Student Recruitment

To celebrate the 2009 Social Work Month theme, “Social Workers: Purpose and Possibility,” NASW kicked off a mini-recruitment campaign last year with guidance from several schools of social work. One promotional strategy was to create a website that explored “50 Ways to Use a Social Work Degree.” Fifty accomplished social workers from various disciplines agreed to be profiled for the site’s March 2009 launch, and offered advice to prospective students interested in joining the profession.

More than 18,000 people visited this new recruitment website from March-May 2009, and several new profiles have since been added to help students understand why social work is an exciting career choice for many.

To continue this prospective student outreach, NASW helped sponsor the American School Counselors Association’s (ASCA) national conference in Dallas in June.  Members of the NASW Texas Chapter answered questions in the conference exhibit hall and gave a formal presentation about social work to interested guidance counselors.  In addition, each conference attendee received promotional literature about social work careers and was invited to visit the “50 Ways” site. 

Also during the summer, NASW created a low-cost Facebook online ad campaign designed to drive interested high school students to the renamed BeASocialWorker.org website. Results included 33 million possible impressions, 8,500 click-thrus to our site.       

For Social Work Month 2010, the BeASocialWorker.org website is undergoing a significant redesign to better utilize social media tools, and to focus content on the needs and questions of prospective students. The re-launched site will be promoted through a more expansive social networking campaign, and will linked more directly to the websites of our country’s 600 schools and programs of social work.

Contact for the BeASocialWorker.org Site and Social Work Student Recruitment:
Amber Johnson at ajohnson@naswdc.org or 202.336.8277