Speaking of Psychology - Planning for a successful career (SOP35)

Episode Date: March 11, 2016

Succeeding in any profession takes careful planning and skills that may not be obvious to people at the start of their careers. In this episode, psychologist Garth Fowler, PhD, talks about the benefits of having an individual development plan and introduces a set of videos that can help psychologists and other professionals take the next step in their careers. APA is currently seeking proposals for APA 2020, click here to learn more https://convention.apa.org/proposals Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Progressing in one's chosen career is not simply about showing up for work every day, so what do you do to succeed? In this episode, we speak with one psychologist who is helping young scientists create individual development plans, or IDPs. He, along with colleagues at the American Psychological Association, has put together a set of short YouTube videos that spell out how IDPs can get your career on the right track from the start. IDPs are a tool that rely upon self-assessment. Identifying your career goals,

your values and your skills and abilities. When done correctly, they provide a framework for developing career milestones that move you towards a desired career outcome. I'm Audrey Hamilton, and this is Speaking of Psychology. Garth Fowler is the Associate Executive Director for the Office of Graduate and Postgraduate Education and Training at the American Psychological Association. He has developed and delivered hundreds of seminars and workshops for young scientists who are just embarking on their careers.

Specifically, is an expert on creating and implementing individual development plans. These are programs that help students and postdoctoral scholars achieve their career goals. Welcome, Dr. Fowler. Thanks for having me. What exactly is an individual development plan and how does it help a student successfully launch a career? An individual development plan is a resource that individuals can use to actually plan out what their career trajectory is going to be. It's a series of steps that they go through that involve looking at their own skills and abilities, what their own interests are, doing research on the type of careers out there that utilize those skills and those abilities and that might match their interests, and then trying to put down and say, well, if I really wanted to have that job, say, in two years or three years, what would it take for me to really be competent and successful? to have someone look at my resume and say, that's the person I want to hire for this job because

they are matching what I need right now. We know, specifically these individual development plans, we're talking about all kinds of careers, but specifically we're with the American Psychological Association. So let's focus a little bit on psychology careers. You know, we know there are a lot of options out there for graduates with a psychology degree. They may not be always terribly obvious, you know, leading to this impression in some quarters, that there aren't a lot of jobs for psychology graduates. Is this true? You know, what should psychology graduates are people interested in psychology as a career be focusing on in order to be

successful? Yeah, I think you're right. There is a lot of right now bad publicity for psychology majors and for lots of majors that if it doesn't really track to a specific job, then it's probably not worthwhile doing. And I think one of the things that an IDP helps people realize is that jobs out there and careers are not actually just titles. There are compositions of skills and competencies and abilities that make you successful or that you need. And so I would say anyone who is majoring saying psychology develops a lot of skills and abilities that they can use later on. They get quantitative skills. They get analytical skills. They become experts in understanding how behavior works and how, say, the brain works. And those skills, those abilities to think broadly

and be analytical are very useful in a number of careers. Of course, as you move further through what we call the educational pipeline. So as you go from being an undergraduate to say a graduate students with a master's degree or an individual with a doctoral degree, you are focusing more on a specific set of careers. So if you're getting a doctoral degree, you're probably really interested in say either doing professional services or doing research or doing both. And so I think the idea here is to tell people, think, you know, think clearly about what kind of skills and abilities you acquire during your education and training. And also think clearly. clearly about the jobs out there and what they're asking people to do. Like in my particular job,

I don't do research near, but I'm still very analytical. I have to look at data. I have to look at reports. I have to look at information that's coming across my desk about the status of, you know, the employment and training and be critical and analytical about it. And that was training I got in my doctoral program in a very different way. So I would say we hear that, oh, there's no jobs for a psychologist or there's no jobs for these types of people. But I would say the skill set you have, is applicable to a lot of very rewarding jobs. You just have to think about it in that kind of competency and skill set. Well, what can be done to better inform psychologists about their options?

