Mental Health Counselor Resume: Real Examples & Free Template

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As a Mental Health Counselor, you have enough stress worrying about your patients’ recovery without having to overcome the challenges of a poorly-written resume. Diagnose the problems in your career progression by using our professional resume templates!

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ResumeGiants » Examples » Mental Health Counselor Resume

We know mental health issues affect a great many people. Whether coping with stress in settings such as hospitals, schools, and prisons, people need someone to be there for them.

Regardless of your niche, if you want to be someone’s helpful mental health counselor, you’ll need a strong resume to land an interview and move to the next round of the selection process.

Luckily there are plenty of resume tools to help you get started, and by following our advice you’ll have hiring managers contacting you in no time.

In this guide, we’ll help you do just that using templates, examples, tips, and tricks, like:

• Creating a mental health counselor resume that follows the correct format
• Following the job description to optimize your mental health counselor resume
• Highlighting the soft and hard skills you’ll need as a mental health counselor
• Looking at mental health counselor resume samples as guidelines

Even as a mental health counselor you may need some assistance yourself even if it’s just for your resume and this guide will offer you just that.

One of the best ways to start planning your resume building is to have a look at a well-written example.

Let’s take a look at our Mental Health Counselor resume sample.

Resume Example

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[Margaret Santiago]

[Mental Health Counselor]

[327, Rose Avenue, PA | 241-815-8241 | margaret.santiago@gmail.com]

Summary

Compassionate Mental Health cCunselor with over 8 years experience in educational and corporate settings. Proven track record of working with at-risk clients to provide quality services. Highly skilled in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, especially for adolescents and young adults.

Experience

Mental Health Counselor 

Bradford Medical Center – Minneapolis, Minnesota 

2014 – 2022

• Organized both clinical interventions and specific treatment plans for patients managing chronic mental health disorders 
• Performed cognitive behavioral therapy to over 20 individual youth patients with the goal of recognizing and redirecting poor habits
• Consistently and effectively documented detailed case files for each patient
• Provided comprehensive counseling to groups and families as necessary

Mental Health Counselor 

Liams Day Treatment Center – Bronx, New York 

2013-2014

• Led five educational seminars at the local community mental health center about mental health awareness
• Managed the onboarding process for summer interns
• Collaborated with professionals to prescribe correct medications for patients

Education

Bachelor of Science in Psychology 

Penn State University, Pennsylvania 

2010 – 2013

• Graduated magna cum laude with 3.8 GPA
• Excelled in Psychology and Sociology
• Relevant Coursework: Advanced Psychology, Neuroscience, Psychological Disorders, Lifespan Development, Stress Management

Skills

• Soft Skills: Time Management, Communication Skills, Organization Skills, Interpersonal Skills, Empathy, Attentiveness 
• Hard Skills: Conflict Resolution, OCD Specialization, Anxiety Specialization, Crisis Management

Certifications

• Certified Professional Counselor (2013)
• Certified Clinical Mental Health Counselor (2014)
• Certified Chemical Dependency Counselor (2015)

You may find it useful to keep this mental health counselor resume sample in mind when drafting your own. 

A vital part of creating a strong resume for mental health counselor job openings is ensuring that your content is well-organized, relevant, and written to impress.

Luckily, if this example hasn’t helped you enough, you can browse resume templates to give your resume the ideal structure.

How you format your resume is just as important as the content you put on it.

By choosing the right format you’ll be able to show off your best attributes, not only to a hiring manager but also to the applicant tracking system (ATS). 

Here are some important details you should be sure to include on your resume:

• Contact/personal information
• A resume objective or summary
• Relevant professional or work experience, qualifications, and achievements
• Soft and hard skills
• Additional “Other” sections to diversify your resume: certifications, training, etc.

A solid mental health counselor resume should use a reverse-chronological format. This means that your most recent experiences should be listed first, followed by the next most recent one, and so on.

However, this is only a good idea for someone with more than a couple of years of professional experience. 

What if you’re brand new to professional mental health counseling? 

If that’s the case a functional resume format would be best. Choosing this format lets your skills cover for your lack of experience. 

This format allows you to show off your relevant skills and makes a hiring manager forget that you’re a bit new. It shows that you have what it takes, even if you haven’t worked as a counselor in the past.

Also try to avoid making your resume too long. In general, a mental health counselor’s resume should be just 1 to max 2 pages long.

At the end of the day the format you choose must be your perfect fit. If you can select the right one you’ll have a great chance of getting an interview.

A resume summary or resume objective is the first thing a potential employer sees when they start reading your resume, which means it has the unique task of grabbing your reader’s attention quickly.

A resume summary is a short paragraph describing your qualifications and above all, experience. Resume summaries are excellent for more experienced mental health counselors.

Meanwhile, resume objectives are more suited to entry-level mental health counselors. 

These usually focus on your skill set and emphasize how your skills can compensate for the lack of experience.

