Counselor Job Description
Counselors are trained medical professionals who offer professional therapy and guidance to individuals, couples, families, and groups. They work with people who are struggling with a wide variety of challenges and issues. Often, counselors specialize in seeing a certain type of patient. For example, they may work only with individuals who are dealing with substance abuse issues, eating disorders, or couples who are struggling in their relationship.
It’s the counselor’s job to help their patients make progress towards resolving the issues that they’re facing. This often means helping patients define goals, plan action, and gain insight into their problems. The job also involves encouraging clients to open up about their emotions and experiences. This means that having strong interpersonal skills and the ability to create a comfortable, safe environment is a must.
Counselor Job Description Template
Our office is looking for a skilled counselor to join our team. This is a general counselor position, which means that you may spend time working with several different types of patients. In this role, you will help patients work through the problems that they’ve been facing. You will also work with them to identify opportunities for progress, help them build healthier coping mechanisms, and develop strategies that they can use to improve their lives.
To do well in this role, you will need to have excellent communication skills as building trust is essential. Additionally, you will need to have a strong understanding of the various types of issues that patients may be facing, what typically causes them, and how they can best be resolved. If you believe that you possess the qualifications necessary to excel in this role, we’d love to see your resume.
Counselor Responsibilities:
- Assist individual patients, families, and groups in defining the problems that they’re facing
- Use information gained from counseling sessions to diagnose patients
- Create treatment plans that will help the patient move past their problems and towards their goals
- Educate patients on the problems they’re facing and help them to develop healthier coping methods for dealing with them
- Maintain detailed notes to track the progress of patients. Use this information to shift treatment plans as needed
Counselor Requirements:
- Bachelor’s degree in social work, psychology, counseling, or a related field
- Previous experience as a counselor is required
- Excellent interpersonal skills and high standards of professionalism and confidentiality
- Knowledge of the best practices for treating a variety of problems that patients may be experiencing
- Strong time management skills
Counselor FAQ
What tasks does a counselor do?
A counselor’s job is to help their patients move past the problems that they’ve been experiencing in their lives. This happens during counseling sessions, in which the counselor must begin by building a relationship and trust with the patient. After that, the counselor can help the patient identify opportunities for improvement and create strategies that help them work towards their goals.
Counselors also need to educate patients on the problems that they’re dealing with. In order to increase their effectiveness, a counselor will also need to track their patients’ progress and change treatment plans as needed.
What should I include in my counselor help-wanted ads?
We recommend that you follow the strategy we’ve laid out above. Begin with an interesting opening paragraph or two that speak about the job in broad terms. Then, provide the specific responsibilities and requirements of the position in two bullet-point lists.
Can I use your counselor job description template?
While you can absolutely use our template, we don’t recommend that you follow it verbatim. Doing so would rob you of an opportunity to make your help-wanted ads more attractive to qualified candidates. We recommend using what we’ve written as a starting point, but adding to it in order to highlight the parts of your job that are unique.
