Anyone have success applying their clinical psych degrees to industry?

[throwaway_psychdr]

I last posted 3 years ago experiencing some disillusionment with psychology and questioning whether I needed an attitude shift, job change or total career change. I've done a lot of soul searching over the past few years and think I really am not feeling a passion for psychology anymore- at least in terms of a career. Any alternative I could think of to my current job does not feel like an improvement in my situation.
I never thought I would be in this position but I guess it shows life doesn't work out the way we think it will. Anyhow, what I have realized I'm interested in is something data-related in industry. I have a good background of research- definitely not a hard core academic but I can do stats independently and get papers published. And I recently started learning some coding languages that are more industry-relevant (e.g., Python, R - definitely not super proficient in these yet). I don't have a particular industry I want to work in as of right now- looking for a generally good company culture that is focused on learning and growth. I've been exploring some different job types- data analyst, data science (although I think I need to get some more experience with machine learning for most of these jobs), and research-type consultants at companies.

What I'm wondering is if folks know of people or themselves have transitioned more to an industry role from a psych role? Any tips?

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[Temperance]

You mentioned that you don't feel a passion for psychology anymore. Is it still something you'd be willing to use for work, perhaps in a non-clinical context? Many tech companies are hiring behavioral scientists who can apply both psychology and analytical expertise. Data scientists tend to be more number crunching.

SQL would be a helpful skill to have, as well, if you'll be working with large data sets.

 

[cotn_psych]

I made the shift from clinical psychology to industry during my postdoc. I was a very productive grad student with 30+ pubs and had good internship/postdoc but got a little burned out writing and clinical work was really tedious for me. Overall, very happy with the switch. I miss some things about academics but for the most part those are pretty minor compared to the QOL now.

Currently title is business analyst where my role is to do demand forecasting, broad business intelligence, advise on business strategy, IT administration (not so much help desk, but tier 2 support to guide business units on process changes for the IT department) and project management.

Things I wish I had had more training in before going to industry in addition to data analysis and learning coding in R, python etc are skills in project management, supply chain management, or some sort of IT analysis (think SQL data mining of electronic health records). These skills are very much in demand and easy to translate from graduate school. SQL development is really useful as is some sort of database engineering/devops. Lots of good training from IBM, coursera, etc. Six sigma is also really easy to understand once you have a basic understanding of stats and analysis, just have to learn the jargon and you can quickly translate your grad school training to industry.

Joining a consulting firm can also be a really good transition and there are lots of mental health startups out there in need of good subject matter experts.

 

[R. Matey]

I'd like to hear more about the rationale behind the change, if you're willing. A Ph.D. is just a long time to spend in graduate school to gain skills that you'll never use again. Don't get me wrong, I've had similar thoughts and am even casually learning how to work with SQL databases on the side because I do know if I can do full time clinical work and be completely fulfilled.

 

[throwaway_psychdr]

You mentioned that you don't feel a passion for psychology anymore. Is it still something you'd be willing to use for work, perhaps in a non-clinical context? Many tech companies are hiring behavioral scientists who can apply both psychology and analytical expertise. Data scientists tend to be more number crunching.

Yes! I am actually very interested in this. I started looking into this before I began thinking about the data analyst/science route but I have a hard time finding jobs that fit this criteria whenever I do a job search- usually I end up with a bunch of academic job results. I have found a few and have started applying whenever I see a position like this. Even with data analyst/science jobs, I am looking for roles where there is some aspect of looking at human behavior (preferences, user experience etc). So I guess I should have specified that I am really interested in continuing to apply my behavioral expertise - just not in clinical or academic settings.

 

[throwaway_psychdr]

Things I wish I had had more training in before going to industry in addition to data analysis and learning coding in R, python etc are skills in project management, supply chain management, or some sort of IT analysis (think SQL data mining of electronic health records). These skills are very much in demand and easy to translate from graduate school. SQL development is really useful as is some sort of database engineering/devops. Lots of good training from IBM, coursera, etc. Six sigma is also really easy to understand once you have a basic understanding of stats and analysis, just have to learn the jargon and you can quickly translate your grad school training to industry.

Thank you for this!! Super helpful. I've been using Pluralsight and that's been helpful. I find it hard to retain stuff when I'm not applying it to real word work. I'm kind of hoping someone will just give me a shot with my relative lack of skill so I can get my foot in the door and learn from there.

