Example Job Description
Director of Guidance and Counseling
A leader who connects district school counseling programs, comprehensive advising, counselor development, and coordination of student planning and referrals with trustworthy evidence, equitable opportunity, and accountable action.
Interview Planning Resource
Possible Interview Q&A: Director of Guidance and Counseling
How to use this resource: Select questions that measure competencies established through the district’s current job analysis. Ask candidates the same predetermined questions under comparable conditions and evaluate responses against the same job-related criteria.
The indicators below describe evidence a strong response may contain; they are not required scripts or the only acceptable answers.
- Counselor ratios look equal but access differs. What would you examine?
Strong response indicators: Reviews student need, assigned duties, availability, appointment demand, missed contacts, language access, and referral completion rather than ratios alone.
- An advising tool incorrectly marks a student eligible for graduation. What would you do?
Strong response indicators: Obtains counselor and records review, verifies local requirements and transcript sources, corrects affected plans, informs authorized parties, and tests the rule.
- How would you evaluate counseling-program quality?
Strong response indicators: Combines access, ethical practice, advising accuracy, student understanding, referral follow-through, and appropriate outcomes; avoids evaluating counselors solely on raw test scores.
- A counselor is expected to provide clinical treatment beyond authorization. How would you respond?
Strong response indicators: Clarifies professional scope and supervision, protects immediate student safety, coordinates qualified referral, and corrects staffing and service expectations.
- How would you allocate counseling support?
Strong response indicators: Uses verified workload and student need, barriers, service goals, staffing capacity, and equitable access; checks actual appointments and follow-through after changes.
- How would you distinguish this role from Mental Health and Wellness?
Strong response indicators: Defines counseling-program and academic-advising responsibility, coordinates shared referrals, and preserves qualified clinical care and crisis-response ownership.
- The counseling access and planning dashboard disagrees with source records. How would you resolve this?
Strong response indicators: Checks populations, dates, definitions, refreshes, joins and corrections for counseling access, workload, advising quality and referral completion; reconciles with accountable owners, documents fixes and adds preventive checks.
- What evidence would you require before recommending this counseling service redesign?
Strong response indicators: Defines educational need, baseline, access and implementation measures, alternatives, cost and capacity; uses appropriate comparisons and uncertainty and specifies a review or exit decision.
- How would you protect sensitive records while helping teams act on counseling access, workload, advising quality and referral completion?
Strong response indicators: Defines purpose and authorized access, minimizes disclosure, protects small groups, uses approved systems and retention rules, and consults responsible privacy and legal owners.
- A vendor proposes AI to automate recommendations in this portfolio. How would you assess it?
Strong response indicators: Tests the proposed use against district school counseling programs, comprehensive advising, counselor development, and coordination of student planning and referrals; reviews accuracy, subgroup errors, privacy, security, accessibility and cost, and preserves authorized human decisions and challenge procedures.
- How would you build staff capability to use counseling access, workload, advising quality and referral completion well?
Strong response indicators: Uses authentic cases, verifies sources and denominators, explains missingness and uncertainty, coaches interpretation and checks whether evidence leads to useful changes in practice.
- What would your first 90 days as Director of Guidance and Counseling include?
Strong response indicators: Listens to affected students, families, staff and partners; maps authority and obligations, validates counseling access, workload, advising quality and referral completion, identifies urgent gaps and proposes a focused plan with owners and review dates.
Position Description
The Director of Guidance and Counseling leads district school counseling programs, comprehensive advising, counselor development, and coordination of student planning and referrals. The district or employing agency should define the final portfolio, delegated authority, and relationships with other program owners.
The position uses counseling access, caseload demand, advising quality, course planning, and referral completion to improve support; coordinates with mental health and readiness leaders while preserving professional boundaries.
Reports To
Illustrative reporting relationship: Assistant Superintendent of Student Services or Educational Services or other designated administrator. Confirm the locally approved structure and delegated authority.
Required Education and Credentials
Required
- Illustrative district qualification for review: master's degree in school counseling, pupil personnel services, educational leadership, or a related field; confirm the local degree requirement and permitted equivalents.
- Hold a valid California Administrative Services Credential or other authorization appropriate to the actual assignment. District HR must verify current authorization and any additional credential requirements against the final duties. Verify the appropriate Pupil Personnel Services authorization and qualified supervision for any assigned counseling services.
- Complete district-required employment clearances and training in student privacy, nondiscrimination, accessibility, records, safety, and responsible use of technology.
Preferred
- Graduate coursework or sustained professional learning in applied statistics, program evaluation, improvement science, education data systems, or responsible AI for educational decision-making.
- Advanced preparation in school counseling, pupil personnel services, educational leadership, or a related field, inclusive leadership, family partnership, and coaching adults to use evidence effectively.
