Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as a child caregiver and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.
A child caregiver is tasked with the primary responsibility of creating and maintaining a safe and stimulating environment for the young children under his or her care. He/she should or usually will work in a family designed-like program and ensures that the children receive the best of skills at an early age by supervising and managing them.
Other than the primary role he/she will perform other main responsibilities that include; formulating plans for language and literacy skills development, maintain a safe environment for the children, support proper growth of the child as a whole and helping in organizing and setting up of the classroom environment.
Core Skills Required to be a Child Caregiver
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 child caregiver should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.
Judgment Skills:
Judgment is the ability to make a decision or form an opinion wisely especially in matters affecting action, good sense and discretion.
A Child Caregiver must be a person of good judgment with the ability to make the right decision at the right time and for right reasons especially in prioritizing the work correctly to focus on a few important things and ensure excellent results are delivered.
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 Child Caregiver 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 Child Caregiver 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.
Attention to Detail:
Attention to Detail is the capacity to achieve a thoroughness and accuracy when accomplishing a task.
A Child Caregiver needs to have this prime characteristic and utilize it in a high performing organization that allows both the customers and staff to understand the need to be keen to all the details required to avoid massive costs for overlooked details that are common in the workplace.
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 Child Caregiver 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.
Personal Accountability:
Personal Accountability is the feeling that you are entirely responsible for your actions and consequences taking ownership without blaming others.
A Child Caregiver should provide a list of duties and responsibilities that every employee is expected to perform and define timelines and supervisors who oversee the work to ensure each knows what she /he should do and remain accountable without passing blame.
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 Child Caregiver 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 Child Caregiver 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 Child Caregiver 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 Child Caregiver 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 Child Caregiver
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 child caregiver should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.