Developing Skills for the Interview

Social work interviewing incorporates at least two skill areas: interpersonal skill, the ability to facilitate relationships with clients, and interviewing skill, the ability to obtain relevant information from clients. Various approaches have been proposed for improving different social work skills. During the first phase students receive intensive training in both verbal and nonverbal interpersonal skills, including identification and expression of feelings, giving and seeking clarification, expression of opinion, response timing, eye contact, appropriate affect, voice volume, and fluency. Designed to facilitate practice of family and group interviewing, skills stressed in this phase differ from those taught earlier in several ways. Transfer of interpersonal and interviewing skills to practice environments is expressly designed into our program. Instructors judge students' interviewing skills on scales that cover introducing the interview, putting client at ease, using questions, seeking concreteness, summarizing, paraphrasing, and using transitions, constructive confrontation, verbal prompts, attention, and silence.