Required / Desired Experience
Required Experience
- Illustrative minimum for local review: five years of successful school counseling, counseling-program supervision, and district or multi-school advising improvement; confirm experience thresholds and permitted equivalents.
- Experience supervising assigned staff, coordinating partners, managing resources, and implementing improvement across the assigned portfolio.
- Demonstrated use of counseling access, workload, advising quality and referral completion to investigate needs, verify records, evaluate action, and explain findings and limitations.
Desired Experience
- Experience with California district or regional program requirements, implementation monitoring, and improvement with diverse communities.
- Experience with a counseling access and planning dashboard, approved spreadsheets and tools such as Excel, Google Sheets, Power BI, Tableau, or equivalents; applied data-science literacy sufficient to collaborate with analysts.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities
Counseling Program Leadership
- Lead coherent academic, college and career, and social-emotional counseling services with appropriately qualified school counselors.
- Support professional supervision, ethical practice, student planning, family partnership, and clear referral pathways to specialized services.
- Coordinate transitions, course advising, and access to counseling with schools, readiness, special education, and mental health owners.
Access and Advising Evidence
- Analyze caseloads, student needs, appointment access, missed services, and referral completion; distinguish nominal staffing ratios from usable capacity.
- Review transcript quality, course plans, graduation progress, and postsecondary advising records with authorized counselors and records owners.
- Evaluate advising quality, student understanding, equitable access, and sustained follow-through using suitable evidence and student voice.
Ethics and Responsible Systems
- Maintain applicable counseling authorization, confidentiality, consent, mandated-reporting, records, and escalation procedures within the assignment.
- Review risk alerts and counseling notes for purpose, access, accuracy, retention, and professional boundaries; avoid unnecessary sensitive information in shared dashboards.
- Assess scheduling, planning, and AI advising tools for accuracy, subgroup effects, accessibility, and qualified human review of consequential recommendations.
Leadership and Improvement
- Supervise assigned personnel, resources, and professional learning; help teams use evidence for practical counseling improvement.
- Allocate support using verified need and workload, and coordinate service gaps with responsible school and district leaders.
- Report access, advising implementation, results and limits and perform related duties within the classification.
Required Skills and Abilities
Knowledge of
- Comprehensive school counseling, student development, academic advising, referral coordination, and professional ethics.
- Applicable pupil-services authorizations, confidentiality, consent, reporting, records, and disability protections.
- Caseload and workload analysis, transcript quality, advising access, referral completion, and evaluation limits.
- SIS and student-planning platforms, secure counseling records, scheduling tools, and responsible AI advising.
Ability to
- Translate priorities in district school counseling programs, comprehensive advising, counselor development, and coordination of student planning and referrals into feasible plans, clear responsibilities and measurable follow-through.
- Validate counseling access, workload, advising quality and referral completion using accurate sources, definitions, populations and denominators before making decisions.
- Evaluate implementation and outcomes, examine subgroup opportunity, and distinguish association from causation with qualified analytical support.
- Use approved modern systems and accessible visualizations; partner with data specialists on complex linkage, statistical methods or reproducible analysis.
- Protect confidential information, document consequential decisions, maintain professional judgment and escalate unresolved legal or policy questions.
- Lead staff and partnerships, communicate evidence and uncertainty clearly, and revise ineffective practices with affected communities.
Work Environment
- Work is performed in district offices, classrooms, school grounds, meeting rooms, and other professional settings, with remote participation as authorized.
- The position involves computer use, school visits, observation, facilitation, and detailed review of records, dashboards, assessments, reports, and communications.
- Work requires frequent coordination with school and district leaders, program specialists, students and families as appropriate, data and technology teams, fiscal and legal owners, and external partners.
- The employee encounters interruptions, competing priorities, sensitive student and personnel matters, and urgent concerns requiring calm, documented judgment.
- Workload may increase during planning and budget cycles, program transitions, monitoring and reporting reviews, public meetings, and urgent service concerns.
Other Requirements
- Successfully complete required criminal-record, fingerprint, and employment clearances.
- Complete a tuberculosis risk assessment and any examination required by applicable law or district policy.
- Maintain required credentials and complete district-assigned training in privacy, cybersecurity, accessibility, nondiscrimination, mandated reporting, and workplace safety.
- Protect confidential student and employee records; follow approved access, sharing, retention, incident-reporting, and records-request procedures.
- Travel between district offices, schools, professional-learning locations, and community meetings as assigned.
- Possess a valid California driver's license and maintain insurability when driving is an essential function; confirm the district's actual travel requirements.
- Occasionally work evenings, weekends, or extended hours for school events, public meetings, reporting deadlines, or urgent student and operational matters.
- Perform office and school-based activities involving sitting, standing, walking, communication, and computer use; confirm any role-specific lifting or other physical requirements through local job analysis.
- Perform the essential functions of the position with or without reasonable accommodation.