Mental health counselor resume examples from 2025

A resume summary is your opening statement that highlights your strongest skills and top accomplishments. It is your chance to quickly let recruiters know who you are professionally - and why they should hire you for the mental health counselor role.

Step 1: Mention your current job title or the role you're pursuing.

Step 2: Include your years of experience in mental health counselor-related roles. Consider adding relevant company and industry experience as relevant to the job listing.

Step 3: Highlight your greatest accomplishments. Here is your chance to make sure your biggest wins aren't buried in your resume.

Step 4: Again, keep it short. Your goal is to summarize your experience and highlight your accomplishments, not write a paragraph.

These four steps should give you a strong elevator pitch and land you some mental health counselor interviews.

Use your Skills section to show you have the knowledge and technical ability to do the job. Here is how to make the most of your skills section and make sure you have the right keywords:

1. You often need to include the exact keywords from the job description in your resume. Look at the job listing and consider which of the listed skills you have experience with, along with related skills.
2. Include as many relevant hard skills and soft skills as possible from the listing.
3. Use the most up to date and accurate terms. Don't forget to be specific.

These five steps should give you a strong elevator pitch and land you some mental health counselor interviews.

A work experience section is a vital part of your resume because it shows you have the experience to succeed in your next job.

1. Put your most recent experience first. Prospective employers care about your most recent accomplishments the most.
2. Put the job title, company name, city, and state on the left. Align dates in month and year format on the right-hand side.
3. Include only recent, relevant jobs. This means if you're a fairly experienced worker, you might need to leave off that first internship or other positions in favor of highlighting more pertinent positions.

Effective job bullet points do more than just describe your job duties. Instead, they should be specific and measurable accomplishments. Here are some strategies to mastering job bullet points:

• Use strong action verbs like Led, Built, or Optimized.
• Follow up with numbers when possible to support your results. How much did performance improve? How much revenue did you drive?
• Wrap it up by explaining the actions you took to achieve the result and how you made an impact.

Here are effective examples from mental health counselor resumes:

Employers are looking for a few things when looking at the Education section of your resume:

• The highest degree you have achieved.
• TWhere you attended school, and the dates (Although if you graduated some time ago, leave the date off to avoid ageism)
• TField of study
• TAny honors, relevant coursework, achievements, or pertinent activities

Here are some examples of good education entries from mental health counselor resumes:

Certifications can be a crucial part of your resume. Many jobs have required certifications.

Include the full name of the certification, along with the name of the issuing organization and date of obtainment.

If you have any of these certifications, be sure to include them on your mental health counselor resume:

1. Certified Professional Counselor
2. National Certified Counselor (NCC)
3. Mental Health
4. Pastoral Counseling Certification
5. Certified Substance Abuse Counselor (CSAC)
6. Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor (ADC)
7. Certified Clinical Mental Health Counselor (CCMHC)
8. Certified Chemical Dependency Counselor
9. First Aid, CPR and AED Instructor
10. Certified Rehabilitation Counselor (CRC)