Regardless of which type of resume headline you end up creating, be sure to summarize the key points of your application in an engaging way. Keep your summary or objective to a few lines, and be certain that each word on the page has a purpose.

You might find it useful to save this piece for the end, as it’s much easier to write a summarized version of your resume once you’ve actually created it!

Mental Health Counselor Resume Summary Example

Take a look at the material from these licensed mental health counselor resume examples:

This example is on the right track, however, it needs to be a bit more detailed! Without giving some facts it’s a bit generic.

This is more like it! This one succeeds because it  shows the candidates’ areas of expertise while giving us adequate, specific information concisely.

How to Write an Entry-Level Mental Health Counselor Resume Objective

Writing an entry-level resume objective can be challenging since you may not have much professional experience to lean on. 

However, focusing on the strengths you bring to the table and how they match what an employer is looking for can help you bypass this obstacle. 

Before drafting your objective you’ll want to study the job description thoroughly. 

That’s because job descriptions will list specific skills, experiences, and qualities that an ideal hire would possess, making it simple to tailor your resume objective (and resume in general) to the position.

Entry-Level Mental Health Counselor Resume Objective

Below are two Resume objective examples; one provides a much better breakdown of your skills, accomplishments, and value as a potential employee.

This is on the right track, but it still seems pretty generic and could give a better idea as to the candidate’s capabilities. 

This works much better. Why? It gives much more insight into the skills they used as an assistant. It clearly shows how this candidate is ready for a more senior position.

The experience section of a mental health counselor’s resume is one of the most important because it highlights all your achievements over the years and demonstrates you have the expertise necessary for the job.

Use your experience section to highlight your accomplishments in a professional setting. It’s also a great way to emphasize your skills practically.

Mental Health Counselor Resume Examples: Experience

Here are a few sample experience sections that demonstrate the value of being specific as you list your qualifications. 

Note how the stronger of the two uses more details and powerful language; it’s much more impactful as a result.

A mistake many people commit is simply listing their experience without explaining further, like in the example above. 

Entry-Level Mental Health Counselor Resume: Experience Section

It’s still possible to create a strong resume even if you have little to no experience as a mental health counselor. 

Use the skills you’ve acquired from various projects, internships, volunteer programs, etc. to show recruiters that you have a diverse skill set. This compensates for the lack of experience and helps your chances of landing a job.

Below are a couple of r examples that make use of basic, entry-level experiences:

This says basically nothing at all! You’ll want to add much more information and relevant experience if you want to impress someone that is going to review your resume.

This is fantastic, as it states your previous responsibilities and even shows you have relevant experience, even if you were only an assistant.

It seems like in many job sectors the education section is becoming less and less influential when it comes to choosing a candidate. 

However, a mental health counselor needs a college degree, preferably in biopsychology, psychology, or social work discipline. So, be sure to list the schools you’ve attended and the qualifications you received in this section.

List your most valuable degree first and use a reverse-chronological format. You can also provide any further training or certificates you’ve received. 

Mental Health Counselor Resume Education Section

Let’s take a look at some examples that showcase how you can keep your resume’s education section engaging for recruiters:

It’s a great idea to mention a GPA as high as this one, but it doesn’t say much about what the candidate really did well in.

Everything the candidate excelled in, a high GPA, and relevant coursework, all listed, this is a great education section.

he skills section of your resume will cover your soft and hard skills. 

Soft skills are non-specific skills that can be utilized in a variety of professions, while hard skills are field-specific skills that are developed on the job.

We’ve listed a few skills that you can list on your mental health counselor resume below, but don’t hesitate to brainstorm some of your own based on your experiences!

An “Other” section(s) of your mental health counselor resume can help set you apart from other candidates. 

It helps distinguish your resume from the hundreds of applications that recruiters go through daily and shows why you specifically are the best fit for the job.

Mental Health Counselor Resume Sample “Other” Sections

Here are some examples of what an “Other” section might look like on an Mental Health Counselor Resume:

We know taking courses and adding certificates are great to add to your resume. However, this example brings up a lot of questions, like what did this candidate learn?

This gives not only more detail, but it’s also relevant. Remember, adding certificates like these are great, but they should be relevant to what you are applying for. 

Things like certifications and training are perhaps the most relevant additional details to mention, but there’s potential value in other types of “Other” sections, too, including things like:

• Volunteer experience 
• Awards
• Languages and special skills
• Personal hobbies and activities that relate to your job as a counselor

Just be sure that whatever you do choose to include adds to your resume and is not just filler.

When creating your resume it’s critical to be clear and concise and try to list only relevant experience and education. 

Not to mention provide plenty of detail so that hiring managers know exactly what you did in the past and how you might be able to help them.

It’s also important to remember if you are having trouble creating your resume, you can use resume-building tools and look over examples to help yourself out at any stage of the process.

It’s not always easy to create the perfect resume but with this guide, you won’t have much trouble starting a new position as a mental health counselor in the near future.