How To Become A Counselor Online

How to become a counselor online: Counseling is a talking or speech therapy that involves a trained professional normally known as talking therapist that listens and helps you to find ways to handle your emotional issues. Sometimes, the term counseling is referred to as talking therapy in general but can be a special therapy on its own. With the advent of technology and daily increase in the numbers of social media users, taking counseling online should not be far-fetched.

To become a counselor online should be the next step for every relationship, marriage counselors out there. On Deedeesblog, which is Nigeria’s best relationship blog, we offer love consulting services, online dating service, and online counseling service. We do all these to take away the offline bottle-neck of traditional counseling and to solve relationship problems on time and real-time

In this article, we will be looking at how to become a counselor online:

How To Become A Counselor Online

1. A degree/ certificate may be necessary

Building credibility is not based on counseling prowess, skill, and experience alone. It is important that you get a certificate that makes you legal, more credible and a go-to counselor as well. When you possess your Counseling certificate, you can raise your shoulders up as not only an expert in that field but professional certified as well.

You may take your Counseling career a step further by getting a Master Degree in counseling. Another feather on your cap isn’t it?

When you obtain your Master Degree in counseling with the state license, or certification, it helps boost the people confidence to accept you as a qualified talking therapist that can be trusted. If you do your job perfectly, you make a first good name.

Steps in getting a certificate in Counseling

Search for a Graduate Counseling Program

Discover the graduate counseling programs that can help you launch your career since there are various specialties in counseling. These are the list of counseling specialties we have:

Career counseling

This helps individuals understand their own selves and the world of work to make sound decisions concerning good occupation, education, and life. Usually, this kind of specialty involves a long period engagement of the client until it is certified that they can be relieved of learning.

Children and adolescent counseling

There is no doubt that children and adolescents face some challenges as they grow up within the circle of the family, peer group, school and their environment at large. From their birth to teenage age, they may be affected by the encounters physically, emotionally, morally and mentally.

College Counseling

College counseling has to do with different responsibilities that are applicable to the college counseling center’s mission.

There are many of the career specialties such as Grief Counseling, Mental health Counselor, Military Counseling, Pastoral Counseling, School counselor and so on. It is now left for you to choose your passion before you pursue your career as a counselor.

Explore a master’s level programs that are offered online, or in universities as per time or regular student. You can also pursue your master’s program on campus through CACREP it is an external accredited link for undergraduate programs.

Relationship/ Marriage Counseling

Wouldn’t it be fun if you snap up all certificates required for you to make couples live happily ever after?

Becoming a counselor to help couples in relationships and marriages will also require that you get a requisite certificate that will boost your counseling knowledge. It is therefore important that you go online to get the certificates you need to be a certified counselor online.

You can also research the counseling programs that are related to your pursuit such as therapy, social work and clinical.

Learn about the admission requirements and don’t forget to define how you will focus on a concentration or specific audience you prefer to work with such as adolescents, children, couples or mentally disturbed people.

2. Try and Execute your Fieldwork

In order to be given the license to counsel people, you must have participated in a number of documented periods in supervised clinical fieldwork. This requires an internship or a practicum before you can be graduated from the counseling program.

The Hours or Period Requirement for Practicum and Internship Program on how to become a Counselor online:

Practice

For a required practicum in counseling program, the hour ranges from 100 to 300 hours. This gives the students the opportunity to work with the team of licensed or certified professional counselors during individual and supervised sessions of the program. This program also opens the opportunity for a student to be present in meetings,  participate in training,  engage in developments that are professional, grant the chance to take reports and clinical notes, review videos and tapes and many other benefits.

Internship

The calculated hours of internship is arrived at about 600 hours. In this practice, students are made to work under the supervision and independently in and out of a session with their clients. This internship is seen in the same standard as to other practicing professionals at the clinical site. Students involved in Interns must take the clinical records, and also engage in professional development, they will communicate and also join other counselors and members of a specific family as may be assigned to them as clients.

3. Try getting a license to become a Counselor

Most countries or states will not allow you to participate in counseling if you are not certified or licensed by a reliable firm. You will not be allowed to accept health insurance from clients. In order for you to meet the requirement to practice counseling job, you must acquire counseling licensure or certification, otherwise, forget about it.

You may be good at counseling the people but the state licensure or certification may be necessary to show that you met the required qualification standard. This will also include the required minimum education level and supervised requisite hours dedicated in the fieldwork.

