|
Careers
in applied psychology Prof.
Johann Louw This document addresses the
question: “What can I do with a major or an Honours or a Master’s degree in
Psychology”? It argues that the full range of opportunities available is best
understood if one approaches it from an applied psychology perspective. You
can read the document as one integrated piece, or you can click on the links
below to access various sub-sections. |
|
Contents
- More opportunities than you think
- Varieties of applied psychology
- Skills from a psychology degree
- Jobs and careers
- Final word
- References
Adobe PDF version of this document
There are more opportunities out there than
you think
“What can I
do with a major or an Honours or a Master’s degree in
Psychology”? This is a question all of us who teach psychology face on a
regular basis. Often one detects a note of despair in this question, as if the
answer is already known, and that the options are limited. Or that apart from
two answers, do clinical work or do research, there just is not much else. I
would like to convince you that people with psychological training do not have
to (and do not) work only in traditional counselling
and mental health care service jobs, or in the academy, but that there are
excellent opportunities in what we can call “applied psychology”.
The strange thing is that if one looks at what people with training in
psychology actually do, the range or variety is amazing. This is why I thought
it might be useful to write about jobs in psychology in a very general sense,
to show students (and others) what is possible with a degree in psychology. I
hope that the information will alert you to career options and educational
pathways that you may not have known about or thought to consider.
I am not going to write about two categories of employment for
psychologists: as academics, and as private practitioners. I believe most
people know enough about these two possibilities. Also, I am not going to write
about the different categories of psychologists in
Instead, I would like to take a look from the other side, from where
people end up in terms of the jobs they do, not in terms of their professional
training. Because the point is that training in psychology prepares you for so
many possibilities, that it is impossible to predict where you might find
yourself in a few years’ time. In the examples of young people in jobs I give
later on, you will see that I don’t say what kind of psychologist they were
trained as. Because it is clear that the specific training did not matter so
much in terms of what they do now, and I assure you that their training
background includes all five the professional categories. And not to forget:
for the majority of people it does not matter that they are not professionally
registered psychologists. Certainly, for the jobs I give examples of, none
required professional registration. If they did, I will indicate that. Indeed,
this is perhaps the most important message of this piece: that professional
registration is required for very few of these jobs.
My approach is to write about jobs in what we can call applied
psychology, as I said above. Of course, one of the major, if not THE major area
of application of psychology is in mental health – hence the fact that clinical
psychologists dominate the field in most countries. But clinical psychologists
themselves frequently use their knowledge and skills to work outside the mental
health field.
What I have done is to identify interesting and personally rewarding
career opportunities that involve psychological knowledge and its application.
The
many varieties of applied psychology
What are the
practical or applied fields in which you will find psychologists? There are too
many to mention here, but the International Association for Applied Psychology
has the following divisions, and this will give you a very good idea of broad
fields of work psychologists are active in.
|
Division |
|
Organisational Psychology |
|
Psychological Assessment and
Evaluation |
|
Psychology and National
Development |
|
Environmental Psychology |
|
Educational, Instructional and
School Psychology |
|
Clinical and Community Psychology |
|
Applied Gerontology |
|
Health Psychology |
|
Economic Psychology |
|
Psychology and Law |
|
Political Psychology |
|
Sport Psychology |
|
Traffic and Transportation
Psychology |
|
Applied Cognitive Psychology |
|
Counselling Psychology |
A field in which psychologically-trained people
are making an increasing impact, is programme
evaluation and monitoring. Because training at all levels of psychology usually
include quite a lot of attention on research methodology, psychology graduates
move into this field quite easily. Many social, health, and community programmes and interventions furthermore are based on
psychological theories and research. In fact, departments of psychology
nowadays often run postgraduate courses in programme
evaluation. Here at UCT the Department of Psychology offers a Master’s course
in programme evaluation methods. In the Section for Organisational Psychology, in the Commerce Faculty, there
is in fact a strong concentration in training evaluation, and human resources programme evaluation.
