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Phone counselor skills for your resume and career

Updated January 8, 2025
2 min read
Quoted experts
Jodi Mullen PhD LMHC RPT-S,
Treniece Lewis Harris Ph.D.
Below we've compiled a list of the most critical phone counselor skills. We ranked the top skills for phone counselors based on the percentage of resumes they appeared on. For example, 26.5% of phone counselor resumes contained social work as a skill. Continue reading to find out what skills a phone counselor needs to be successful in the workplace.

15 phone counselor skills for your resume and career

1. Social Work

Here's how phone counselors use social work:
  • Coordinated, developed, and maintained psychological treatment plan by communicating with primary therapist, social worker/probation officer and school administration.
  • Assisted families with intellectually disabled children; intervened in behavioral crisis components; created family goals in conjunction with social workers.

2. Crisis Calls

Here's how phone counselors use crisis calls:
  • Triaged and screened crisis calls.
  • Responded to crisis calls, conducted emergency shelter placements, and assisted with domestic violence protective order preparation.

3. Crisis Planning

Here's how phone counselors use crisis planning:
  • Supplied goal-directed crisis planning and counseling.
  • Provide goal-directed counseling and crisis planning as well as following with clients through the crisis response system process until discharged.

4. Crisis Intervention

Here's how phone counselors use crisis intervention:
  • Analyze situations using crisis intervention and risk assessment knowledge.
  • Counseled individuals in crisis and provided crisis intervention.

5. Suicide Prevention

Suicide prevention is a collective effort focused on mental health to reduce the risk of suicide. Suicide prevention efforts can be carried out at an individual, community, society, or relationship level. It aims to enhance the mental and psychological health of an individual to remove suicidal thoughts or tendecies.

Here's how phone counselors use suicide prevention:
  • Completed additional Suicide Prevention training.
  • Responded to the suicide prevention and crisis hotline.

6. Mental Illness

Here's how phone counselors use mental illness:
  • Facilitated supportive and culturally-sensitive services to clients, to promote their personal growth, rehabilitation, and recovery from mental illness.
  • Provided office and community-based individual and group counseling services to disadvantage adults and youth with co-occurring substance abuse and mental illness.

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7. Mental Health Issues

Here's how phone counselors use mental health issues:
  • Provide counseling and support to callers in crisis situations as well as callers with various mental health issues.
  • Provided nightly supervision to 30 residents living with mental health issues and assisted individuals with accurate medication ingestion

8. Crisis Hotline

Here's how phone counselors use crisis hotline:
  • Answered multiple phone lines in crisis hotline call center setting.
  • Answer calls to a 24-hour suicide/crisis hotline.

9. Crisis Line

Here's how phone counselors use crisis line:
  • Provide crisis counseling, information and referral services to individuals crisis line callers
  • Provide support and crisis counseling to callers contacting the Rape and Sexual Abuse Crisis Line.

10. Crisis Phone

Here's how phone counselors use crisis phone:
  • Certified Crisis Phone Counselor Conducted lethality assessments Provided crisis phone counseling Assessed needs and assisted clients with linkage to appropriate community resources

11. HIV

Here's how phone counselors use hiv:
  • Counseled HIV/AIDS clients having medical, psychological, and social problems.
  • Coordinated local community health awareness events Conducted sexual and reproductive health awareness sessions Directly supervised HIV testing services on site

12. Substance Abuse Issues

Here's how phone counselors use substance abuse issues:
  • Facilitated individual and group counseling session using various techniques and interventions for clients with substance abuse issues
  • Analyze available information and offer treatment recommendations to commanders addressing substance abuse issues and diagnosis.

13. Emotional Support

At its core, emotional support involves providing support, reassurance, acceptance, love, and encouragement. It is especially important in a time of stress/sadness as it stabilizes an individual and provides a positive foundation for trust. Honing this skill is important for individuals who want to pursue the career of caregivers and emotional support nurses. Their job includes monitoring mental health and helping patients to handle any mental challenge.

Here's how phone counselors use emotional support:
  • Provided active listening and emotional support.
  • Provide emotional support to hotline callers with parenting stress.

14. Crisis Situations

Here's how phone counselors use crisis situations:
  • Provided support and assistance in crisis situations, collect and enter data in daily as well as other clerical activities.
  • Intervened in crisis situations by providing empathy to callers and referring to the appropriate authorities.

15. 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 phone counselors use domestic violence:
  • Provided phone counseling for individuals experiencing domestic violence.
  • Researched legal proceedings for domestic violence, divorce, custody, spousal support, and public assistance.
top-skills

What skills help Phone Counselors find jobs?

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

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

Jodi Mullen PhD LMHC RPT-SJodi Mullen PhD LMHC RPT-S LinkedIn profile

Professor, SUNY College at Oswego

The bulk of the work a mental health counselor does is clinical, meaning you meet with clients and provide counseling. There is also record keeping, preparation, and administrative responsibilities. New and seasoned counselors alike spend some time in supervision and consultation with other counselors. Supervision is a time to discuss cases with a more experienced professional where there are opportunities for growth professionally and personally. Consultation involves either meeting with others connected to your clients, like parents of children clients, or with professionals in mental health and other fields that can help the counselor sort out a challenge. In that case it may be an attorney or a trauma specialist.

What soft skills should all phone counselors possess?

Treniece Lewis Harris Ph.D.

Associate Professor of the Practice, Program Director, Master's Program in Mental Health Counseling, Boston College

-compassion

-active listening

-perspective-taking

-open-mindedness and respect for differences

-humility

-curiosity and critical observation

-problem recognition and analytical thinking

-creativity and flexibility

-presentation skills
Do you want to know more?
Read more about what experts have to say about phone counselor

List of phone counselor skills to add to your resume

Phone counselor skills

The most important skills for a phone counselor resume and required skills for a phone counselor to have include:

  • Social Work
  • Crisis Calls
  • Crisis Planning
  • Crisis Intervention
  • Suicide Prevention
  • Mental Illness
  • Mental Health Issues
  • Crisis Hotline
  • Crisis Line
  • Crisis Phone
  • HIV
  • Substance Abuse Issues
  • Emotional Support
  • Crisis Situations
  • Domestic Violence
  • Inbound Calls
  • Law Enforcement
  • Crisis Management
  • Community Resources
  • Community Services
  • Emergency Services
  • Asist
  • Mental Health
  • Community Referrals

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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