I was born into an immigrant family that have a lot of traditional beliefs and it has pushed me to find a career that seems meaningful to me. Their traditional beliefs allowed me to start pursuing my dreams and try to achieve a good career. This all started from growing up in New York City because it allows you to have the wonderful experience of different cultures and ethnic groups that makes New York City what it is. I feel as if I have seen everything that happens in the city and everything that is in the melting pot. This helps me seek something that seems just as rewarding and meaningful for me. I believe this is what had simply lead me to start looking for a career in human services.
Human services to me is not just about helping others because you can help others by volunteering or helping an elderly person cross the street. It is more about seeking out issues and problems people and the community face, along with the overall look and impact on things in life. Being a human services worker allows me to do that and more for people and their communities by being their voice and ears and getting their problems fixed. This is what makes this career well suited for me because that is what I want to be for people that don’t have a voice.
I also wanted to become a human services worker because it always has been a dream for me to create relationships with people that never had the help that they would get if it wasn’t for someone that could help them. Whether it’s their families, friends, strangers or human service worker. It is also a job that allows you to see many issues that people have and opens a door for them because they know that you can help them and it allows a relationship to form. The reward that comes at the end of the day when people get what they came to ask for is the best part of the job. There are many jobs in the world that have a higher salary but to me, its knowing that you change someone’s life and their gratitude towards you is something that money can’t buy you.
There are skills that human service workers need to have and I believe that listening skills is one of them. Listening skills are quite important to have because most of the clients that come in might just need someone to talk to and having them know that you can listen is what they need. I love listening to people talk because it lets me see who the person is. It allows me to paint a picture of what happened during the day without being there in person since I can see their day form as they talk about what they did or who they talked to or whatever is going on. This skill is important in becoming an effective human service worker because not every client can say what their concern is but if I can paint a picture of what they are trying to say without having to describe everything, I can figure out what they want me to help them with.
Another thing that makes me an effective human service worker is having patience. Sometimes, it might take some time for the client to work out their problems, needs and concerns and for them to talk to someone about it might be very stressful. And as a human service worker, you have to have patience for it to show the client that you are there for them. I have been in situations where the person I am trying to talk to has no patience towards me and my situation and it was not a pleasant experience. So I can understand how important it is to have the patience for clients that are having trouble expressing themselves because it can help them to be more open and trusting towards the human service worker.
The population that I would like to work for is the children and families population. The reasons that I would want to work for them is that I believe that most of the problems, needs and concerns the clients would have start from a family perspective. If you start at the root of the problem with the family, you can help everyone throughout the process. The unique challenge of this population is how to deal with kids and parents and other family members because everyone is different. The challenge could range from misbehavior to teenage pregnancy or having their basic needs met. I feel that these challenges are what I know would work best for me because I can personally relate to that population the most.
A skill that I think that I need to learn to be ready to professionally serve this population is how to deal with issues that relate to physical abuse or domestic violence because these issues could be a challenge to me. I want to develop an understanding of how to spot these issues within the population before something could happen, and to prevent it from happening again. Another skill that I need to learn is to not to being too emotionally attached to the situation. This skill is vital because it might hurt the family and your career if you are not careful about it. I want to be able to achieve open-mindedness where human service workers, “accommodate clients’ feelings, attitudes, and behaviors that may be different from their own” because that way I could understand my clients through their own eyes (Hackney & Cormier, 2013). There are many other skills that I think I would need to learn to be able to handle the population professionally. Hopefully when I gain the skills needed for the population, I would be well off in a position such as a development director or executive director.
Before being in that position, I have to graduate from college and start working towards a master’s degree or even a PhD in social work. However, from my time of my graduation to ten years later, I see myself starting the goal of working up the ladder of human services to an upper level position. Once I meet that goal, I would like to open my own organization. I envision my career path to be very successful in human services as I gain all my education that I need for my goals to be met.
As for meeting my goal of opening up my own organization, I want it to be free for the public and offer top counseling, social work and other human services for clients. It is important for me that my organization will help many other people that need the help and it would be free. I also hope that I would be able to gain funds from donations to help educate the future of human service workers. The organization would be able to provide people what human services is meant to do for others. I want to start this so that I can open the doors for other people that need the service or other people that want to help out others.
If I don’t get to have my own organization, I hope that I could find myself working in a non-profit job that serves the population of children and families. I want to stick to the population and eventually help all the families that come to see me. The reason I chose a non-profit job is because I believe I could benefit from working in one since it could a lot different then working in a government funded organization. A non-profit would mean that I would have to find ways to help fund the organization but the reward from working there would be worth it. Many people believe that working at a non-profit is worth the job because of what it stands for and I want to work at a place that sees what I see in human services. The point of working in a non-profit is loving the job and that is what I want to achieve.
Human service is not a career path most people chose to work in but it has inspired me to work towards the job. I see the opportunity for it to be my career path and I want to learn and grow from it. It also allows me to be in a population that I enjoy and love most which is children and families. I see nothing is more important in a job then your happiness, and I could tell that if I am not happy at my job, that it is not worth be at. I think that there is a little more to human services then just the work and the clients that go to it. Helping others is the understatement of what human service is and I see that as I work towards the goal of becoming a human services worker. Lastly, I hope that my effort for my career path is just what I hope it would be like.
Work Cited
Hackney, H., & Cormier, L. S. (2013). The professional counselor: a process guide to helping (7th ed.). Boston: Pearson.
