Supervisory experience I have... and don't

August 18, 2016 5:02 PM

I'm applying for a management position. It is within my current job field, and my boss would still be my boss. The two year supervisory/management requirement is a hard rule. HR is just that way. It's a position which I completely qualify for, in terms of skills and experience but not in that perfect way.

My supervisor has been working with me on staff trainings and taking on some administrative tasks over the last 6 months out of desperation because yeah that management spot needs to be filled. It is not guaranteed for reasons, and there are some good some good reasons for keeping me right where I am at.

I have never supervised in my field of social work in an professional title capacity. Since I became an LCSW, I've done plenty of case consulting with peers, have done staff trainings, done debriefing, worked on a year long pilot project that was rolled across several agencies, and have been an active participant in multidisplinary groups providing professional advice. And I've done a plenty of case management, so I'm use to bring responsible for a bunch of people in a completely different capacity.

I have supervisory experience also in that I've

1) I was on a board of directors of a small organization for 1 year.

2) Worked on a startup and was the Social Consult/director. This start up recieved some funding but tanked due to issues outside of my control (and we were too slow for a good spot in that particular market), but was a year long intensive in consulting a small team due to my professional experiences which impacted what we did in big ways.


So it is there, but I'm having trouble putting it together in a way that HR won't decide I'm bluffing and throw it out.

I created this ask for Help on wording or guidance towards what I'm looking to say that says I'm a leader, I'm capible had have solid experience I can build on to do this very specific job.

posted by AlexiaSky to Work & Money (7 answers total)

Can you call yourself a Team Lead? Around here, it's code for an unofficial supervisor without the title. If you've ever had to manage the workload of a team, or run weekly group meetings, or other stuff that your boss would do but they are too busy, you can spin that as supervisor. Also, did you do any project management work on that pilot project?
posted by cabingirl at 5:22 PM on August 18, 2016

If it is a hard rule than make sure the supervisory details of the two external positions are front and centre. Sometimes beaucracy just needs to show they did their due diligence.

What I have done I the past for internal positions that had hard and fast qualification rules is to include a table that lists all the positions stated qualifications in one column and in the same row I would succinctly describe in bullet-form how I exceeded their requirements.
posted by saucysault at 5:29 PM on August 18, 2016

Have you ever actually managed direct reports? It sounds like that is what they are looking for, in which case being on a board or doing social outreach may not qualify.
posted by winna at 5:32 PM on August 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

I agree with winna, this isn't (to me) direct management experience and wouldn't qualify if it is a hard and fast requirement. I'm not sure about the interpretation of "supervisor" however, since that sounds as though it might accept a softer definition. Do you have the actual text of the requirement to share?
posted by frumiousb at 7:00 PM on August 18, 2016

With the guidance of my current manager, I put together a (successful!) application for a supervisory position, with experience that sounds similar to yours. This is from my written application. Some details elided for privacy:

Please describe any experience you have leading and training others, especially in a clinical setting. Include in your response, a description of your role and duties, the number and type of staff you led and/or trained, your employer(s), job title(s), and dates when you gained this experience. If you do not have any related experience in this area, please respond, "N/A."

In my [current (now past!) role], I have been given the opportunity to mentor and teach my co-workers, including [list of co-worker titles], all spread across two main offices. Because our team’s offices are geographically distant, our manager is often off-site, and I therefore step in to provide coverage and support to my co-workers when needed. I provide clinical guidance about appropriate and recovery-oriented interventions, education about mental health diagnoses and symptoms, help with locating resources, training in writing notes that meet Medicaid requirements but also incorporate recovery-oriented language and concepts, and feedback on client plans, progress notes, and client interactions. I often help co-workers focus on psychiatric rehabilitation, especially on teaching skills to clients that will foster independence. I also help my co-workers identify areas in which their knowledge or training might be lacking and to help them increase their skills, within their scopes of practice, so that our team’s work is clinically sound and credible.

In addition to providing this guidance to co-workers, I also work to stay cognizant of our team’s day-to-day activities and of overall organizational needs. I have started attending [bureaucratic meetings] to gain a greater understanding of how our team fits into the larger picture of [our organization] and how we interact with other programs, as well as to advocate for clients with outside agencies like [agency names] to facilitate good client outcomes. I have been participating in an ongoing collaboration between [our team] and [peer organization] to identify areas in which we can better serve our clients and better foster their recovery.

To ensure that the advice, guidance, and training I provide is sound, I have completed the training “Foundations of Clinical Supervision” from the Zur Institute, which qualifies me to work as a clinical supervisor, and I have completed trainings on [leadership topics] through [our HR training program]. I also keep up with best practices in my field by attending trainings, and I am working to increase my supervision skills by doing readings on the topic on my own.

I did also have some decades-old managerial experience from college, which I stuck in there to help HR tick off the boxes they needed to tick off. If you've got supervisory experience outside your current field, and your HR dept is sticklers, absolutely include it. And if you are eligible to become a licensed supervisor but aren't yet, I'd definitely recommend doing one of the online trainings ASAP so you can include that on your resume.
posted by lazuli at 8:02 PM on August 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

I basically bullshitted my way into the first couple of supervisory positions and so do a lot of other people, because how else do you solve the problem of needing to show experience in order to get experience? I would think nothing of reframing your board experience, for example, as being about staff oversight, supervision, and hiring, or the startup director position as being all about team supervision.

Don't lie, exactly, but don't do that thing that people sometimes do where they preemptively sell themselves short, either. The hiring committee may decide "no," and that is ok, but you shouldn't do that for them. Put together something that explicitly says "I am qualified" and let them decide. If you are an internal candidate, the decision probably isn't going to rest on technicalities about exact experience requirements -- it will likely be more about people's perception of your current performance, future roles, etc.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:10 AM on August 19, 2016

I should note that a bunch of the phrases and concepts I emphasized in my application (psych rehab, recovery-oriented interventions, Medicaid billing, "good outcomes") came directly from my manager saying, "These are things upper management is going to be emphasizing in the next year or so, so here are the buzzwords you should try to work in." If you can have that conversation with your manager, it would likely be helpful. It was also very helpful to get her go-ahead to say that I had been "mentoring" co-workers and "providing coverage" when she was out of the office, because I had been a bit stuck at how to say, "I've been doing this job unofficially and therefore probably against Union rules because our manager hasn't been able to do it because we don't have enough staff and no one will approve us getting any more," which was not really the warm-fuzzy "Yay team!" message I was trying to send.
posted by lazuli at 6:11 AM on August 19, 2016 [1 favorite]