Andrew FennellCommunication skills are vital as a school counselor; you need to listen carefully and offer helpful, coherent advice.
You also need to put your communication skills to good use when writing your resume in order to persuade the hiring manager that you’re the best candidate for the job.
If you’re stuck on where to start, don’t panic. Check out our school counselor resume example and top writing tips below.
Contents
|
School Counselor Resume Example
The example School Counselor resume above shows you how a professional resume should look, along with the type of content it should contain.
You’ll notice that the information is well organized across the page, and its easy for busy hiring managers to spot the candidate’s important skills.
Keep this in mind as you write your own resume.
School Counselor resume layout and format
When it comes to holding the attention of recruiting managers, the format and layout of your resume play a key role.
Your resume needs to strike a perfect balance between looking awesome, and being easy for recruiters to read (which is not always easy to achieve)
Use the following formatting tips to get started.
Tips for resume formatting
- Length: Recruiters often see hundreds of resumes per day – so keep yours under 2 pages in length, if you want to ensure it gets read in full.
- Font and text: Nobody likes to read huge unbroken paragraphs of text – and recruiters are no different. Break your resume text up with bullet points and use a clear simple font.
- Design & structure: Allow recruiters to skim through your resume with ease, by dividing the page into clear sections with headings and borders. The design of your resume should be eye-catching but not overly complex – keep the style and color scheme simple and clean.
- Photos and images: It’s not mandatory to add a photo to your resume in the USA but it if you’re applying to organizations within the creative fields, it can be beneficial.
Quick tip: Formatting a resume to look professional can be difficult and time-consuming. If you want to create an attractive resume quickly, try our partner’s Resume Builder and use one of their eye-catching resume templates.
Resume layout
Organize the document into these sections when you write your resume.
- Name and contact details – Employers need to know how to get in touch with you – so list your email and cell phone number here.
- Resume summary – An intro paragraph at the top of the resume which summarizes your suitability for target jobs.
- Skills section – A bullet-pointed list of your most relevant skills and knowledge.
- Work experience – A list of your previous jobs (or at least the most relevant and recent ones)
- Education – Add academic and professional qualifications that prove you can carry out the job
- Additional info – If they are relevant to the jobs you are applying for, you can add an extra section for things like hobbies and interests.
Now, here’s what to include in each of these sections in your resume.
Resume Contact Details
Make it easy for hiring managers to contact you by adding your contact details to the top of your resume.
Keep this section small to save space and include the following.
- Name and profession title
- Telephone number – Ideally your cell phone so you can answer quickly.
- Location – Add your general location such as LA or New York
- Email address – Use a professional looking one with no nicknames.
You can add a link to your LinkedIn profile if you have one – you do not need to include personal details like date of birth or marital status.
School Counselor Resume Summary
Your resume summary is like an elevator pitch. It’s your chance to sell yourself to employers within a short space of time.
Achieve this by summarizing your skills and expertise, whilst highlighting your abilities that closely match the jobs you are aiming for.
Top tips for creating an effective resume summary:
- Keep it brief: Your summary is intended to be a high-level introduction to hook readers’ attention, so keep it brief (4-7 lines) – save the details for later in your resume.
- Tailor it: Tailor your resume to your target jobs by studying the job description and adding as many matching skills as you can.
- Avoid cliches: Recruiters always see cringey cliches like “hardworking guru who works well in a team or individually” – they don’t mean much to anyone, so focus your summary on tangible skills and experience.
Example resume summary for School Counselor
What to include in your School Counselor resume summary?
- Summary of your experience: Summarize the type of work you have done in the past and the benefits you have delivered for the organizations you worked at.
- Relevant skills: Highlight your skills which are most relevant to School Counselor jobs, to ensure that recruiters see your most in-demand skills as soon as they open your resume.
- Important qualifications: Any qualifications that are important to the School Counselor jobs you are applying for, should be mentioned in the summary.
Quick tip: Choose from hundreds of pre-written summaries across all industries, and add one to your resume with one click in our partner’s Resume Builder. All written by our recruitment experts and easily tailored to suit your unique skillset.
Core skills section
Underneath your summary, write a core skills section to make your most relevant skills jump off the page at readers.
It should be made up of 2-3 columns of bullet points of your relevant skills.
Before you do this, look over the job description and make a list of any specific skills, specialisms or knowledge required.
Then, make sure to use your findings in your list. This will paint you as the perfect match for the role.
Best skills for your School Counselor resume
- Group and individual counseling – Utilizing individual and group counseling sessions when appropriate, allowing students to develop supportive relationships with others while providing a direct counseling service.
- Learning strategies – Delivering counseling programs utilizing appropriate and individualized learning strategies for each student.
- Mediation and crisis intervention – Serving as a mediator for student/student, student/teacher and student/family conflicts including coordinating meetings.
- Social skills coaching – Supporting students to overcome social/emotional barriers that are limiting their academic success.
- Career planning – Supporting students to choose an appropriate and meaningful career and to take meaningful next steps towards that career goal.
Quick tip: Our partner’s Resume Builder contains thousands of in-demand skills for every profession that can be added to your resume in seconds – saving you time and greatly improving your chances of landing job interviews.
Resume work experience section
Once you’ve hooked the hiring manager with your summary, you can really blow them away with you work experience.
List your previous jobs from newest to oldest to show the impact you made at each organization.
If you have years of experience, you can leave out some of the older jobs, and if you have little/no experience, you can bulk this section up with voluntary work and college placements.
Structuring your job descriptions
Resume job descriptions contain lots of information, so its crucial to structure them well.
Use the structure below to ensure hiring managers can consume the information easily.
Job outline
Begin each job with a short summary of who the organization is, where you sit within it, and what the main goal of your position is.
Key responsibilities
List your notable responsibilities in short sharp bullet points to demonstrate your input and how you contributed to the organization’s success.
Highlight the skills that are most important to the roles you are applying for.
Key achievements
Show employers the value you can bring to them by adding a few achievements to your jobs.
Whether you’ve saved the company money or improved an internal process, let recruiters know
Add some numbers to give readers a real scale of the impact, e.g. “reduced call wait time by 10%”
Example job for School Counselor resume
Outline
Working for a large high school in Cleveland, OH, providing career counseling, academic advising, and socio-emotional support to 400+ high school students.
Key Responsibilities
- Provide direct school counseling services to high school students such as individual counseling and academic advisement
- Develop a counseling curriculum in line with modern ASCA guidelines
- Lead one-on-one and group meetings with students; identifying challenges, working collaboratively toward solutions, and providing emergency counselling and referrals
- Facilitate access and accompany students to local resources such as women’s shelters, food banks, mental health crisis centers
Quick tip: Create impressive job descriptions easily in our partner’s Resume Builder by adding pre-written job phrases for every industry and career stage.
Education resume section
Towards the bottom of your resume, add your education section.
Here you should list your professional qualifications and academic record, such as high school diplomas or college degrees.
If you have lots of work experience, you can keep this section brief (because recruiters will be more interested in your career. If you have little/no experience then you should bulk this section up with plenty of detail.
Additional info for your resume
The additional info section is optional but can be useful if you have anything else to add that could benefit your application.
For example ,you may have some hobbies and interests that are relevant to your job – or you might have awards or publications to shout about.
Writing your School Counselor resume
Following the steps in this guide will help you to create a winning School Counselor and bag lots of interviews.
If you want some more help through the process, try our partner’s Resume Builder for expert guidance and tons of pre-written resume content.
Good luck with your job search!