Ryan Thomas Neace

One of the largest mistakes would-be interns make in attempting to find internships is very, very easy to avoid. Here’s how.

A recent email from a would-be-graduate counseling intern: “I am currently completing my counseling graduate coursework at a university in pursuit of licensure. I have been searching for an internship position beginning in the Fall 2013. I have been looking for 6 months now. I interviewed, but did not get an internship from an agency who had only 14 applicants for 10 open positions. Their response to me was that they thought I could obtain something elsewhere due to my extensive background (I already have an M.A. in Human Services and Education) and others could not. I wish they'd tell me the real reason as I thought the interview went very well. I am frustrated, so I was avidly searching for other places to apply and found your site… Since I have plenty of experience, I am baffled as to why I cannot find an internship.”

In Part 1 of “What’s Wrong with the Counseling Intern Picture?”, I made clear that the way counselors-in-training approach the internship phase of their programs needs changing. I’d now like to turn our attention to what needs changing in Professional Counseling culture toward young people in general, and especially toward counseling interns.

Frequently, I get contacts from students panicked, sometimes legitimately, over one internship thing or another. I try to help in any way I can, but often, my answers may have a similar ring to them. It lead me to start wondering, both from the perspective of counseling interns and the perspective of the counseling industry’s culture toward them, what is wrong with this picture?

Over the past few years it dawned on me that there are close to 1000 counseling education programs in the US – over 600 of them CACREP-accredited. That’s tremendous! What’s more, literally every student in every program must go through an internship. The American Counseling Association estimates that it has approximately 20,000 student members! Yet, for all of these realities, until now there has been no resource on the web for students to find counseling internships. That just didn’t seem right.