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Adult school counselor skills for your resume and career

Updated January 8, 2025
3 min read
Quoted experts
Kacie Blalock Ph.D.,
Kacie Blalock Ph.D.
Below we've compiled a list of the most critical adult school counselor skills. We ranked the top skills for adult school counselors based on the percentage of resumes they appeared on. For example, 24.3% of adult school counselor resumes contained social work as a skill. Continue reading to find out what skills an adult school counselor needs to be successful in the workplace.

15 adult school counselor skills for your resume and career

1. Social Work

Here's how adult school counselors use social work:
  • Coordinated with Social Worker and staff psychiatrist for discharge planning.
  • Assist Social Worker in facilitating group meetings.

2. Substance Abuse

Here's how adult school counselors use substance abuse:
  • Maintain confidentiality of all information regarding participants following federal regulations for individuals in substance abuse and/or mental health treatment.
  • Facilitated counseling groups including substance abuse, anger management and domestic violence court ordered treatment.

3. Community Resources

Community resources are a set of resources that are used in the day to day life of people which improves their lifestyle in some way. People, sites or houses, and population assistance can come under the services offered by community resources.

Here's how adult school counselors use community resources:
  • Identified client needs and provided appropriate referrals to community resources.
  • Conducted one-on-one visits, assessments, treatment plans, case notes, advocacy, linkage and referral to community resources.

4. Group Therapy

Group psychotherapy or group therapy is the practice of treating a group of clients together in one sitting throughout multiple sessions. This practice allows people to receive encouragement and support from their peers who are taking the same group therapy.

Here's how adult school counselors use group therapy:
  • Provide weekly individual and group therapy for a caseload of 25 clients who are participating in the outpatient Drug Court program.
  • Provided individual and group therapy services for survivors of rape, other types of sexual assault, and childhood sexual abuse.

5. Discharge Planning

Here's how adult school counselors use discharge planning:
  • Carried a caseload, which included providing individual and group counseling, lectures, assessments, treatment and discharge planning.
  • Performed client's individual assessment, treatment planning, and discharge planning.

6. Social Services

Here's how adult school counselors use social services:
  • Counseled battered women on domestic violence and self-esteem Provided client support with welfare, social services and other agencies.
  • Interviewed applicants to determine needed social services; asked applicants questions needed to complete budget forms related to their eligibility status.

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7. Crisis Intervention

Here's how adult school counselors use crisis intervention:
  • Performed assessment and diagnosis of adults seeking immediate crisis intervention as well as ongoing counseling.
  • Conducted in-home assessments, treatment plans, referral, case management, case notes, and crisis intervention.

8. Individual Therapy

Here's how adult school counselors use individual therapy:
  • Provided group and individual therapy on the adult unit of a private psychiatric hospital.
  • Co-led evidence-based group therapy and individual therapy for court-involved adolescents with co-occurring substance abuse and mental health disorders and their parents.

9. Domestic Violence

Domestic violence is a pattern of violent, intimidating, or abusive behavior in any relationship committed by someone within the victim's circle - partner, ex-partner, parents, family, and friends, to gain or maintain power and control over the victim. This can be emotional, sexual, social, financial, economic, psychological, spiritual, and/or physical abuse.

Here's how adult school counselors use domestic violence:
  • Deliver contracted off-site individual and group domestic violence counseling services at an addiction treatment facility.
  • Conducted counseling and educational groups to adult women victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.

10. Motivational

Motivational is defined as something related to the reason or drive behind why a person does what they do. It is related to the motivation behind why a person or an animal acts a certain way. Motivation is the practice through which a person finds the drive to do a certain task.

Here's how adult school counselors use motivational:
  • Use of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Motivational Interviewing and Solution Focused Therapy.
  • Received training in Motivational Interviewing by Yale University and training in CT SBIRT by DMHAS.

11. Community Agencies

Community agencies stand for the organizations operated to provide human service in the community.

Here's how adult school counselors use community agencies:
  • Served as a liaison between patients and community agencies when needed.
  • Consulted and collaborated effectively with parents, teachers, administrators, and community agencies regarding students with identified concerns and needs.

12. Severe Mental Illness

Here's how adult school counselors use severe mental illness:
  • Offer counseling and rehabilitation services to individuals with middle and severe mental illness from different Backgrounds.
  • Carried out the duties for individual, group and psychotherapy with diverse population of dually diagnosed homeless adults with severe mental illness

13. Cognitive Behavioral

Here's how adult school counselors use cognitive behavioral:
  • Applied cognitive behavioral, family systems, and holistic counseling theories.

