Welcome My Name Is Garth A. Fowler and I M the Associate Executive Director of APA S Office

Welcome my name is Garth A. Fowler and I’m the Associate Executive Director of APA’s Office of Graduate and Postgraduate Education and Training. I’ll be your moderator for today’s latest installment of our PsycIQ series. I’m excited to be joined today by my colleague Amber Story who is the APA’s Associate Executive Director Scientific Affairs.

Today, Amber and I will be talking about emerging careers for psychology researchers and more importantly talking about how you position yourself for what you know coming down the line in terms of the job market both things we know and stuff that’s probably outside the horizon for us to predict. So I think about this when I was in graduate school, my classmates and I had our sights set on a career in research, and typically that meant being a faculty member somewhere conducting research and teach it. And I worked this for years, this is the typical career track for most anyone who got an advanced degree or at least doctoral degree in psychology and had an interest in a research career.

But, today we know much has changed there’s lots of data out there saying, showing that universities and colleges don’t hire as many tenure-track faculty members as they used to and at the same time that there’s been a shift in hiring individuals with doctoral training at the university level, but they’re doing more administrative or strategic position work instead of fact work. They also see that there are businesses and nonprofits, and that the business and nonprofit worlds are evolving really quickly and they have more opportunities and options for individuals like us, than ever before. So, if you’re looking to tap into those new career outside the traditional academic setting, then a new set of questions arise for us. Really what kindsof organizations need someone with our types of skills set? How do we identify those opportunities? And how do we distinguish ourselves from those other applicants?

So, we’re hoping that today’s conversation will find light on some of these questions and help you try to set your way on finding your own career path.To kick off the discussion, I’m going to hand this over to Amber, who’s going to share some helpful insights and tips on sectors you might consider exploring and ways to kind of actually position yourself. So Amber welcome and take it away.

(Amber): Thank You Garth and thanks to all of you for joining us today. I’m really excited to be here. So like most researchers you were probably sort of “in an academic environment. “Your mentor was an academic, your colleagues probably had goals to stay in the academic environment, but there’s any number of reasons why you might be interested in exploring other opportunities. Maybe you’re just dissatisfied with your current position. If you’re trying to juggle family demands or solve a two body problem, or maybe you’re just itching to do something different.

So today I’m going to talk to you about some factors you can take into consideration as you think about these other professional opportunities and then I’ll try to offer you some practical advice on how to move ahead. So, before you begin your search it is important to know why you are thinking about another career. People often think about career choices of academic vs not academic and it’s kind of a simplistic way of thinking about it. Even within academia one can have any number of different kinds of diverse careers. As you well know, some positions focus more on teaching, some focus more on research, some are more administrative in its type. All of those can be very potentially rewarding careers as long as they’re a good fit for you, and your values, and your skills.

If not, maybe you want to stay in academia, but change departments, or change institutions and find one that’s a better fit for you. Over the years, you have honed many important skills; critical thought, statistical know-how, communications, and public speaking.You’re a competitive candidate for manycareer trajectory. You know, but you have to think about well which one. Perhaps, you’re really committed to psychological science, but you’re not so interested in doing the science yourself. Well there’s any number of ways you can support science. You could work at a federal funding agency like the National Science Foundation, or National Institutes of Health, or even the National Institutes of Justice. They’re looking for people with scientific expertise like you to help them identify promising research.

Similarly, you can work in a private foundation that funds research like the Kavli, or Templeton, or Robert Wood Johnson. You might also consider supporting science through advocacy and public education. In which case you might be interested in positions in nonprofit organizations and professional societies like APA. Or you know, maybe you really do like conducting research. You’re really interested in continuing to do that, but the research ideas don’t really have to be your own, right. Well, you could look for positions in research and assessment companies or in nonprofits that provide research services to others. Booth Allen comes to mind, ABT, Rand, there’s a lot of companies out there that provide those kinds of services that need your expertise. Or you might find opportunities in larger corporations that have research and development arms. They are looking for people who know how to gather data, analyze data that will inform their strategic planning, their marketing, and even their product development. So there’s really any number of ways that your skills, and your knowledge, and your expertise in human behavior and cognition, and even non-human behavior and cognition to a completely new enterprise.

