Author: admin

Posted on

Increasing Your Chances of Employment as a Counsellor Part 2 of 3

Young smiling woman getting support on psychotherapy session

By Nathan Beel 2018, reprinted from QCA blog.
www.nathanbeel.com

In the first part of this series, I discussed the competitive nature of advertised counselling applications. We have established that employers are looking for who they perceive to be the best applicant out of their pool of applicants. Your role then is to give yourself as many chances as possible to be the best applicant. Below are five strategies that may help increase the perceived value of what you might offer an employer:

Qualification: These days, more employers are looking for a minimum of a bachelor’s degree in counselling or a related discipline. Given that bachelor degrees are more common now than previous years, a bachelor’s degree or higher will generally provide an edge over a holder of a certificate or diploma.

Experience: Accredited counselling degrees nearly all have a placement component in them. However, if you and two of your fellow graduates are going for the same position, it is better to have additional experience. I recommend people consider volunteering at Lifeline, Drug Arm, or similar service that provides ongoing experience and close supervision. Quality volunteer experience plus a degree often gives a significant edge over a degree alone. In addition, there may be pathways in the volunteer organisations for becoming a volunteer supervisor, allowing additional skills and experience to be accrued.

Demonstrate commitment to the profession: When I would look at counsellor or counselling educator applicant CV, I always look for mention of membership in a counselling association. When I see a CV that indicates membership in a counselling association, it sends me a signal this person is committed to their professional identity and growth. When I see CVs without mention of membership, it raises questions in my mind. Is the depth of this person’s interest in counselling only limited to the possibility of gaining employment? Membership maintenance requires commitment to an ethical code, maintaining professional development, maintaining clinical supervision and contributing financially to the profession.  When I’m involved in hiring, I’m looking for evidence of commitment beyond the pay packet and promises made in the interview itself.

Get known: Counsellors are often introverted. We don’t put ourselves out there but prefer more intimate relating with our clients behind closed doors. However, our profession is a relational profession. I recommend people aim to become known. When people become familiar with who you are and the value you represent as a person, this may influence them if they are on your interview panel. Counselling is a fairly small profession, so it is fairly easy to get known by other counsellors. Attend professional development events and get to know other counsellors. Contribute to the association newsletter and blogs. Join an association subcommittee. Seek opportunities to provide professional development in an area you have knowledge and expertise in. Set up a LinkedIn account to put your CV for the world to see. When meeting people, give them your business card and later invite connection with LinkedIn. You might also consider setting up your own special business Facebook page or website as another ‘shopfront’ for your brand. The more people who become familiar with who you are and learn to trust you, the more likelihood that someone on your interview panel may know you and your ‘brand’ and may trust you over other candidates whom they do not know.

Develop a positive reputation: Your interactions with others in person and online, and your online footprint, will contribute to developing your reputation. Likewise, if you are studying, will your interaction with fellow students and behaviour in classes send signals of someone committed to the journey of becoming a counsellor? What type of person do they see? Do they see someone who they would want to refer clients to? Your reputation begins in university and people are unlikely to forget the behavioural impressions you leave with them. If people Google or Bing you, will the results send a signal of professionalism and other qualities associated with counselling? Determine what type of counsellor you want to be viewed as and ensure that is what you communicate in person and online. Employers and clients will look you up online or may ask questions of people who know you. A good reputation takes years to build and can be lost quickly. Aim to build it and protect it.

This segment has offered five ways of enhancing the chances of success in gaining counselling employment. In the next installment, I will list a further four strategies that I believe will enhance your chance of employment as a counsellor.

Posted on

Increasing Your Chances of Employment as a Counsellor Part 1 of 3

Nathan Beel 2018, reprinted from QCA blog.

Reality hit me hard when I graduated with my first counselling degree. I was 23 years old and confident that obtaining my degree meant that I would become employed as a counsellor in the first weeks of looking for work. I diligently applied for successive positions and on occasions when I received replies, they politely declined and indicated that I needed more experience. I learned the hard way that degrees in counselling were not a guaranteed ticket to employment.

I returned to study for a graduate diploma in counselling with a 200 hr internship for experience and was fortunate to pick up a counselling job soon afterwards. After two decades in various counselling related roles, including being on panels interviewing for counsellors, my understanding of counselling employment has grown, and I can see how naïve my presumptions were in the early days.

A key assumption I operate on now is that counselling employment is a competitive supply and demand market. Employers aim for the most attractive candidate who applies. This attractiveness is based on the perceived value the applicant can bring to the role. Value is subjective depending on the position and the hirer, and the field of applicants.

What applicants often do not see is who they are competing against. This is an important factor that shouldn’t be overlooked. Missing out on a job does not mean that one was deemed inadequate or under-qualified. It may mean that there was another applicant with more diverse or specialised experience and training who gained the position. However it is measured, the applicant who gains the job is deemed by the panel to offer the role the most potential value compared to the other candidates. The challenge for the job seeker is to help shape the panel’s perception that s/he is the most valuable applicant.

Some counselling job seekers will miss out on positions because they disqualify themselves from applying. They may believe they are slightly underqualified for a position, that the position is difficult for them, or that others going for the position will be more qualified and experienced. However, if these job seekers do not apply, they might miss out on gaining the job that they may have otherwise gained. If they were to put their application in, they might be the most attractive candidate compared to the other candidates. I recommend against self-selecting out of applying when there may be some criteria that are not met or when the position description may appear intimidating. I have gained several positions which I perceived were above my capabilities and experience, but which if I had not have applied, I would have missed out on gaining the employment and discovering that I could do the role despite my self-doubts. While job seekers have increased chances of gaining work when they meet all the job criteria, their chances reduce to zero if they self-select out from applying at all.

