Thinking of studying psychology? Good news – a psychology degree can open the door to more job opportunities than you can count. If you want to consider your options for life after university, here are five fields where a psychology degree can help you get ahead.
1. Psychology, counselling and social work
A lot of people study psychology because of their desire to help others. A psychology degree can be the first in a series of steps towards becoming a registered psychologist in Australia, and it can also open the door to other ‘helping professions’, such as counselling and social work.
Psychologists work with people to assess, diagnose, treat and manage a range of psychological conditions, while counsellors use a person-centred approach (asking questions, non-judgemental listening, identifying options and strategies) to help clients address issues in their lives.
Social workers provide counselling for, and connect clients to, resources and services that can help them overcome a wide range of life challenges.
While psychologists must complete six years of university study, social workers need a three-year bachelor’s degree and counsellors must complete a Diploma of Counselling.
If you decide to pursue counselling or social work after attaining a psych degree, you’ll likely be eligible for credit recognition for subjects you’ve already completed.
2. Marketing and PR
Marketing is all about selling products and services, while PR is about building and maintaining an organisation’s public profile. Both rely on an understanding of human behaviour, which psychology graduates have in spades.
Studying psychology will equip you with a highly developed sense of what motivates and influences people. This expertise can deliver crucial insights into consumer behaviour and public perceptions, enabling you to create campaigns and communications that resonate with customer values.
If a bit of hard science floats your boat, you can even get involved with ‘neuromarketing’, which involves measuring the psychological and neural signals that reveal what people want – and why.
3. Financial services
Psychology and banking may seem like odd bedfellows, but understanding how and why people make decisions around risk and money are pretty important to how the financial sector functions. Increasingly, banks are creating behavioural insights teams responsible for monitoring clients’ transaction patterns and looking for anomalies that might indicate serious issues like fraud, theft or elder abuse.
Psychology can also be helpful when it comes to investor behaviour — like all people, investors are prone to irrational decisions that are based on emotion rather than fact. A branch of psychology known as ‘behavioural economics’ can help them overcome these tendencies, which is key to helping them measure risk appropriately and achieve their financial goals.
4. Cybersecurity
Cybercriminals are adept at manipulating people’s emotions – case in point: the recent ‘Hi Mum’ scam that drives victims to transfer to an unknown account because they think their kids need their help. As such, a growing field known as ‘cyber psychology’ has a role to play in protecting our data – and our bank accounts –from ever-increasing cybersecurity threats.
According to IBM, cybersecurity is about dealing with the mathematical aspect of when, where and how cyberattacks occur, while psychology is concerned with the behavioural element – the why and the what. Understanding what motivates cybercriminals to act can help cybersecurity professionals predict what they’re likely to do next, helping the good guys stay one step ahead.
5. High-performance coaching
When Simone Biles pulled out of the bulk of her events at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, it was described as ‘the greatest choke of all time’. Biles, undeniably the GOAT of her sport, confirmed that she wasn’t in the right mental space to compete. This incident speaks volumes about the importance of psychology in achieving peak performance – which is where high-performance coaching comes in.
High-performance coaches draw on their understanding of psychology to help people function at their peak. While professional athletes and performers might be some of the most obvious recipients of this sort of expertise, high-performance coaches also have a lot to offer in the corporate realm, too: executive staff, managers and even whole teams can benefit from a strategic approach to overcoming roadblocks, embracing change, and tapping into individual and collective sources of motivation.
Gain skills that are always in demand
These are just a few of the countless ways that an undergraduate psychology degree can put you on the path towards your dream career.