Counselor/case manager skills for your resume and career

There is widespread consensus within the mental health counseling field that counseling is much about the skills and techniques as it is about the dispositions or qualities that enable counselors to provide meaningful and effective services to clients. Therefore, responding to the question of what skills stand out on Mental Health Counselors' resumes requires an articulation of attributes, characteristics, variables, or qualities that an ideal mental health counselor would possess. Indeed, there is a copious body of counseling literature describing effective counselor variables. I have highlighted some of the most salient of these variables.

1. Respectfulness of & Responsiveness to Others, Including Diverse Populations: The ability of mental health professionals to provide effective and meaningful services to individuals from diverse backgrounds is of vital importance. More culturally responsive mental health providers tend to produce better outcomes with their clients. Such cultural competence of responsiveness is most evident when a practitioner consistently conveys an attitude of respect, in both verbal and non-verbal communication, for the capability and worth of others and seeks to understand them in terms of what makes them different. It means honoring individual differences such as culture, race, ethnicity, family structure, gender, age, socioeconomic status, and other individual differences without needing to always agree with what others do or say based on these differences.
2. Ability to Balance Multiple Life Expectations and Commitment to Wellness: Mental health professionals work in an environment that demands the ability to balance multiple responsibilities and life expectations. This work-life balance is often most challenging for new professionals, often leading to high rates of burnout. Agencies or organizations will look for a mental health counselor who is able to recognize and accept their capacity to handle multiple life responsibilities such as family, school, work, and avocational pursuits. This includes being realistic in setting limits on time spent in various roles, adjusting schedules to accommodate changes in responsibilities, eating healthily, and getting adequate sleep and exercise in order to function effectively.
3. Empathy, Genuineness, Warmth, and Caring: Empathy can be described as the ability to consistently communicate, in words and actions, an accurate understanding of what others feeling or thinking; when a professional counselor is truly "in tune" with others through verbal and nonverbal actions and reactions, and try to know what it is like to be in the other person's shoes. It includes the ability to consistently convey warmth, caring, and concern for others in interactions with them. Empathy, genuineness, and caring (unconditional regard) are considered the foundational skills and orientations in mental health counseling. In fact, these have long been described as a trio of qualities that are necessary, though insufficient, for positive therapeutic outcomes.
4. Effective Interpersonal Communication: There is broad consensus within the counseling field that effective communication is the cornerstone of successful client/counselor relationships. Broadly defined, interpersonal communication involves the ability for the mental health professional to elicit and appreciate client concerns, to provide a rationale for treatment decisions, and engage the client in the process of shared decision-making and goal setting. Such skills may be both verbal and non-verbal and include micro-level skills (active listening, paraphrasing, questioning, summarizing) and macro-level skills (crisis intervention, assessment, documentation, case conceptualization, use of self, immediacy, etc.). Employers are constantly looking for mental health counselors with the ability to maximize their communication skills and knowledge of human development to enhance their clients' growth and development.
5. Professional Integrity: This quality is most evident when a mental health professional is consistently honest and trustworthy in dealing with others and admits to shortcomings and limitations in knowledge and skills. More importantly, professional integrity requires that a mental health counselor abides faithfully by established professional codes of conduct, as well as agency policies and practices. Such professionalism manifests itself in the ability to set healthy boundaries with clients, as well as communicate clearly the nature and limits of the counseling relationship.
6. Capacity for Organization: The world within which a mental health professional operates has become more complex, and such increasing complexity has necessitated demonstrated capacity for organization. This skill is most evident when a mental health counseling professional is consistently planful and orderly in thinking about and performing tasks. They can prioritize efficiently and are disciplined and task-oriented. They impose the right kind of structure on themselves to be productive without being unreasonably obsessive about things.
7. Commitment to Excellence: Growing both personally and professionally requires openness to new learning and examining one's beliefs, values, assumptions, and effectiveness. When a gap in knowledge is discovered, or a deficit in a personal quality is uncovered, a mental health professional will take the initiative to acquire new information, improve and change. To be committed to excellence requires, in part, a great deal of self-reflection, an awareness that they are one of the primary instruments/tools in counseling.
8. Trauma-informed Care: The ability to appreciate the widespread and complex impact of trauma on clients' lives and develop and integrate trauma-responsive skills, knowledge, and awareness into one's practice has become essential to providing effective counseling services. Employers are, thus, keen on mental health counseling graduates with crisis and trauma intervention skills such as mindfulness techniques, breathing techniques, relaxation methods, grounding strategies, and other knowledge of trauma-specific treatment approaches (e.g., EMDR TF-CBT, animal-assisted therapy, etc.).
9. Assessment and Diagnostic skills: The ability to work collaboratively with a client to determine presenting concerns, desired goals and objectives, and therapy process is a core component of what mental health counselors do. To do so requires skills in selecting and administering assessment tools, formulating diagnostic/clinical impressions, and developing treatment plans/or strategies. Prospective employers, therefore, usually look for candidates with strong assessment and diagnostic skills, particularly knowledge of the DSM-V and/or ICD-CM and use of primary assessment instruments (e.g., Mental Status Exam, PHQ-9).
10. Technology Skills: Digital media and resources (e.g., email, smartphone apps, online forums, Web sites, DVDs, computer software, online social networks, telephone and televideo communication, and mobile devices are fast becoming essential to the work of mental health counseling. The COVID-19 pandemic has accentuated the need for competence in virtual communication or the ability to provide telehealth, in addition to familiarity with Electronic Medical/Health Records systems.
11. Bilingual: The growing diversity of the United States population means that mental health counselors live and work in a multicultural world. The reality is that mental health practitioners are now more and more likely to encounter clients from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. While the counseling profession has long emphasized cultural competence as a necessary component of ethical and effective service delivery, there is evidence to suggest that the mental health field as a whole has not kept up with the demand for bilingual and multiculturally oriented counselors.