 

[cotn_psych]

@R.Matey, not sure that comment was directed at me. It was a lot of little things that all added up over time to make me dissatisfied with the path I was on and ultimately made me make a decision to leave clinical psychology. I had grown increasingly frustrated with the academic culture, and couldn't fake the liberal party line as hard as I tried. I found myself pushed out of clinical work by some supervisors, although I take responsibility for that, the research was always more interesting and I was much more devoted to building research skills than my clinical skills. I think as I progressed my supervisors allowed me to pursue my interests and I didn't set myself up for a more balanced career. I didn't match the first time around on internship because I had not fully developed my clinical skills and after securing an internship the next year it seemed pursuing that path was going to be an enormous uphill battle. My research in postdoc hit a dead end and I failed to pivot fast enough. My postdoc project was given a 50/50 chance of success by my mentor and when it ultimately failed I did not get my contract renewed. I moved on to another postdoc at the beginning of COVID but most research was shut down. I found myself bored and wasn't motivated to write anymore papers, it all just seemed really pointless. I didn't really feel any real joy in publishing for a small audience in my field anymore. I always enjoyed mentorship of younger students, but with everything shut down there wasn't much opportunity and I was stuck writing papers for myself. My family and partner were becoming increasingly vocal and frustrated with me spending a lot of time on research and not making any real money. I pursued some personal connections and found that the industry that I am now in had a huge need for my data and analysis skills. There was an opportunity to build an entire analytics program for the company and I was really interested in learning something different. There was the promise of more immediate gratification in the work that I could do as well as a better paycheck (2x at the time of postdoc salary). From the beginning, I was offered the chance to guide strategy and operations and was really excited about contributing my analysis skills towards improving business processes.

Long answer but as they say about going broke, slowly at first then all at once.

 

[throwaway_psychdr]

I'd like to hear more about the rationale behind the change, if you're willing. A Ph.D. is just a long time to spend in graduate school to gain skills that you'll never use again. Don't get me wrong, I've had similar thoughts and am even casually learning how to work with SQL databases on the side because I do know if I can do full time clinical work and be completely fulfilled.

A lot of things behind the change. I moved across country after my postdoc and my priorities really changed. QOL and flexibility means way more to me now than it did 5 years ago. I did not go into grad school wanting to be a full time clinician - I tried a year of the research job route and it was totally dysfunctional and made me miss clinical work so that brings me to my current primarily clinical role. Now in my clinical role, I'm burnt out by expectations of the system, the patients and I really am starting to feel resentful of the responsibility. I am sure there are some great clinical and research roles out there, I just feel like I've lost some trust in the systems (healthcare and academia, specifically) so the idea of another clinical or academic research job just doesn't sound appealing to me. Also from much of what I've heard, it could actually be a lot worse than how I have it right now.

I also feel *so* stagnant. I have tried to work on this and make it work at my current position for the past few years, but the institution I work for you (you might be able to guess which one, there's a whole gripe thread about it on here ) doesn't seem to want to foster growth in their clinicians. I want to feel inspired to learn again- I totally felt that way before and during my training- but it fizzed out wayyyy quicker than I imagined. I am still interested in human behavior/psychology on a personal level and am actively looking at how I can apply this jobs in industry. But I guess the most important thing for me is that I have flexibility and that I am learning something new. I know that working in industry has its own set of issues but it just feels like a better fit for me right now.

I also think I will certainly use the skills I learned in grad school and beyond- in fact I recently had an interview with a tech company where the person remarked on how much better I communicated and how much more personable I was than some of the other applicants- not sure if I'll get selected but that was really nice feedback to hear! And I'm sure a lot of that has come from my clinical work, working on teams etc. I think there's a lot of hard and soft skills which can be applied to this industry- what makes me excited about working in industry is finding those ways that those skills might apply that might not be immediately obvious.

(Oh and I have 2 experimental psych PhD friends who are data scientists, making bank, taking off work whenever and really loving the work their doing- them telling me about their experiences is what set me off in the data analytics/science direction but I was already ready to get out by that point, just gave me some ideas/direction).

