Major responsibilities of education counselors
Educational counselors organize special in counseling sessions, interviews and talent assessment tests along with several other techniques to help the students to recognize their hidden talents and advise them accordingly. They often work with employment education programs and renowned information centers to enrich the students with career related significant information.
For mentally disabled students, healthcare jobs are also served by these educational counselors like boosting up their mental as well as emotional resilience to fight with their disability, they also arrange some vocational counseling sessions for these handicapped or mental disabled students. Placement and career planning counselors are also there who assist the college students to develop their interest in one particular field and also make them familiar with latest job hunting approaches.
Vocational counseling is another important job done by educational counselors whose chief focus is on making career related decisions. Actually, these counselors analyze student’s academic and professional qualifications, his interests, personality, prior work experience and talents. Furthermore, the vocational counselors also support the clients suffering from job stress, job loss and many other career transition matters. In education sector, counselors also do some finance jobs like planning of fee structures of student.
Skill set required for education counselor jobs
- Generally, a degree of post graduation is supposed to have must for licensed education counselor. Also a graduate person with some counseling course is also said to be eligible for applying for educational counseling jobs.
- In a master’s degree, 45 to 60 semester hours of reading done in graduation course incorporating clinical practice in counseling field is demanded.
- National certification is must (it is completely different to that of state certification) to have for all education counselors despite of their states or nations, however rules and conditions may vary. For getting certification, the counselor must have the prior clinical experience of two years. Those having national certification or license can be excused for getting state official recognition.
- Education counselors should be able to work effectively and exclusively or as a part of an organization.
- Counselors should work according to the moral code or principals linked with respective licenses and certifications.
- Education counselors must be strong physical as well as emotional to deal with several problems, as it can cause depression or stress in mind.
Employment opportunities for all occupations of education counselors including vocational and school counseling are projected to grow to about 13 percent which is about average. Mainly, career counseling jobs are anticipated to grow more because of constant changes in job services and also because of career awareness among today’s teens. Furthermore, some local and state governments are also appointing education counselors to check the literacy rate and job opportunities in state. For school level counselors, more job opportunities have been developed due to the awareness of parents regarding the personality as well as career development of their children.
When it comes to the salary of education counselors, an important fact is that secondary school and elementary school level counselors are recognized as the largest earners among all other occupations of education counseling.
For those who are planning to build their career in education counseling occupation, more than enough opportunities are there. If you have all above mentioned skills and qualifications, you must go for it.