Donaldson and Christie (2006) identified a broad range of settings where
psychologists doing programme evaluation work:
non-profit organisations, educational settings,
health-care settings, government settings, and corporate settings. The
situation in
I give only a few recent examples.
|
Government sector: |
|
Deputy Director for Policy
Evaluation and Research in the Eastern Cape Department of Education |
|
Deputy Manager: Monitoring and
Evaluation, KwaZuluNatal Department of Agriculture
and Environment |
|
Deputy Director-General,
Monitoring and Evaluation, Office of the Public Service Commission |
|
Deputy Director, Programme
Performance Monitoring, Department of Land Affairs |
|
Non-government sector: |
|
Senior Researcher in Monitoring
and Assessment of Human Rights for the South African Human Rights Commission |
|
Monitoring and Evaluation Officer,
World Vision of |
|
Senior Technical Specialist in
Evaluation and Research for Jet Education Services. |
|
Corporate settings:
|
|
Monitoring and Evaluation
specialists for a Johannesburg-based management consulting firm |
One indicator of the importance given in
Given
The Human Capital Initiative of the American Psychological Society
predicted that these six areas of concern would be where applied psychologists
could make substantial contributions. One can look at these broad fields as
predictors of where opportunities for growth and employment are going to be in
the future.
|
Area of concern
|
|
Productivity in the workplace |
You
learn more than you think
Students,
even after they have graduated with a bachelor’s, honours
or master’s degree, say that they don’t know what they actually have learnt
what they can do; what they can offer to prospective employers. Perhaps because
psychology graduates find such a variety of jobs, they often consider their
work unrelated to psychology. But it is more likely that many graduates, or
current students, underestimate psychology's relationship to their work. And we
at universities contribute to that, because we don’t tell students explicitly
what knowledge and skills they are acquiring via their psychology degrees. We
often fail to recognize what skills psychologists have, or find it very
difficult to articulate what these are. Yet psychology majors gain a range of
skills that are asked for by, and can be applied to, almost any job.
It is not a bad idea to take a skills orientation to both your studies
and your later career. Think of your courses not only as ways of learning about
particular subjects but also as learning experiences which refine a variety of
specific skills. So let us look at “skills”, as something a little different
from “knowledge”. First, we look at the skills that employers seek in
graduates, as suggested by the American Psychological Association (APA), and by
a South African study.
The skills and knowledge that employers seek
– the APA
Go to http://www.apa.org/science/nonacad-skills.html
|
General skills:
|
|
Action oriented, take initiative |
|
Information gathering and reporting skills: |
|
Literature searches (paper and
electronic) |
|
General analysis and synthesis skills: |
|
Reading critically |
|
Project planning skills: |
|
Identifying the steps in a project
from beginning to end |
|
Problem definition:
|
|
Identifying central issues and key
questions |
|
Understanding that people may have different perspectives: |
|
Realising the advantage to
understanding the different perspectives |
|
Methodological skills: |
|
Ability to detect confounded
variables |
|
Statistical and inferential skills: |
|
Statistical reasoning skills |
|
Knowledge of the capabilities and limitations of people: |
|
E.g. cognitive, perceptual,
social, personality differences |
Linda Richter and her colleagues at the
South Africa
|
Advertised Skills and Duties |
|
Training or teaching |
You can find this out easily for yourself, by looking at the job
advertisements in the weekend newspapers, to see what knowledge, skills, and
abilities employers require. A little further on I give some recent examples to
illustrate this point for you. (You can find another, complementary, list at http://www.psywww.com/careers/skills.htm).
But Richter and colleagues draw our attention to a number of important
conclusions, all still valid today I believe:
- When graduates enter the workforce, many are going to be expected
to train and/ or teach people; take on administrative and managerial tasks
and roles; be numerate; and understand the labour
environment and the changing social environment.
- Most jobs were advertised in human resources, manpower, organisational development, and industrial relations,
followed, in descending order, by education, research, social development,
welfare, and health.
- The finding that the majority of jobs advertised ask for a
generalist tertiary qualification, or one in the social sciences (and
later the human sciences), and not professional registration, contains an
important lesson. It is that the employment environment in
By now I am sure you have sensed that the skills that employers want are
exactly the things that an education in psychology delivers. Below is a list of
such skills, which I drew from a number of sources, as you will see. Of course,
many of those skills are generic to university education, but psychology is
unique in the number and variety of skills it imparts. The British
psychologist, Nicky Hayes (1996), had this to say about it: “One of the
important factors that makes psychology special is not
the psychological skills themselves, which are often relevant to other
disciplines as well, nor the specific items of knowledge. It is the sheer
number of skills and range of knowledge that makes psychology special.