14. Individual Sessions

Here's how adult school counselors use individual sessions:
  • Provided individual sessions and group counseling within a therapeutic setting, collaborate and provided leadership to staff members to ensure cohesiveness
  • Conduct Assessments-Develop Treatment Plans-Individual Sessions-Facilitate Groups-Complete DAP, Group, and Lecture Notes-Continuing Care-Transport Patients to Various AA and NA meetings

15. Group Sessions

Here's how adult school counselors use group sessions:
  • Facilitated groups including contemplative stage of change outpatient group sessions, young adult specific group and family group art therapy program.
  • Demonstrate knowledge of counseling theories by selecting appropriate assessment and diagnostic procedures and effective counseling processes for individual and group sessions.
top-skills

What skills help Adult School Counselors find jobs?

Tell us what job you are looking for, we’ll show you what skills employers want.

What skills stand out on adult school counselor resumes?

Kacie Blalock Ph.D.

Associate Professor; Director, Master of Counseling, Louisiana State University at Shreveport

Skills that stand out on Counselor resumes include multilingual, critical thinking, conflict resolution, and leadership skills.

What soft skills should all adult school counselors possess?

Kacie Blalock Ph.D.

Associate Professor; Director, Master of Counseling, Louisiana State University at Shreveport

Soft skills that are essential for counselors include emotional intelligence, empathy, multicultural competency, interpersonal abilities, and authenticity.

What hard/technical skills are most important for adult school counselors?

Kacie Blalock Ph.D.

Associate Professor; Director, Master of Counseling, Louisiana State University at Shreveport

It is important that counselors are able to effectively take notes and summarize progress, interpret assessments, memorize and recall information, and keep clear yet concise records.

What adult school counselor skills would you recommend for someone trying to advance their career?

Emily Yowell Ph.D.Emily Yowell Ph.D. LinkedIn profile

Professor

There is a critical need for mental health care in our world. Many want to help with this need, making counseling a good profession to enter now.

What type of skills will young adult school counselors need?

Chris Hennington Ph.D.Chris Hennington Ph.D. LinkedIn profile

School Counseling Program Coordinator, Lubbock Christian University

School counselors will be tasked with the usual school counseling responsibilities while also encountering trauma that students experience outside of school and in school. Being well versed in trauma response is going to be a vital aspect of being a school counselor. Kids are experiencing more trauma, but we are getting better at recognizing and treating trauma as well.

What technical skills for an adult school counselor stand out to employers?

Dr. Chantrelle Varnado-Johnson

Assistant Professor & Coordinator of School Counseling Program, Nicholls State University

In addition, recent graduates will need to be familiarized with using telehealth platforms due to more remote learning needs. Plus, recent graduates will need to familiarize themselves with their basic facilitative skills to establish rapport quickly to have brief sessions. Also, I would recommend students receive competency-based credentials and become licensed in at least one additional state. Lastly, I would recommend students familiarize themselves with crisis intervention and trauma counseling.

In sum, graduates have to be aware of how their roles may shift due to job displacement, furloughs, and restructuring. Due to new challenges presented in the COVID-19 pandemic, graduates have to be prepared to address the possibility of being faced with high caseloads, secondary traumatization, role conflict/ambiguity, and tension in the workplace. As a precautionary measure, neophytes should adopt a holistic self-care regimen and professional network to ameliorate the mental health condition.
Do you want to know more?
Read more about what experts have to say about adult school counselor

List of adult school counselor skills to add to your resume

Adult school counselor skills

The most important skills for an adult school counselor resume and required skills for an adult school counselor to have include:

  • Social Work
  • Substance Abuse
  • Community Resources
  • Group Therapy
  • Discharge Planning
  • Social Services
  • Crisis Intervention
  • Individual Therapy
  • Domestic Violence
  • Motivational
  • Community Agencies
  • Severe Mental Illness
  • Cognitive Behavioral
  • Individual Sessions
  • Group Sessions
  • CPR
  • Clinical Documentation
  • Therapeutic Treatments
  • Substance USE Disorders
  • Conflict Resolution
  • Treatment Services
  • Direct Services
  • Adult Clients
  • Anger Management
  • GED

Updated January 8, 2025

Zippia Research Team
Zippia Team

Editorial Staff

The Zippia Research Team has spent countless hours reviewing resumes, job postings, and government data to determine what goes into getting a job in each phase of life. Professional writers and data scientists comprise the Zippia Research Team.

Updated January 8, 2025

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