Counseling Psychologist Interview Questions:
1. What inspired you to pursue Counseling Psychology?
While this is typically a generic question, it holds a certain significance in the counseling profession. Counseling psychologists are required to treat the job as more than just a job. Working with people to better themselves requires patience and perseverance. Candidates should cite a strong motivation for wanting to pursue counseling, such as a life-changing event take took place when they were younger, for example.
2. A patient is emotionally distressed after suffering a traumatic experience. How do you respond?
Counseling psychologists require tremendous patience and understanding with their clients. Candidates should describe how they managed to calm them down in a level-headed, professional manner and assured them of their capacity to treat them.
3. What has been your greatest achievement with a patient?
Candidates should describe how they identified a unique problem, made the patient aware of something they did not yet know, and in doing so provided the patient with successful counseling. Look for stories where candidates identified a problem and found a creative solution to it.
4. What, in your opinion, is the most important quality in a counseling psychologist?
Along with patience, candidates should cite empathy and emotional intelligence as key skills in a counseling psychologist.
5. Have you ever failed to properly diagnose a client or offer helpful counseling? What did you do?
In the event that a candidate fails to offer the counseling a patient requires, the candidate should recommend the patient to a specialist who they believe is better suited to deal with their problem. It is important that candidates do not create the impression that the patient's problem is unsolvable, but rather that they require care beyond the candidate's professional capacity.