Psychology is distinctive in that it equips its graduates with an extremely
rich and diverse portfolio—providing a variety of forms of expertise, which are
found in few other disciplines and which can equip psychology graduates to
undertake many different types of work”.
The distinctive skills of a psychology
graduate
from Nicky
Hayes (1996)
|
Literacy |
|
Highly literate |
|
Numeracy |
|
Highly numerate |
|
Computer literacy
|
|
Generally computer literate |
|
Information-finding skills |
|
Trained to search through a range
of ways of obtaining information |
|
Research skills
|
|
Explicitly trained in research
methods. A range of different techniques:
|
|
Measurement skills
|
|
Learn how to operationalise
the measurement of complex process |
|
Environmental awareness |
|
Know how someone's environment can
influence their behaviour, such as
|
|
Interpersonal awareness |
|
Learn about
|
|
Problem-solving skills |
|
Systematically trained in
problem-solving skills |
|
Critical evaluation
|
|
Training in skepticism:
|
|
Perspectives |
|
Ability to examine issues from
multiple points of view |
|
Higher-order analysis |
|
Skilled at spotting recurrent
patterns in human activity |
|
Pragmatism |
|
A pragmatic approach to work and
problem-solving |
To repeat a point that should be obvious by now: the skills imparted by
a degree in psychology can be valuable for many types of work apart from the
profession of psychology itself. Perhaps the most generalizable of those are:
- information gathering skills
- analysis and synthesis skills (for example, figuring out why a
certain problem occurs and how to minimize or eliminate it),
- methodological skills,
- statistical reasoning skills (for example, using statistics,
tables, and graphs to analyze problems and communicate relevant findings),
- "people skills" (for example, communicating with and
relating to individuals from diverse backgrounds), and
- writing skills
(for example, writing a logically developed report).
Although all of these skills may not be acquired by all graduate
students in the course of their study, graduate students may acquire these
skills by a thoughtful selection of courses and experiences. Here is what a
group of young Australian psychologists had to say about the value of their
psychology degrees:
- “I constantly draw on the knowledge and skills I learnt from
university. I would not be as effective as I am without my degrees.”
- “Most important in maximising my career
prospects would be skills in psychological assessment and intervention,
interpersonal skills, report writing and the ability to work effectively
as part of a team.”
- “Working within a university environment was instrumental in
developing analytical, problem solving and research skills. It was
enormously beneficial to have also gained such a breadth and depth of
theoretical and statistical knowledge”
- The psychology degree has provided me with essential research and
communication skills, which have enabled me to work in a job for which I
had no prior content knowledge”
- “The quality of the grounding which I received during my Psychology
degrees has provided a solid foundation to enable me to succeed in an
entirely new field.”
- “The psychology degree provides a much stronger theoretical basis
on which to understand what organisational
psychologists do and why, the limitations and the contributions that we
can make. It provides a set of ethical principles within which to work and
a scientist-practitioner perspective.”
Jobs
and careers
Earlier I
said that it is useful to study the job market, or careers, from the point of
view of people who already hold jobs in which they use the knowledge and skills
imparted by an education in psychology. It is now time to look at such jobs.
The first thing you will notice is the immense variety that exists. This
should not come as a surprise, given what I have said so far about skills. In
the USA, even the CIA regularly advertises for psychologists, and they ask for
areas of expertise like these: research methodology and experimental design,
attitudinal survey development and implementation, advanced statistical
analysis, test validation and development, job performance measurement and
evaluation, personnel selection and placement, human-computer interface issues,
organisational analysis and development, database
design, development and manipulation.
Second, keep in mind that these people landed in their current jobs via
a very circuitous route. In future, we will try and update this document by
also including a few case studies of how people arrived at their present jobs.
Starting out, you can expect to move in and out of jobs and organisations.
