Career-Focused Counsellor (Remote / Contract) at Careers By Design

The Opportunity: 
Are you a passionate and experienced Career Counsellor, residing in Canada, ready to make a significant impact? We're seeking a warm, empathetic, and highly skilled professional to join our remote team. This unique role is for a practitioner who excels at practical career development while integrating resilience building modalities that address the whole person, and is adept at effectively enrolling clients into powerful, life-changing programs. You'll facilitate profound, long-term client success within a supportive, collaborative team environment, managing your workflow and client interactions seamlessly with our CRM and ensuring your professional insurance coverage is always current.
 

About Us: 

Careers by Design is a mission-driven organization that is dedicated to empowering individuals to achieve lasting career success by "bringing head and heart together."  We believe true career fulfillment comes from understanding both practical guidance and deeper emotional and physiological well-being. Our approach includes tactical strategies but goes beyond, focusing on creating safety and regulation as foundations for transformative career advancement. We are celebrating 20 years of success! 

Your Role & Our Client Journey: 

As a Career-Focused Counsellor, you'll guide clients through a transformative journey, blending practical career solutions with holistic well-being. Our client process is designed for deep impact:

1. The Initial Counselling Session: You'll lead prospective clients through our signature "Turning Point" session. This is where you'll demonstrate confidence in our comprehensive solution, build rapport, and effectively enroll clients into ongoing coaching programs aligned with their needs.
    
2. Ongoing Coaching Programs: You will then deliver comprehensive, long-term coaching (3 months to a year). This involves:
   
   
   • Career Guidance: Addressing career challenges including career change and job search (resume feedback, interviewing, job search) alongside deeper emotional challenges (stress, anxiety, identity disruption) and life issues. You'll leverage your proficiency with AI tools for efficient career development research (e.g., labour market trends, job search strategies), but always integrate this research with your professional insight and client-centered approach.
      
   • Resilience Building: Providing psychoeducation and utilizing HeartMath and body-centered approaches to optimize their well-being for career change and decision-making.
      
   • Client Engagement: Maintaining strong, collaborative, and non-judgmental client relationships through consistent engagement and ongoing check-ins, documenting client progress within our CRM system.
      
   • Action-Oriented Support: Structuring sessions with clear action plans, balancing process with tangible results.
      

You'll manage 10-15 clients per week, demonstrating excellent self-management and a proactive approach, while actively contributing to our team and ensuring all administrative tasks, including CRM updates are handled efficiently.

What We're Looking For In You:

Essential Experience & Skills:
 

• 3-5+ years focusing specifically on Career Counselling.
   
• HeartMath: Familiarity with HeartMath tools and approach. This is an integral part of our solution. It is essential that the candidate has evaluated and assessed alignment with this approach and is excited to integrate it into the career counselling work. Training and facilitator certification can be obtained post-hire.
   
• Anxiety & Stress Specialization: Advanced skills in helping clients navigate anxiety through both cognitive and somatic approaches, recognizing the intensity of career transition stress.
   
• Cognitive Training: Minimum CBT training and/or certification.
   
• Career Transition Acumen & AI Proficiency: Expertise in the stressful context of career change, including job loss, identity disruption, tech impact (AI), and labour market trends. Demonstrated ability to effectively use AI tools for career development research (e.g., industry trends, skill mapping) to enhance your client support, while maintaining critical human insight and judgment.
   
• Sales & Enrollment Proficiency: High proficiency in guiding clients through the sales and enrollment process for our coaching programs.
   
• Holistic & Solution-Oriented: A solution and strengths-focused approach, knowledgeable in positive psychology, with the ability to coach on broader life issues.
   
• CRM Proficiency: Essential ability to efficiently utilize a CRM system for client management, scheduling, and progress tracking.
   
• (For bonus points!) Nervous System & Somatic Focus: A deep understanding of nervous system states and their impact on career decisions. Training in somatic therapy or body-centered psychotherapy. Personal experience working on your own nervous system and emotional regulation.
   

Your Character & Approach:

• Authentically Client-Centered: You genuinely believe clients are resourceful, creative, and wise. You're committed to long-term relational work.
   
• High Emotional Intelligence: Possessing warmth, caring, and the ability to easily establish rapport with diverse clients.
   
• Collaborative & Adaptive: A self-starter who works well within a team, offers helpful feedback, adapts with ease and joy, and embraces our policies and procedures.
   
• Mission-Aligned: A genuine passion for empowering diverse client populations and supporting our vision of "bringing head and heart together."
   
• Depth-Oriented: Eager to work beneath surface-level issues, recognizing that practical challenges often stem from deeper concerns.
   

Education & Certification:

• Expertise in career development.
   
• You have well developed counselling skills and your services are eligible for insurance coverage (examples for Ontario: Registered Psychotherapist, Registered Psychologist, Social Worker (MSW or RSW), CCC, RCC, RCT or equivalent designation in your home province).  Coverage has to be valid for private practice and recognized by major insurers.
   
• HeartMath facilitator certification (can be pursued after hiring) but must be aligned with this approach and willing to integrate it into your work.
   
• Bonus: Training/certification in nervous system/somatic approaches.
   
• Bonus: Background in body-centered psychotherapy modalities.
   

Practical Requirements:

• Current and ongoing professional insurance coverage is mandatory for this role.
   
• Ability to facilitate counselling effectively in a remote setting.
   
• Strong administrative skills, including highly proficient use of CRM software.