IT’S not unusual for people to go to university with no idea what they actually want to do at the end of it. Some people can’t even settle on a degree and change when they go to their college or university of choice. However, fear not – there are often jobs available to graduates of certain degrees that they might not have already thought of. A good mix of writing skills and analytical proficiency that can be gained from doing any degree can always be put to use in a job and it’s something that employers look out for. So, if you have a psychology degree, what else can you do apart from becoming a psychologist?
Counsellor or advice worker
‘Advice worker’ sounds quite vague, but that career path, together with a counselling job, is perfect for psychology graduates. After proving that you can read, write and listen well, why not combine those skills and help people out? Councils use counsellors (both kinds, in fact) to help local residents with various troubles, and big institutions like universities and banks employ counsellors to counsel students and members of staff who are under stresses and strains of everyday life. All around the world, psychology students are bringing calm and serenity to people’s busy lives – isn’t that a nice thought?
Careers advisor
How ironic that this should make it onto a career advice list, but we couldn’t ignore it as an option. First of all, it uses similar qualities that counsellors have – rational thought and talking things through with people – and results come when you work with someone who desperately need some guidance and a steady onlooker to help them. Secondary schools and universities employ careers advisors, but if working with teenagers doesn’t ring your bell, try looking at local authorities and councils.
Human resources officer
The psychology graduate can read people like they’re books with big-print font, so what better person to employ for a HR position than someone who’ll be able to place people in the right job and get to the bottom of what they want when they come into the HR office. Human resources officers need to think about the bigger picture, look at a broad spectrum of problems and issues and overcome things that are causing companies grief – all with an analytical mind and eye for detail.
Market researcher
Any employer looking for someone to fill a researching role will look upon a psychology degree favourably, but a marketing researcher needs to have a pretty good understanding of what people are thinking, how they might respond to something and how best to get a message across. Speaking to small groups of people with a psychologist’s eye for picking up on the smallest of nuances, marketing researchers can work out what is and isn’t working for a company’s marketing strategy. Not quite mind readers, but almost…
Sport and exercise psychologist
Sports and games are important in peoples’ lives because they promote a healthy lifestyle, a chance to make new friends and do something fun in their free time. But some people take it pretty seriously – and they want to know exactly what the other team is thinking so that they can out-manoeuvre or tackle someone to win the game. Sneaky, but effective, and various sporting industries need tactical-thinking sports psychologists to help them with their game play. Who knows, do a psychology degree and you could end up helping your home country’s football team win the world cup.
Teaching
This one might seem fairly obvious – but think about how good a teacher you could be if you knew the best way to get messages and lessons across to people (of any age, of course). A psychology graduate would make a great teacher because they’ll understand that some people need to be taught more physically than others and adapt their teaching methods to appeal to a wide range of learning abilities and styles. And when the head teacher walks in and sees your class enraptured in the intricacies of Spanish grammar or complicated algorithms, they’ll know you’re doing something right.
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