Your degree therefore is a platform to start off from, but it is almost
impossible to predict where you are going to end up.
Third, the jobs, and job advertisements, mentioned below, are a mixture
of high level, senior posts, and posts that require little experience. I don’t
discuss entry level posts much, because what I want you to see is the end
point. But the skills I referred to above are exactly the kinds of generic
skill entry level jobs typically ask for. Psychologists (and other
professionals and graduates too) are expected to perform tasks and duties that
go beyond narrow job functions and specialist applications.
A sample of jobs held by South African psychology
graduates is presented below.
|
Jobs held by South African psychology graduates |
|
Vice-chancellor of a university |
|
In at least three cases, deputy
vice-chancellors of universities |
|
Director-general of the national
Department of Education |
|
A director in the National
Intelligence Agency |
|
Consultant to Investec Bank |
|
Applying psychological principles
to health and sport at the Sports Science Institute |
|
Human resources specialist in the
South African Breweries |
|
Change management consultant MAC
Consulting |
|
Recruitment officer - Truworths |
|
Project writer Stellenbosch
Foundation, |
|
Researcher, Braxton Group
Consulting |
|
Manager, Organisational
Development, SANLAM |
|
Executive Director and Director,
of the Child, Youth, Family and Social Development research programme of the
Human Sciences Research Council |
|
Director, Social Aspects of
HIV/AIDS and Health research programme of the Human Sciences Research Council
|
|
Researcher for the South African
Parliament |
|
Project Manager: People
Development, Ackermans |
To expand on this, and give you an up-to-date idea what jobs are
available, and what the job requirements are, I give a list of jobs recently
advertised. I give the job title, the employer, and a brief list of
requirements the applicant ideally should meet.
- Deputy Director: Research Management, in the Department of Home
Affairs. A postgraduate degree, knowledge of research methods, project
management skills, writing skills, analytical skills, knowledge of organisational research.
- Manager, Department of Housing, Human Resource Management, HR
Development and Transformation. Appropriate bachelor’s degree, knowledge
of the appropriate legal framework, interpersonal skills, communication
skills, and competence in Human Resource Management, HR Development, Transformation,
Employee Wellbeing, and Labour Relations.
- Deputy Director, Department of Housing, Policy formulation,
Research and Best Practice and Monitoring. Appropriate bachelor’s degree
in the human sciences, knowledge of housing legislation, high-level liaising
and communication skills, computer literacy.
- Assistant Director, Department of Housing, Education, Training and
Development. Appropriate bachelor’s degree in social or human sciences,
experience in the field of capacity building, knowledge of housing
operations.
- Human Resource Officer, Labour Liaison, KwaZuluNatal Government. Qualification in the human
sciences, computer literate, knowledge of human resource related matters,
fluent in English.
- Manager, Psychological Services, all provinces. Master’s degree in
psychology and registration with the SAMDC as a psychologist.
- Training and Awareness Coordinator, for the Flemish Food Security Programme in KwaZuluNatal.
University degree, knowledge of training and communication to rural
communities, expertise in adult training, planning and implementing
training programmes.
- Director, Monitoring and Evaluation, Department of Social Services
and Poverty Alleviation,
- Interns (Monitoring and Evaluation) in the Health Systems Trust, to
assist with the implementation of projects that aim to support the
development of effective and efficient health information systems. A
degree in a social science, computer literate, good writing and
communication skills, facilitation skills.
- Assistant Director, Human Resources, Office of the Public Service
Commission. Degree in Human Resources, experience in human resource
development, labour relations, transformation
interventions, job evaluation, performance management, knowledge of
relevant acts, such as the Labour Relations Act.
- Clinical Psychologist at
- Student Counsellor,
- Research Specialist, Surveys, Analyses, Modelling
and Mapping, Human Sciences Research Council. A master’s degree in the
social sciences, research experience, refereed research publications,
knowledge of quantitative and qualitative methodologies.
- Researcher,
- Research Coordinator: Policy and Research, Commission on Gender
Equality. Master’s degree in public administration or the humanities.
Qualifications in Gender Studies. Sound research methodology and
monitoring skills. Experience in drawing up research and funding
proposals. Computer literacy.
