Get a state license.
According the Department of Labor, most states require 3,000 hours of supervised clinical experience for state licensure of clinical social workers. That may sound like quite a time commitment, but Rollins says it is worth the effort. 

"You can bump up against the ceiling pretty fast without a master's degree and state licensure, because if you're not licensed yourself, you have to work for someone who is for most positions," says Rollins.

Do internships.
While in undergraduate or graduate programs, students are required to complete a certain amount of fieldwork depending on the university. For Hiramoto, undergraduate fieldwork meant interning with a social services department close to her school. While in graduate school at the University of California at Berkeley, Hiramoto worked at a state congressman's office, where she first learned how to write government bills that promoted social change.

Rollins' undergraduate internship was at a therapeutic foster care agency. Her internship there turned into a job after college. Now, years later, after receiving a master's in social work, Rollins says she's sure she has her current job mainly "because of my internship experience and all the related jobs I had through school."