In this instalment, I have highlighted that advertised counselling positions are competitive by nature and that organisations are seeking the most potentially valuable person from among a number of applicants. Missing out on a position does not imply that one is professionally deficient or unemployable as a counsellor but may simply reflect high-quality competition. I also recommended job seekers to go for positions that one may not meet all the criteria or where the position description tasks appear too difficult, as the job seeker may still be the viewed as the most potentially valuable person for the role compared to the other applicants. In the next instalment, I will discuss five specific strategies for increasing one’s perceived potential value of applying for jobs.

Posted on

Do counsellors become more effective over time?

By Nathan Beel (reprinted from QCA)

The counselling profession prizes clinical experience. For counsellors to advance from intern through to clinical member, there is an expectation that they will accrue hundreds of hours of counselling practice over years. Exposure over time to a broader range of clients and their issues, training, professional development, and clinical supervision, is likely to lead counsellors to acquire expanded learning at multiple levels. But does this accruing of experience, knowledge, and skill translate into improved outcomes over time? Or, put another way, will the senior members in the profession be getting better results than they did when they first began their counselling practice?

Goldberg and colleagues (2016) set out to measure therapist performance over time in a longitudinal study. They reviewed the outcome data from 170 therapists from a university counselling service over a period between .44 to 17.93 years (av 4.73). Therapists covered a continuum of career status, from trainee students through to experienced licensed professionals.

The results of the study were surprising. Therapists, as a group, did not improve with experience, whether the experience be measured in time or cases.  In fact, overall, there was a very slight decline of outcomes with experience. Breaking it down further, 60% of therapists declined slightly while the remaining 40% improved slightly over time. The bulk of therapists experienced very little improvement or deterioration in their outcomes over time.

How might we interpret these results?

General effectiveness: first, we need to remember that counselling is generally very effective (Smith & Glass, 1977). Finding that counsellor performance generally does not change over time does not suggest clients are not benefitting from treatment. Most clients will benefit from most counsellors.

Staple profession requirements: The results raise questions about the impact on outcomes of professional development and clinical supervision. Both of these areas have little research support on their contribution to improving outcomes. If counsellors are receiving regular supervision and professional development but are not improving in outcomes, we need to understand why. Do these activities simply help us maintain our existing levels of effectiveness? Are benefits of clinical supervision not generalizable across our clients? Or are these activities primarily for other benefits, such as increasing therapist practice knowledge, self-awareness, and resilience?

Over-estimates: Over time, counsellors collectively may not improve in their effectiveness, but they tend to increase in confidence and professional self-belief. Research has demonstrated that therapists over-estimate their effectiveness and typically suffer from self-assessment bias (Walfish, McAlister, O’Donnell, & Lambert, 2012). However, there is some evidence that counsellors who display more professional self-doubt tend to get better outcomes than those who have more professional self-confidence (Nissen-Lie et al., 2017). The interpretation of why this might be the case is that those who lack professional confidence are likely to spend more time devoted to considering their work in comparison to those who engage in less critical professional reflection.

So how can counsellors continue improving their effectiveness?  This area of psychotherapy expertise research is still very young. Current suggestions include ensuring appropriate reliable formal outcome feedback is collected. Therapists are typically over-optimistic in their perceptions of client improvement and fail to recognise failing cases (Hannan et al., 2005), hence objective measurement is important. The second is utilising the feedback and translating it into deliberate practice (Goodyear, Wampold, Tracey, & Lichtenberg, 2017), and then checking to see if this deliberate practice converts into improved outcomes.

Counsellors cannot rely on experience, supervision, professional development as pathways to improve their client effectiveness. Current recommendations suggest counsellors need systematic outcome feedback combined with deliberate practice if they seek to continue to improve.

Click here for a YouTube version of this article.

References

Goldberg, S. B., Rousmaniere, T., Miller, S. D., Whipple, J., Nielsen, S. L., Hoyt, W. T., & Wampold, B. E. (2016). Do psychotherapists improve with time and experience? A longitudinal analysis of outcomes in a clinical setting. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 63(1), 1-11.

Goodyear, R. K., Wampold, B. E., Tracey, T. J. G., & Lichtenberg, J. W. (2017). Psychotherapy expertise should mean superior outcomes and demonstrable improvement over time. The Counseling Psychologist, 45(1), 54-65. doi:10.1177/0011000016652691

Hannan, C., Lambert, M. J., Harmon, C., Nielsen, S. L., Smart, D. W., Shimokawa, K., & Sutton, S. W. (2005). A lab test and algorithms for identifying clients at risk for treatment failure. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 61(2), 155-163.

Nissen-Lie, H. A., Rønnestad, M. H., Høglend, P. A., Havik, O. E., Solbakken, O. A., Stiles, T. C., & Monsen, J. T. (2017). Love yourself as a person, doubt yourself as a therapist? Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, 24(1), 48-60. doi:10.1002/cpp.1977

Smith, M. L., & Glass, G. V. (1977). Meta-analysis of psychotherapy outcome studies. American Psychologist, 32(9), 752-760. doi:10.1037/0003-066x.32.9.752

Walfish, S., McAlister, B., O’Donnell, P., & Lambert, M. J. (2012). An investigation of self-assessment bias in mental health providers. Psychological Reports, 110(2), 639-644. doi:10.2466/02.07.17.PR0.110.2.639-644