- Research Executive, Bluchick (Pty) Ltd, a
qualitative market research agency. Strong background in psychology or
sociology, qualitative research experience, analytical skills.
- Psychometrist,
Department of Defence. Honours
degree in psychology, registered with the SAMDC as a psychometrist,
communication skills, interviewing and report-writing, computer literacy.
- Assistant Director, Employee Wellness Programme,
Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism. Appropriate bachelor’s
degree in the social sciences, sound knowledge of research, analytical
skills, knowledge of HIV/AIDS, of the Occupational Health and Safety Act,
computer literacy.
- Deputy Director: Youth Development, Department of Social
Development. Bachelor’s degree in social science, monitoring and
evaluation skills, project management skills, facilitation skills,
financial management, communication skills, computer literacy.
- Coordinator of in-house research, the Cancer Association of South
Africa. Qualification in research and statistics, epidemiology
requirement, proposal writing, data input, analysis and write-up.
- Counselling Centre
Manager, Lifeline
- Human Resources Coordinator, SouthDeep
Mining. HR-related degree, knowledge of HR information systems, of
Microsoft Excel, Word, and Powerpoint.
Analytical ability.
- Manager, Organisation al Wellness,
Parliament of South Africa. Degree in Behavioural
Sciences or Organisational Psychology.
Registration with an HR statutory body. Knowledge of HR administrative and
information systems, compensation and benefits, employee relations, health
and safety.
- Skills Development Officer, Construction Education and Training Athority. A relevant degree or diploma, with exposure
to quality assurance, education, training, and development of persons.
Good communication skills, computer literacy, ability to generate
technical reports.
- Transformation Manager, PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
BA or BComm degree. Monitoring and reporting on
social responsibility projects, liaising with stakeholders, monitoring of
CSI budget.
- Marketing Manager, BHPBilliton. Bacherlor’s or Master’s degree in a business,
commercial or technical discipline. Fluent English. Computer literate with
SAP experience.
- Behavioural
Scientist for the Desmond Tutu HIV Centre, South African AIDS Vaccine
Initiative. Minimum a degree in the social sciences, ability to plan,
design and implement projects, research experience, interest in community
work, report writing.
- Project manager, SANGONet. Project
management skills, understand the Internet and
its potential use in the workplace. Information management skills,
communication skills.
- Deputy Director: Gender and Disability, in the Department of
Science and Technology. An Honours degree,
research project management skills, gender mainstreaming knowledge,
involvement with projects dealing with disability issues, knowledge of
government policy environment.
- Manager: Knowledge Management, Department of Science and
Technology. Some managerial experience, a postgraduate degree, ability in
research management and report writing, communication skills, and
administrative skills.
- Training and Social Development Coordinator for the South African
National Biodiversity Institute, on the Working for Wetlands programme. An appropriate degree, experience in
training and social development, competence in training management, skills
development, assessment, and evaluation.
The USA
On the APA
website (http://www.apa.org/science/nonacad_careers.html),
they list what they call interesting careers, and they give details of what it
is that each person does, and how they got there.
|
Non-Academic Careers for Scientific Psychologists |
|
Acquisitions Editor |
|
Research Psychologist in a |
|
Research Director for a Non-Profit
Organization |
|
Experimental Psychologist in a
Behavioral Science Research Firm |
|
Medical Error Consultant |
|
Social Psychologist in
Rehabilitation Technology |
|
Psychology Emerges in a Multimedia
World |
|
Engineering Psychology in Research
and Development |
|
Becoming a Science Writer |
|
Technology Consultant in the
Telecom Industry |
|
Social Science Analyst in the
Public Sector |
|
Research Psychology at Microsoft |
|
Human-Computer Interface Designer |
|
Cognitive and I/O Psychologists in
the Technology Industry |
|
Highway Safety Research Analyst |
|
Policy Scientist as an Independent
Consultant |
|
International Market Research
Consultant |
|
Human Factors Expert |
|
Statistical and Methodological
Consultant |
|
Psychologist in the White House |
|
Police Psychology in the Federal
Government |
|
Clinical Neuropsycho-pharmacologist
|
|
Market Research Consultant |
|
Human Factors Psychologist in
Aviation |
|
Academic Research Administrator |
|
|
|
Chemical Senses Scientist |
|
Chemical Senses Scientist |
|
NASA Research Psychologist |
|
Design Psychologist |
|
Forensic Psychologist in the FBI |
|
Human Resources Research
Organization |
|
Corporate Investment Strategist
for the Military |
|
Federal Drug Science Specialist |
|
Executive Search Consultant |
|
Organizational Development Consultant
|
|
Trial Consultant |
|
Expert Witness in Employment
Discrimination Cases |
The same APA website also lists tasks that psychologically-trained
people perform in these jobs. I am sure that a survey of South African psychologists
will produce a very similar picture; indeed, if you look at the list of skills
and duties from Richter et al.’s study (1998), you will see the similarities.
