---
title: "Mental Performance Consultant"
description: "Teaches athletes, coaches, and performers mental skills like focus, confidence, and composure to perform at their best."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/mental-performance-consultant"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Mental Performance Consultant

**Category:** Community and Social Service · **SOC code:** 21-1014 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 21-1014.00

Teaches athletes, coaches, and performers mental skills like focus, confidence, and composure to perform at their best.

Also advertised as: Certified Mental Performance Consultant; CMPC; Mental Skills Coach; Mental Conditioning Coach; Performance Coach.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $60,320 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $29.00/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $39,250 to $100,900, with the middle half between $47,560 and $78,260
- **Total US employment:** 1,035,300
- **Typical entry education:** Master's
- **Preparation required:** Considerable preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Five: Extensive Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +10.9% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 97,700 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 34/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 1,035,300 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $39,250 |
| 25th | $47,560 |
| 50th (median) | $60,320 |
| 75th | $78,260 |
| 90th | $100,900 |
| Mean (average) | $66,300 |

### Pay by state

OEWS publishes no state-level wage estimates for this occupation.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 1,145,900 in the 2025–2035 base year to 1,270,700 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 124,800 jobs, or +10.9%. Much faster than average: 10.9% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 97,700 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Master's degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Considerable preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Five: Extensive Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** None.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| Master's Degree | 89.3% |
| Post-Master's Certificate | 7.1% |
| First Professional Degree | 3.6% |

## What the work involves

- Assess athletes' mental strengths and performance challenges
- Teach routines, imagery, self-talk, and focus techniques
- Lead team workshops on confidence and composure
- Observe training and competition to give feedback
- Advise coaches on communication and team culture
- Help athletes prepare for high-pressure events
- Refer clients with mental health concerns to licensed clinicians
- Track client goals and progress over a season

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Active Listening — importance 5.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Social Perceptiveness — importance 5.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Service Orientation — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Negotiation — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Therapy and Counseling — importance 5.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Psychology — importance 5.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 4.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Sociology and Anthropology — importance 4.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Education and Training — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 4.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Problem Sensitivity — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Expression — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Social (S), Investigative (I), Enterprising (E).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| S — Social | 6.79 |
| I — Investigative | 4.42 |
| E — Enterprising | 3.93 |
| A — Artistic | 3.82 |
| C — Conventional | 3.43 |
| R — Realistic | 1.31 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ENFJ | 78.4 |
| ENFP | 73.8 |
| ESFP | 67.2 |
| INFJ | 66.3 |
| ESFJ | 64.0 |

Best-fitting types: ENFJ, ENFP.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Mental Health Counselor](https://nuecareer.com/careers/mental-health-counselor) — median $60,320
- [Mental Health and Substance Abuse Social Worker](https://nuecareer.com/careers/mental-health-and-substance-abuse-social-worker) — median $60,280
- [Marriage and Family Therapist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/marriage-and-family-therapist) — median $66,940
- [Healthcare Social Worker](https://nuecareer.com/careers/healthcare-social-worker) — median $67,880
- [Clinical Psychologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/clinical-psychologist) — median $100,580
- [Rehabilitation Counselor](https://nuecareer.com/careers/rehabilitation-counselor) — median $46,850
- [School Social Worker](https://nuecareer.com/careers/school-social-worker) — median $59,550
- [Substance Abuse and Behavioral Disorder Counselor](https://nuecareer.com/careers/substance-abuse-and-behavioral-disorder-counselor) — median $60,320
- [Advanced Practice Psychiatric Nurse](https://nuecareer.com/careers/advanced-practice-psychiatric-nurse) — median $97,550
- [Social and Human Service Assistant](https://nuecareer.com/careers/social-and-human-service-assistant) — median $45,930

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/mental-performance-consultant