What career have you made by choosing Psychology and/or a similar specialty?

Hi Alisha,

After a couple of paragraphs, I will answer your question, directly. I think that it's important to get some clarification about the discipline of psychology first!

There are many opportunities in the discipline of psychology for employment. The reality is that you cannot call yourself a "psychologist" unless you have a doctorate (PhD or PsyD). Each state in the USA requires licensing to practice psychology; all of those statutes specify a doctorate plus supervised training by an already licensed practitioner for a specified number of months/years. The requirements for practice (i.e., providing therapy) vary from state to state.

Now, there are many opportunities to use psychological principles in work settings even without a doctorate. In order to provide "therapeutic services," you would need to get a master's degree in say counseling or family therapy and then get licensed within the state in which you wish to practice. With a master's degree in say family therapy, you just cannot call yourself a psychologist, since you do not posses a doctorate. Many master's level therapist obtain a credential called the Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC). Third-party health insurance carriers often compensate LPC's at the same rate for therapy as persons licensed as psychologists! You can learn more about the LPC credential by going to the website of the American Counseling Association (https://www.counseling.org/)

Less than fifty percent of psychologists actually offer therapy. Are you surprised by this statement? Psychology is a very diverse discipline with opportunities to use psychological principles in the work setting even with just a bachelor's degree.

I recommend that you explore all of the sub-disciplines within psychology by going to the "divisions tab" from the website of the American Psychological Association (www.apa.org). Another place to explore is the Association for Psychological Science (https://www.psychologicalscience.org/).

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Now, to answer your question, finally, I have had several related occupations since obtaining my doctorate. I'll list them in the order in which they occurred. All of these occupations involved psychological assessment (as that is what my doctorate was all about!)

1. I was a traveling school psychologist in the State of Arkansas for two years. I was licensed, initially as a Psychological Examiner when I started, as my dissertation wasn't yet completed; my work was supervised by a licensed, clinical psychologist. I had to take a test to get licensed at the master's level at that time (1977). Then when I completed my doctorate (1978), I was licensed as a Psychologist, still under the supervision of that same man as I was still new to the profession. I loved doing this work. I just didn't love small town living in Arkansas. So, I moved back home.
2. I got a contract with the City of Philadelphia to provide consulting services in assessment design for one year. I worked for the Personnel Department. I was hired full time after that and worked for about 20 years total creating customized, occupational tests for the Police and Fire Departments. I also did staff training for our own employees and for people in other cities through a professional organization with which I was affiliated. I supervised a small staff of 5 people for a few years and then managed a team of 12 personnel analysts (many of the personnel analysts had bachelor degree in psychology!). I realized that I loved doing the training work more than anything else and started doing part-time teaching at colleges and universities a few evening a week or on Saturdays.
3. I went to work for the private sector for about a year doing assessment activities; that firm was bought-out by a major publishing house, a few months after I left that job.
4. I landed a middle-management job, similar to what I was doing with the City of Philadelphia's Personnel Department with State Government in New Jersey. I just had more management responsibilities than previously - I was second in command of a division of 95 people. My employment with State Government ended after a little more than 3 years, as a re-organization of the department was underway and I didn't have status as a civil servant employee (part of the Senior Executive Service which means that you are an employee at will).
5. I worked for 1 year for Temple University in an administrative job with their Measurement and Research Center. I continued to teach occasionally on a part-time basis.
6. An opportunity to teach full-time at one of the universities where I was a "part-timer" became available to me in 2004. I jumped at the opportunity to teach full-time and did so for 10 year until my retirement in June, 2014. I taught assessment courses at the graduate level (for a master's level program), Introduction to Psychology, Personality Theory, Leadership Theory, Tests & Measurement and occasionally other undergraduate courses such as Adolescent Psychology and Learning Theory.

So, as you can see with the descriptions above, I've had a variety of different employment opportunities in my 35+ years since leaving graduate school!

Hi Alisha,

I'm happy to see that you are interested in the vast field of Psychology! There are many different paths that you can take with traditional undergraduate training in psychology, and many specialties you are eligible for if you decide to pursue additional training. After earning a B.S. in Psychology I began working as a recruiter and I quickly moved into more of a sales/consultant role. In that position I would consult clients on human capital issues and assist them in finding talent in a very niche/saturated market. I worked in this industry in multiple roles for about 4 years. I liked some parts of what I was doing, but I couldn't answer the questions I really wanted to because I didn't have the training. I decided to go back to school and I am currently a graduate student pursuing my M.S. in Applied Behavioral Sciences with a specialization in Industrial-Organizational (I/O) Psychology expected to graduate in May 2019. This sub-field of psychology is primarily focused on people and the workplace. As an I/O practitioner, I'd be equipped to help organizations answer challenging and pertinent questions.

A couple of the topics I cover are:

• Motivation, Satisfaction, and Leadership. Does a motivated workforce perform better than a unmotivated workforce? Why do they (or not)? How much does leadership play a role in this relationship? How do we accurately measure the constructs 'leadership' and 'motivation'?
• Performance and Selection. Can we create a selection procedure that predicts performance? What factors should we measure? What should the research design be? How accurate an assessment in measuring a construct of interest? Are the results reliable and accurate?

As you can imagine, these are some topics and questions organizations are interested in answering as doing so could make them more efficient and increase their competitive advantage. Also - this is just an example of what an I/O psychologist does; however, Psychology is the science of finding out the why behind behavior.

To your other point about being told that Psychology is 'unstable' - in my opinion that is simply untrue. Psychology has been consistently ranked as one of the top 5 (or 10) majors in the USA, and has the most transferable skills for a profession that works with. . . . . people (so pretty much all of them!). I have friends that have used their undergraduate degree in psychology to go on an become police officers, lawyers, social workers, probation officers, elected government officials, and many other professions.

Let me know if you have any other questions! I'd be happy to provide more information about my experiences. I wish you the best.

Tyler

P.S. You interest in normative influence is right in the field of a social or cognitive psychology. Check out some of the other research in the field and see if there are phenomena you find interesting!