Your steps to apply
Licensed Professional Mental Health Counselor (LPMHC)
Veterans Health Administration · Syracuse, New York · Closes in 58 days
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1 Check you can apply You are here
Who can apply: The public.
This job is open to the public. The announcement says you must be a U.S. citizen to apply, and males born after 12/31/1959 must have registered with Selective Service.
Experience: For the GS-11 full performance level, you need at least 1 year of post-master's mental health counseling experience (VA or non-VA) and an independent-practice license. The GS-9 entry level is for people with less than 1 year of post-master's experience or for graduates not yet licensed, who must work under close supervision.
Education: You need a master's or doctoral degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling, Clinical Rehabilitation Counseling, or a related field such as Addiction, Community, Gerontology, or Marital, Couple, and Family Counseling. The program must be accredited by CACREP. Traditional rehabilitation counseling programs do not qualify. Foreign degrees need a Certificate of Foreign Equivalency.
Licenses and certifications:
- Full, current, unrestricted license to practice independently as a Licensed Professional Mental Health Counselor, including diagnosis and treatment
- Applicants still completing licensure may be referred and tentatively selected but cannot be hired until all requirements are met
Experience can be paid or unpaid, volunteer work included: if it matches the duties, it counts. The full rules are in the announcement.
2 Resume and documents
Write a federal resume for this job. For each job you held, give the month and year you started and ended, your hours per week and what you did, using the words of the experience the announcement asks for. Many announcements accept resumes of up to 2 pages: check this one.
3 Apply on USAJOBS
Closes in 58 days (December 31, until 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time).
You sign in to USAJOBS with a Login.gov account, answer the questionnaire and upload your documents, then you submit. Answer the questionnaire honestly: your resume must show what you claim.
How they rate you: You will be rated on how well you meet the qualifications. Your application, resume, CV, and supporting documents will be verified, and the agency may run reference checks. Missing required information may result in an ineligible rating or a lower score.
4 After you apply
In USAJOBS, under Applications, you can see where your application stands: received, reviewed, referred to the hiring manager or not, then selected or not. It can take a few weeks.
For the interview, prepare three examples with the STAR method: the Situation, the Task, what you did (Action) and the Result.
If they choose you: a tentative offer, then a background check, a security clearance (Other), then the final offer with your start date.
Tips for this job:
- Be clear and specific about your counseling experience, because the agency will not assume anything about it.
- Confirm your master's or doctoral program is CACREP accredited and upload a transcript if you use education to qualify.
- Submit your full application, including the questionnaire and documents, by 11:59 PM ET on 12/31/2026.
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