You might find some inspiration and guidance from the APA Science Directorate series on what we call, “interesting careers in psychological science.” The website, which is going to be listed at the end slide of this program, it contains essays of dozens and dozens of people who have PhDs in psychological science, who have pursued a wide variety of careers. There’s a person there who’s an Aviation Policy Specialist, a Science Writer, a Video Game User Researcher, and an International Market Research consultant.

Again, as a psychological scientist, you’ve had a lot of training in the scientific method, and statistics, analytics, but not everyone has the same strengths. It’s important to know what your strengths when you’re trying to find a position, to know what a good match. A first step could be a self-assessment. This might be as easy as talking to a trusted colleague or a mentor to try to identify what your strengths are and any areas that might need improvement. You could hire a consulting a career coach that might be a helpful maneuver for you. You could also use some self-assessment tools, the APA has a tool for individualdevelopment plans. Now granted this is usually for people who are like graduate students, but the fundamentals are the same and they’re very helpful. I should also mention that the American Association for the Advancement of Science, AAAS, hasan IDP program as well that’s very helpful. These programs will help you identify what your skills are, what your strengths are, what your values are, and what yourgoals are. And it will help you in your career path. To find and position yourself for new opportunities, I really can’t overestimate the importance of networking. It really is important to know a lot of people and get to know what’s going on out there. There are many opportunities that aren’t advertised or there in the development phase, and networking is great way to find out what’s going on before it even happens.

And don’t limit yourself to networking in professional settings, even casual settings can provide networking opportunities. The other day, I was waiting for my commuter train and struck up a conversation with a woman who turned out to be a professional staffer on the Hill, and we have some interest in commonso exchanged cards. What may come of this?I don’t know, but it’s an opportunity and it’s good to avail yourself to that. When you are looking for other opportunities, let those in your network know that you are open to considering alternative pathways. That can help them keep their ears open for you. You might even consider a sort of test-trial for a career. Some of the positions at theNational Science Foundation for program directors, division directors, even the head of directorates, are temporary in nature, these are what we call, “rotators.” These are academics to take a year, or two, or even three away from their university lives and they come to an assess and they direct a program, or direct a division, or direct a directorate. They help fund the research that is important to NSF portfolio. At the end of their time at NSF, some go home with brand new knowledge energized, some use their experience at NSF to pivot to new positions within their university or even new universities, and some like it so much at NSF they decide to stay.

Other opportunities are fellowships, so AAAS has a Science and Technology Policy Fellowship program that’s very popular. It offers a one or two-year opportunity to learn about policy making and to apply your knowledge and skills to federal decision making, to policy development, and implementation which can be quite rewarding. APA partners with AAAS with this opportunity and hosts its own Executive and Congressional Fellowship program.

I hope you found this helpful. I do have a couple parting thoughts. One is you know you are responsible for your career trajectory, no one’s going to look out for it but you. You can certainly rely on other people, get advice from other people, talk to them about their experiences, but ultimately it’s up to you. And the second is, it’s often easy to get paralyzed by this important decision of what is my next career going to look like. And it is an important decision, but trust me it is not the final decision. You will have many other decisions in your career; some big, some small.

So this is not the last decision you’re going to make, it’s simply the next one. Thank you.

(Garth): Alrighty, thank you Amber. I really appreciate that and as you were talking we got a number questions that came in. We had a number of people who submitted questions, so a number of questions that have come in previously.

So as I’m going to work through those I think I’m going to start by giving you is an easy one as I go through and look. And one of those that I think was that people would like to hear is, is to have you talk a little bit about your own career trajectory and maybe some of those opportunities and how it changed over time. People like personal stories and I think it helps give them kind of a model to follow, but I think at the same time you know it’s like you said, that this is your story and it helps them draw parallels to what their story needs to be.

(Amber): Sure. Yes. Well, I started off on an academic career trajectory, like many people do. I was a professor tenure, but I had other goals in my heart which was to be in the same city as my then fiancé, now husband. And that you know, that kind of why you want to change, that determines the type of job search you’re going to be doing. You know mine was obviously going to be limited to geographic area and so just about anything that looked appropriate, you know I put in my hat for. I was very thrilled when the National Science Foundation called for an interview.