I know you're working on some YouTube videos to help students put together individual development plans, as we talked about. Can you talk about that? And is this anything new? Well, I'll start with the second part. IDPs really aren't new in that regard. You ask what the biggest challenge is, is helping graduate students and postdocs learn about all. the different jobs out there. And that's the biggest challenge. How would someone learn what I do

unless they actually say shadow me or call and talk to me or something like that? And so part of the IDP resource that we're developing is giving examples and providing ideas and describing approaches to learning more about all the different jobs out there. And one of the things that we talk about in the IDP is something called an informational interview where you essentially would find someone who, say, someone would be interested in my job. They meet me at a conference. They could send me a follow-up email later saying. I was really impressed by your talk about IDPs,

and I am also interested in graduate development, education, and training. Would you mind if we had coffee after, you know, tomorrow's session, and you can just tell me in 20 minutes a little bit about what you do, how you got there, how your training matched what you. And actually, when most people get an email, like that, they're happy to respond. Right. It sounds really intimidating, and it's hard, I think, sometimes to get graduate students and

postdocs to do that. But that's one of the ways to go out there and say, well, how would I get a job like yours, or are there other jobs like yours? Like, do other associations have individuals in charge of graduate and postgraduate education and training like we do at the APA? And would I be able to, you know, apply for that job or would I be successful? So I think that's the biggest challenge is getting them to think beyond, oh, well, most people who usually studied psychology ended up being X.

When the data shows right now in workforce and reports that come from the National Science Foundation and from National Institutes of Health and other groups, that's not the case in where. There used to be this really what we call traditional track for, and it's not there. That's fewer opportunities in some regards. There's not as many faculty positions that there used to be. But there's also a lot new, a lot more new opportunities. that people should be investigating. And so that's, I think, the biggest challenge

and that's where we're trying to really focus. And frankly, maybe more creative and interesting careers than you have ever thought of. I mean, we have highlighted in science and action and on our website, you know, people who work playing video games all day. They have a PhD in psychology. I mean, it's not saying that, you know, people out there that that's what you should be doing you're focusing on.

But, you know, thinking outside the box seems to be a really big focus right now, not only in psychology, but other careers as well. I think you're right. It is kind of this thinking outside the box. And it's also taking an advantage of just seeing what people are willing, you know, what people are doing. So I like your example of playing video games where I went to graduate school, Microsoft was right across the river. And you would be surprised at how many people with graduate degrees were getting hired by Microsoft to do things like, let's product test this, you know, part of Microsoft Word. Let's have this, let's have that. And psychologists are well versed in. to have that type of job. They might have to learn some computer coding on the side, but then that's a new skill set that you've added, and here you are doing something really amazing and different with your degree. So let's imagine I'm a psychologist, I'm not, but let's imagine I am. I have a fresh new doctorate. I'm heading to my first postdoc position or maybe my

first job. You know, what are the first things I should do when I start this new job to make sure I'm getting the best out of that experience and to position me for the future? Yeah, so that's a good question. And in our video series, and the resource that we're developing, we actually start with some characters. We kind of storyboard this and say, you know, this is Hunter. We pick two characters.

Their names are Hunter and Amanda. And we're both about to start their postdoc. And we actually walk through, you know, two ways that you could approach it. And one is just arrive and hope someone tells you what you're going to do today and they have a plan over the next two years or however long this is.

That's going to get you somewhere. And if you just come in and hunker down and work really hard, When the two years is over, you'll find a job. Or the other approach is to come in and think critically about what you're being asked to do, what your job and daily requirements are, but also how do they help you develop new skills, new abilities? Where's the opportunity to say, maybe I'm not so great at public speaking? So while I'm in this postdoc, I'd like to try and get more opportunities to do that

because someday I would like to be a spokesperson for psychology careers at the APA or something like that. So we tell people, when you start a new phase of your training or a new phase, of your career, sit down and think, what am I going to gain from this? What opportunities are there for me? And think, well, what would be the next set of jobs I could take that would match that? So it's kind of thinking a little bit forward. It's kind of maybe trying to predict. That's where it's hard. Like, can I predict exactly what jobs are going to be open? I don't think you can, but you can develop a really broad skill set so that when a new and interesting job comes across your desk, you'd be like, I'm really qualified. I should probably apply for that job just to see what would happen.

So what if you're not a psychologist or a psychology major? What other fields are these IDPs useful for? And when should people start developing one? Yeah, that's a really great question. And we're starting to see this idea of an IDP going across all disciplines and all stages of education, which I think is really exciting. But it also really, I think, drives home the idea that during your graduate education or during your post-doctoral education, One of the things you should be focusing on is developing competencies and skill sets that will serve you for the rest of your life, not just writing one paper that will get you the next job or something like that. Great. Well, Garth, thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

To see the IDP videos and to learn more about the IDP process, please go to our website, speakingofpsychology.org. With the American Psychological Association, Speaking of Psychology, I'm Audrey Hamilton.