Skills
Sociology Professor Skills & Tools
The technical skills, people skills and tools employers look for in sociology professors, and how to build and show them.
What skills do sociology professors need?
Sociology Professors need technical skills such as social theory, survey research, and qualitative methods, plus people skills like facilitation and empathy. They also use tools such as Survey software and R and Stata.
Technical (hard) skills
- Social theory
- Survey research
- Qualitative methods
- Statistics
- Writing
- Curriculum design
People (soft) skills
- Facilitation
- Empathy
- Critical thinking
- Communication
Tools, equipment and technology
- Survey software
- R and Stata
- Qualitative analysis software
- Learning management systems
- Census data
- Presentation tools
Skills in action: common tasks
These step-by-step guides show how sociology professors put their skills to work:
- How to teach the sociological imagination
- How to design a student survey project
- How to code interview data
How to show these skills on a resume
- Lead your skills section with the technical skills from the job posting, for example, “Social theory” and “Survey research.”
- Prove soft skills with results: instead of listing “facilitation,” describe a situation where you used it.
- List credentials such as Ph.D. in sociology near the top, with the issuing organization and date.
- Use the employer’s vocabulary. Our sociology professor glossary covers the terms hiring managers expect.
How to build these skills
Formal training, supervised practice and certification are the most direct routes. Our Sociology Professor training introduces each of these skills with plain-language lessons, procedures and a final knowledge check: a strong foundation before hands-on training or your first day.