This is not surprising, because psychology in this sense is truly an
international discipline, so that one gets qualified to do very similar things,
no matter where you qualified.
|
Tasks performed
|
|
|
|
|
|
Administration |
Motivation |
|
Advising |
Negotiation |
|
Analysis Performance Evaluation |
Polling |
|
Assessment |
Public Policy |
|
Business Process Engineering |
Recruiting |
|
Computer/Human Interface |
Rehabilitation |
|
Consulting |
Research |
|
Counseling |
Safety |
|
Data Analysis |
Sensory Evaluation / Perception |
|
Design Software Engineering |
Statistics |
|
Editing |
Strategic Planning |
|
Ergonomics |
Stress Evaluation |
|
Exper. Design |
Teaching/Training |
|
Evaluating |
Time-Motion Study |
|
Facilitation |
Work Design |
|
Focus Groups |
Writing |
|
Forensics |
Interviewing |
|
Market Research |
|
In conclusion
There are
large-scale changes happening in the world that affect all of us in the jobs
that are available to us, and what we do. This is especially true for
psychologists, because two of those fundamental shifts apply directly to
psychology: one is a shift to the services industry, and the other is the
reliance on knowledge, what people generally refer to as the knowledge economy.
(In the advertisements listed above you saw for example jobs related to
knowledge management, a job category unheard of until recently). A consequence
of these shifts, and other I have mentioned, is that students find it difficult
to identify and understand what the career opportunities available to them are
in this regard. And not just students – all of us find it difficult! If you
look at the job advertisements in the newspapers, it certainly does not seem as
if there is much for the psychologically-trained graduate to go for.
But it is all in the way you look. You have to look first at the job title,
normally a pretty good indication whether it is something for you. Then of
course you look at the job requirements – and here is where the surprises lie
for you. Hopefully I have convinced you the kinds of skills now required by
jobs advertised in
There certainly is a trend toward more diverse careers, also and perhaps
especially so involving psychology. In short, “a range of rewarding and
exciting new career opportunities for those with bachelor’s, master’s or
doctorate degrees in psychology await you” (Donaldson & Berger, 2006, p.
17) Indeed, these authors say that “opportunities for students entering the
field of psychology have never been greater than today” (p. 6).
References
I have
referred in the text to the websites and publications I found useful in drawing
up this document. Here I list them all again, plus a few extra.
- Donaldson, S.I., Berger, D.E., and Pezdek,
K. (Eds.). (2006). Applied psychology: New frontiers and rewarding
careers.
You can access the two chapters I referred to in the text on the web: - http://www.cgu.edu/include/Rise_Applied_Psych_Chap1.pdf
(Donaldson and Berger)
- http://www.cgu.edu/include/Evaluation_Careers.pdf
(Donaldson and Christie)
- Hayes, N. (1996). The distinctive skills of a psychology graduate.
European Psychologist, 1 (2), 130 -134.
- Richter, L.M., Griesel, R.D., Durrheim, K.,
4.
Websites:
http://www.psywww.com/careers/skills.htm
http://www.apa.org/careers/
http://www.apa.org/workforce/
http://www.apa.org/monitor/2008/04/careers.aspx
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/getArticle.cfm?id=1316
http://www.apa.org/gradpsych/2009/03/ivory-tower.aspx
http://www.apa.org/careers/resources/profiles/index.aspx