You can also research the licensing requirements in your area to ease the approval of your career opportunity.  Learn the number of hours for fieldwork and supervision requires in your state and where and how to fulfill them in practice. You may also make a requirement on the exam, cost, study, and registration.

4. Select a Career Path for your New Dream

There are many career opportunities available for you. If you have a state license or master’s degree in counseling can work in places such as the hospitals, clinics for mental health, private practices, drugs, and alcohol abuse rehabilitation programs, schools, government and community agencies.

• Search for specialties and identify the one you can help as a client.
• Locate where the counseling jobs are in your state

5. Continue in the Field of Learning and Working

Learning is a continuous process, the more you practice the better you become. Continue to expand your knowledge in the field of your career progress.  Remember, the field of counseling is dynamic; it grows with new findings every day.  There is a possibility that there has been a new development in child and adolescent counseling that was not previously addressed if you learn it, will not be pulled back in the trend.  You can’t tell when the license to participate in this new development could become a requirement before you can be allowed to attend to a client.

How to Follow the trend in Counseling Career

• Join the group of professional counseling organizations
• Explore and understand the requirement for the certification of the new development and learn how to obtain it.

6. Search for a Platform to register as a Certified Counselor

There are opportunities online for a professional and certified counselor like you when you have fulfilled the above requirements. Many companies are now online searching for professional to teach their client or guide them online. Companies such as udemy.com, indeed.com, careerjet.com, specialized in employing professionals to teach or guide as counselors on their websites and then get paid. You can apply to continue with the quest of your professional career.

7. Examinations?

Some online clients will require you to go through some aptitude test in order to qualify for the job of a counselor online. This is mostly required for an assurance of the fact that truly, you are a certified professional counselor before you are allowed to work with them. As a matter of that, you have to be informed about your field of professionalism before applying for a job online. You should be well acquainted with the knowledge of the job you are applying for and then pass the test given to test your knowledge.

8. Credentials and Documents

Remember, a genuine online company does not take anything unserious; they are professionals who mean serious business. They are prepared for anybody who needs their employment. This means you have to provide every single credential and document needed to qualify you to work with them.  Your documents must reach their requirements as stated in their terms and condition to participate as a staff, otherwise, you will be denied to teach on their platform.

9. Be sound in the Field of your Career

If you want to be selected first in anything you engage, you have to be diligent. Be well informed about your career. Especially, when people have good credibility about you offline, this will be an added advantage to boost your confidence while applying for a job of counseling online. Sometimes, a company online may require that you should be put on probation to see if you are really intelligent enough to handle a specific position that may be given to you. If you are good at what you claim, there will be no much setback while considering your employment.

10. Establish your own website to promote your Career

Every job must not be done under a boss or an organization, especially a guardian and counseling career; it is a self-employed entity. After the acquisition of the above requirements to become a counselor, and you have been certified or licensed, you can open a website, register the domain name and start your personal guidance and counseling job. This will give you the main sole proprietorship power to explore more at your convenient time how to attend to your client in the most appropriate way.  It will give you the chance to showcase your professionalism based on your leadership. This means, if you make your counsellorship a paid one, you still have full control over the salary that comes along.

11. You can join Social Media Forum of Counselors

There are many social media forums online that give you a wide expanse of space to promote your profession. Social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Nairaland, and so on are specifically built to say your mind. Especially Facebook, you can create a Facebook page to expand the circle of your career by guiding people on the path of your counsellorship. Twitter and Nairaland are not left out of the game; you can be updating your knowledge about guidance and counseling from time to time until the people are conversant with you.

You can then go ahead and build your authority online – Skype, Whatsapp, Facebook, Twitter and especially Instagram are now big on pushing content online. You can leverage these apps to build your authority, professionalism, and audience. Deedeesblog online counseling platform on Instagram has been able to build followership to a whopping 20 thousand followers. See how amazing this is? Go ahead, set your social media profiles up and start your Counseling career. Remove the offline, brick and mortar bottleneck. Presently we run the best online counseling service by leveraging our social media strength and great online counseling content on this Nigerian relationship blog.

Check out some of the reactions we got online on the importance of relationship counseling.

Now that you know a thing or two on how to become a Counselor online. Can you share further details on how it works in your locality? Whether you want to become a Counselor online in Nigeria, United Kingdom, US or anywhere in the world. How does becoming a Counselor online work in your area, please feel free to share with us.