Even within my time at the National Science Foundation, I had a couple of different positions there; once I was the program director for Social Psychology and then I became the deputy division director for Behavioral Cognitive Sciences there. Both were veryinteresting and challenging job and Ireally enjoyed my time in that stuff. ButI was itching to do something differentI was eager to have some new challenges, but because I liked my job I had the luxury of being really picky. I didn’t have to send out my application everywhere. I only sent it to places that were really intriguing to me and frankly I didn’t get everything I wanted, but this particular job at APA came down the pike and I said,” Oh, that’s it!” So I was very excited about that. I can tell you that networking played a huge role in my ladder job search of trying to be very particular and find the right job for me.

(Garth): Excellent! So one of the questions that you know, one of the questions that I was thinking about it is you know what most common concern here when academic researchers are really starting to make this career move? Maybe they’re in their place and they’re trying to figure out you know nonprofit vs government versus should I stay in academia? So, what is kind of the most common concern that you would hear some individuals when they’re looking to start this whole process?

(Amber): Well, I think Garth, you actually kind of hit upon it. What I hear is,” I don’t know where to start!” You know, “How do I how do I hone this down? What’s out there even?” I think that there are more sort of websites and that kind of technology that’s available to you, you know social media sites like LinkedIn. You can enter your own profile and it will send you jobs that match your profile. Glassdoor, is another example of that or if you’re interested in federal jobs; USA Jobs has listings of government jobs. But, it is really a lot easier to look if you narrow down your search and that’s what I think it’s important to know your strength, to have a good self-assessment, and have an idea of the kind of jobs that match those strengths.

(Garth): Yeah, I think that’s great advice and also when you were saying about places to look, it made me think of this, of the idea that once you start engaging outside your typical career, you know it’s a network, you start to find lots of opportunities. And one that comes to mind is when I started here at AAAS, oh excuse me, at the APA. I used to be at AAAS, and when I started APA I got involved in a group called the Graduate Career Consortium. And it’s a group I work very closely with my mission here at APA. And they send out job advertisements through their Listserv quite often and it’s not one that you often find on your typical like Chronicle of Higher Ed. Or Inside Higher Edge, or even you would find say like science, or here at APA. And so I think part of it is once you start breaking into these groups through your networks, since we trying something up you find other resources for that kind of each area that you’re looking for.

(Amber): I agree.

(Garth): Let’s see where some of the other questions that have been coming in here. How about what advice would you give to a young researcher who’s looking to make a career change that’s compared to say someone who is more mid-career? We’re getting questions about individual thing, you know, but I might adjust, we have some people who are graduate students, we even have an undergraduate in our listing. So they’re kind of thinking about what stage there in. What advice would you give to someone who’s you know mid-career more established then say their early career? Are there any differences?

(Amber): Well, I imagine there are. And a lot of it would probably be the dependent upon you know your expectations. As an early or mid-career, or an early-career person perhaps your expectations are for more entry-level positions. And you know what at a reasonable salary, mid-career you probably would want something thatwas a little bit more advanced. I’m notsure that the advice in terms of sort ofpractical things to do is any different,but I would say one of the things thatI’ve learned over the years that I don’t think I appreciate it early on was, sometimes the only way to move up is to move out. That is you know you might be looking at a job that looks parallel to the job you currently have and you’re like,” Why would I considered moving?” Well, it may be that, that other job, though lateral to where you are now, has a lot more opportunities. It’s like being at the top of one ladder and moving to another ladder where you’re at the bottom, and you have nowhere else to go but up.

(Garth): Yeah, I like that analogy and I think that’s a really good one, because sometimes we get we get stuck in knowing the world that we are in and not knowing that, that parallel new line might actually look more like an entry-level position on that world, but maybe there’s higher up. Maybe they’ll open up bigger, bigger doors and bigger pathways. I think that’s also something that people can start to investigate and talk about when they use their, when they use their network. Sorry I’m a little, fumbling just a little today.