The social work career services community is quite a small one. So small that Cindy Snell, director of career services and alumni relations for the Boston College School of Social Work (BCSSW), is one of just 20–25 people across the country who focus on career development for social work students.
“I am in a professional association, a small one of people like me who do this work,” Snell said. “We get together every year and talk about ways that we can share tips but also have a mission to support all of the social workers who don’t have access to a career services person. From that I think launched the idea of this book.”
Snell has been at BC for almost 20 years working with students and alumni in the BCSSW and recently published a book, “The Social Work Career Guidebook: How to Land Your Ideal Job and Build a Legacy,” designed to guide readers through their career development in the social work.
Snell published the book with two co-authors, Jennifer Luna, who formerly served as director of the DiNitto Center for Career Services at the University of Texas at Austin, and Michelle Woods, who currently serves as director of career services at the University of Michigan School of Social Work.
“Collectively, we have decades of experience having helped students and alumni, and we really wanted to pull all of our expertise together and share it in the form of a book so that individual social workers or advisors for social workers could use this book to advance their own careers,” Snell said.
Snell emphasized that the book was written for people at all stages of their careers—not just university students.
“There’s certainly a lot of sections at the beginning about people that are just curious about social work and what that means, or people that might be thinking about majoring in that at an undergraduate level through masters degrees,” Snell said. “But also people that are 10 to 15 years out who want to pivot or make a different contribution or aren’t sure how to advance their career at that point.”
The book is also designed to be interactive, thought-provoking, and reflective rather than be skimmed through cover to cover, she said.
“We start each chapter with an action plan,” Snell said. “There are four or five things that we hope you get out of this and things that you should try to do when you are finished with the chapter.”
Many exercises prompt readers to reflect on key career questions—what their values are, what they enjoy, their skills, and how these align with potential jobs. Other exercises focus on specific topics, such as evaluating job offers.
“I was encouraging some of our faculty advisors to have that be an exercise that they could do together with their advisees and then share what they learned collectively to kind of gain information in that way,” Snell said.
Marian Concepcion, BC ’19, BCSSW and CSTM ’24, previously worked as a graduate assistant for Snell after being matched with her through the graduate assistantship program. Part of her work included editing parts of Snell’s book.
“My role was reading parts of a couple of chapters from a student lens,” Concepcion said. “The material was already done, so it was me being part of a lot of other people, other students, who also gave final eyes once everything was done, telling her if it made sense or not to students.”
Before getting a master’s degree in theology and social work, Concepcion earned her bachelor’s in management with concentrations in marketing and information systems. But when working with Snell and reading the book offered a new perspective on her career search, Concepcion pivoted.
“I think it made me realize how transferable and important the skills I learned in CSOM were because they have continued to be important for me,” Concepcion said. “I think those [skills] are all really important, but I also liked how in Cindy’s book, she has specific parts about taking the time to really discern like what you’re good at, like where your strengths are at.”
Concepcion currently works at the University of San Diego running the Search Retreat, which she described as a similar experience to the Kairos retreat at BC. As she got her career footing after achieving double-Eagle status, she was grateful to have Snell’s guidance, she said.
“Cindy was really helpful in the process,” Concepcion said. “We had a lot of conversations about negotiation and that stage of the job process and figuring out what my nonnegotiables were for the job and what was important to me and what were the goals I had both in the short term and long term.”
Social work offers a wide range of career paths and practice areas, but sometimes it can be a challenge for students looking to go outside of the traditional clinical social work path.
Marielena Feliciano, BCSSW ’24, said students in the field of social work are presented with a distinct set of challenges upon graduation. Feliciano was in the Global Practice program within the BCSSW, a unique program allowing students to explore routes different from traditional clinical social work with a more macro or global perspective.
“In the macro spaces, there isn’t like a specific goal like for clinical social workers … so it’s sometimes kind of hard to find a job title that says macro social worker needed, because there isn’t, it’s not like a licensed clinical social worker,” Feliciano said.
Through her program, Feliciano had the opportunity to work with the International Catholic Migration Commission headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, where she gained a variety of skills that overlapped with and added to the social work field.
“I was doing a lot of project coordination, management, and communications for them,” Feliciano said. “I learned the skills at that internship, but, even now I’m kind of rebranding myself as a communication social worker.
Currently, Feliciano works as a recruiter and project manager for her alma mater La Sierra University in Riverside, California in their Department of Social Work. Like Snell, Feliciano said she wants to educate students about career possibilities within the field of social work.
“I basically promote the program because it’s very small,” Feliciano said. “I’m going to different college fairs, high schools, and community colleges and talking to them about the field of social work.”
One of Snell’s larger goals is to get students to consider what they are passionate about and explore the wide range of possibilities within the field of social work.
“All of our students come feeling very passionate about wanting to make a difference in the world, but that looks different depending on the sorts of passions of that person,” Snell said. “I am a big proponent of educating everyone about how many different things you can do with an MSW degree.”
Next semester the BCSSW is planning an exhibit in the Social Work Library that coincides with an alumni panel being held this semester on Nov. 13, 2024, that is meant to showcase the diversity of social work careers.
“My mission this year is to kind of get the word out about that,” Snell said. “And I think the book is helpful for you to kind of try to position yourself and figure out what’s important to you and then move forward with it.”
