Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as a childcare worker and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.
A childcare worker cares for children from infants to school going in the absence of their parents. He/she teaches infants basic concepts such as sharing and manners, assist pre-schools in preparing for school, and help the school-age children with homework or take them to club meetings or sports practice.
Other duties associated with the role include monitoring children under their care, helping the children to maintain good hygiene, developing schedules of the children, preparing meals and snacks, being on the lookout for developmental and emotional problems and alerting the parents about the same, maintaining children records on routines, progress and interests as wells as helping the children to explore their interests by organizing activities.
Core Skills Required to be a Childcare Worker
Core skills describe a set of non-technical abilities, knowledge, and understanding that form the basis for successful participation in the workplace. Core skills enable employees to efficiently and professionally navigate the world of work and interact with others, as well as adapt and think critically to solve problems.
Core skills are often tagged onto job descriptions to find or attract employees with specific essential core values that enable the company to remain competitive, build relationships, and improve productivity.
A childcare worker should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.
Multi-Tasking:
Multi-Tasking allows one to juggle and perform more than one task at a time without losing track of what you are working on or dropping the ball.
A Childcare Worker must learn the trick of multitasking and help the staff balance the competing demands of their time and energy that they are expected to handle multiple priorities every day without compromising on the effectiveness of the work done.
Dependability:
Dependability is the characteristic of being able to be counted on and relied upon by providing services that be trusted within a period.
A Childcare Worker needs to be dependable and hire reliable employees who can be counted on as consistent and beneficial to the business, building their niche as an essential element of the larger team without worrying about bringing less than your efforts.
Physical Abilities:
Physical Abilities is the ability of one's strengths and limitations that are also known as the individual resources to perform well at the tasks given.
A Childcare Worker must understand that his employees are very different types of people who vary in what they can or cannot do and treat each one with respect while supporting them to become the best in what they do.
Assertiveness:
Assertiveness is the inclination to stand up for your rights or other people's rights in a calm and concrete way without being aggressive or accepting a wrong.
A Childcare Worker must be self-assured and confident to master the skills to put his points across without upsetting others or becoming angry and allowing the employees to do the same while complying with the company's policies and procedures.
Commitment to the Job:
Commitment to the Job is the feeling of responsibility that a person has towards a mission and goals of an organization.
A Childcare Worker should be diligent in helping the employees connect and commit to their job by creating proper communication channels that make the employees feel listened to and encouraged to provide feedback thus creating mutual trust and respect in the workplace.
Following Directions:
Following Directions is the skill of carefully considering the given instructions and following them closely without fail.
A Childcare Worker must ensure that his workers are paying attention and listening to instructions provided as well as taking careful steps in doing what they are supposed to do and understand what it means to the business and bring satisfaction to their superiors.
Personal Drive:
Personal Drive is a combination of desire and energy in its simplest form directed at achieving a goal in whatever you have set your heart to accomplish.
A Childcare Worker needs to creatively design ways that drive the staff to carry out their work without wasting time by helping them understand and develop their self-motivation skills that assist them to take control of many different viewpoints of their life.
Using Common Sense:
Using Common Sense is the ability to see what is missing in a situation or a project and supplying it without necessarily being assigned or asked to do it.
A Childcare Worker needs to creatively train his employees always to see the missing element that is typically crucial in any workplace or project and take the opportunity to do business out of it.
Organizational Skills:
Organizational Skills is the ability to make use of time, energy and resources available in the most efficient manner to achieve their goal.
A Childcare Worker should organize the work for the employees to ensure overall organization, planning, time management, scheduling, coordinating resources and meeting deadlines is handled most efficiently by each employee for both personal and professional growth.
Resource Use:
Resource Use is the ability to utilize the office supplies effectively while avoiding any wastage and ensuring everything is used correctly.
A Childcare Worker needs to educate his employees on the rising threat of global warming and the business's risk of high expenses to avoid wastage of any kind from copiers, computers, old filing processes and data backing disks that are sometimes misused by the employees.
Hard Skills Required to be a Childcare Worker
Hard skills are job-specific skill sets, or expertise, that are teachable and whose presence can be tested through exams. While core skills are more difficult to quantify and less tangible, hard skills are quantifiable and more defined.
Hard skills are usually listed on an applicant's resume to help recruiters know the applicant's qualifications for the applied position. A recruiter, therefore, needs to review the applicant's resume and education to find out if he/she has the knowledge necessary to get the job done.
A childcare worker should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.