it is possible to complete tasks faster in the social field. Teamwork ensures the exchange and sharing of ideas among the team are achieved (Frisch et al., 2014). Sharing and exchanging ideas makes individuals develop a variety of skills, and therefore a person performs a particular task better depending on the specialization. There is exposure to new experiences in teams. Therefore innovation within a team can be faster depending on the team members' innovation skills, leading to better and easier ways of performing duties.

The general public is the immediate audience in social support, and the skill of dealing with it is necessary to achieve better social support results. Dealing with people to achieve success has been my pleasure; therefore, I have always enjoyed my task as a social support worker. I can deal with the public effectively because of the following skills; respecting my fellows. Treating every individual with dignity is a driver of successful tasks. Trusting people has also been a secret to deal with the public effectively. Verily, being honest with everyone has been a key factor in social support as people can share their emotions without fear.

Other social skills that I have obtained as a social support worker are people management skills, training of the public, negotiations, and effective communication. Managing other people is vital in social support. Management requires leadership skills to ensure effective working in places of work (Frisch et al., 2014). Relating well with other individuals is the key requirement for managing people and engaging them in social support tasks (Frisch et al., 2014). The public also needs to be trained in gathering information and disseminating of information. With the possession of the skills in training the public, different tasks are obtainable as the public can give relevant information according to their needs. Training ensures development and trained people give effective results as they develop their skills appropriately to suit the tasks required (Frisch et al., 2014). Training also makes individuals competent and confident about their tasks, making them enjoy their work in the social field.

Negotiations, which are necessary to gather information on various things, are also important for social support. With high negotiation skills, even conflicts can be solved as there will be minimal arguments on disagreements (Frisch et al., 2014). High negotiation skills can also make individuals gain an adequate number of the social public to work with. Effective communication, which builds good rapport in the social field, also aids in obtaining a better task force for the job's responsibilities. The major weakness experienced in these skills is that they need time to be acquired. They are, therefore, considered to be time-consuming (Frisch et al., 2014). The weaknesses can be solved by creating adequate time for training to acquire the skills. With adequate time, incorporating the skills can be effective, thus yielding a useful team in the social support sector.

Activity skills and qualities.

In the acting skills, as a social support worker, I possess numerous effective skills for the job. Some of the skills include; skills to effectively debate and argue. With effective debating and argument skills, the public's ideas can be won, and their interests served (Frisch et al., 2014). Argument skills require great content mastery and strategy to deliver information productively. Debating also requires confidence to interact with the public and be able to convince them (Frisch et al., 2014). The weakness of the debating skill is a deficiency of sensitivity to information. The lack of sensitivity to information may lead to the loss of vital information from the public (Frisch et al., 2014). Sensitivity can be solved by employing intelligence in conversations and being speedy enough to note details.

Having a broad view of issues and analyzing them is also a skill in the social support field. As a proficient social support worker, it is necessary to have a broader view of issues affecting the public and develop strategies to solve them. The skill also helps create a peaceful correlation between the workers because, with a broader view of issues, there will be an understanding of the issues affecting other colleagues in the field (Frisch et al., 2014). However, the most common challenge is the lack of effective communication between the managers and the employees or between the social support workers and the public. The parties herein need to develop a habit of listening to one another and analyzing every action before reacting. The strategy's application will avoid unnecessary errors that may affect the relationship between the public and the social support team.

Additional activity skills relevant to the social support job are; the ability to classify and organize information, decision-making skills, management and transition, facilitation of meetings, organizing work, staying calm, information technology, problem-solving, and writing of reports and official letters. A social support worker needs to organize information in an orderly way to enable the easy flow of correct information (Frisch et al., 2014). Information organization is a subject of intelligence that deals with different activities such as document description, indexing, and classification (Frisch et al., 2014). The activities of information and classification of information aid in the representation and order organization of various information that may have been gathered from the social job. The circulation of information is made easier with an efficient organization of information. Decision-making skills help in solving trivial issues. Decision-making is a process of choosing between the most applicable and most possible solutions to a problem that may arise at any time (Frisch et al., 2014).

Decision-making needs an individual to reason out and make judgments based on facts and the emotional effects of the public's decision. Decisions made should neither be too complex nor too shallow to solve the possible solutions that may arise in offering social support to the public (Frisch et al., 2014). Management and transition and the ability to manage meetings are skills obtained from the administration of tasks. The skills determine the direction in which the social support team will take concerning the transitional decisions made from various meetings that are essential. It is also necessary for social support workers to stay calm in their line of duty. Calmness ensures that there will be no impaired reasoning or judgments made by the individual (Frisch et al., 2014). Staying calm also aids in solving problems, therefore instilling the skills of problem-solving that are necessary for the success of the social support sector.

Stress management and risk-taking skills are also important for people in the social support sector. Additionally, assertiveness, determination, ability to set goals, and motivational skills are necessary to meet the goals required in a social support job.