 

[R. Matey]

@cotn_psych, it was not though re-reading your post and your follow-up post, I can see how you got there. If anything, it's more curiosity. I'm in an academic postdoc I'm trying to figure out whether I want to keep going on the academic train or just do some mix of clinical and consulting. I wouldn't call myself fluent, but I am a competent R user and am beginning to learn how to use R in some non-psych research related ways (including querying SQL databases). I know if I were to take it seriously, I would have to teach myself Python, which seems doable based on my limited experience with Matlab. A hang up for me has been that mental health is my career and has been for a spell so giving it all up seems like a wasted time to me. Sunk costs, sure, but there has to be some crossover with data and mental health that isn't a poorly paid academic position where I might have to compromise my integrity for similar reasons that you identified.

@throwaway_psychdr, That makes a lot of sense and I can definitely relate. Part of the reason I left mental health counseling is because I needed more autonomy in my day, so it was disheartening to learn that many clinical systems in psych functioning similarly (I mean it's all healthcare). I know that I would be miserable if I were to be in a clinical day job, which is why I regularly pass up jobs that my tax dollars do the work. The venting thread is also fairly good advertising. I work with some data science people in a side gig and I can definitely speak to the importance of having some people skills when interacting with our consulting clients. Also, data ethics--most of the folks in our group didn't realize that, for various reasons, we needed an IRB for what we were doing.

 

[DynamicDidactic]

I know some folks that started out right away in industry jobs (with clinical PhDs) but they seemed to be planning in that direction. All are in the tech/app sector.

 

[albatross_at_crossroads]

I'm going to chime in with my experience here, hopefully it will be helpful.
Background: started in clinical, left only with a master's (due to medical and family reasons) and worked for about a decade in various psych roles, several of those years in consulting; I am now back for the PhD and hope to work in a mostly clinical, maybe consulting role when I graduate.

I've seen many experimental folk transition (somewhat) easier into data science type roles. I've seen a few clinical folk in industry, mainly in management consulting/ people roles. The doctoral level skills transfer really well into industry, especially once you get to learn the jargon and how priorities are different compared to academia/some healthcare environments.

The advantage of the PhD is that you can mostly start at an upper level in an organization and often be better positioned to lead teams/ organize analytics programs as a poster said above, while most bachelor's/ master's folk might start at entry level or not reach as quickly a lead role. The key thing here is that you need to learn how businesses work, how to do effective project management, how different business areas operate and interact with each other etc. Business leaders will take you seriously because of your credentials, and you become even more persuasive once you speak "their language". If this is something you are interested in, then you can make the transition and be positioned for better pay and a more flexible role with real influence.

From where you are right now, it might be easier to get a consulting role - you might try reaching out to a recruiter for a larger company and see if any of the roles they have available are a match for your experience and credentials. This could be a better approach than just sending your CV in for a job, since you might just be applying only for analytics roles for example, and they might have available a senior people consultant role that you might like more. A consulting job is great in that it exposes you quickly to all of the business knowledge you'd need and you can get a better sense of what other companies are doing - this will enable you to then jump ship very well informed if you want to. I say jump ship because the downside in most full-time consulting roles is that it is a very fast-paced type of work, often dealing with a lot of ambiguity and it's easy to get burned out. Many people move on to traditional companies after several years in consulting because of this, but they also are better positioned when they make the transition as well. The pay and perks are pretty good and you build a pretty valuable network.

A data science role might be interesting, but it might not fully take advantage of your clinical skills and other experience. Moreover, they are often poorly defined and stakeholders often expect miracles from poorly collected data with badly designed questions. You might also be playing catch-up with the technical skills against people that have heavy CS backgrounds, which may not be ideal, unless you want that kind of career switch. I personally advocate to leverage as much of your knowledge and experience as you can when going into industry. Also, data science as a field is still murky - the responsibilities, expectations and day to day really vary from place to place.

I resonated with your feeling of being stuck/stagnant. Felt that way in the past and a change helped. Just keep in mind that while the grass might seem greener, each side comes with its own disadvantages and dysfunctions. It's more of a question of which environment is more tolerable for you and where can you thrive and grow. Let me know if you have questions, happy to share more.

 

[Therapist4Chnge]

It's very much about translating your skillset in a way that makes sense for the area you want to work. Being able to walk a recruiter/senior manager through how your training translates to their company is really the key thing. If you can present a solid narrative and highlight valuable skills, you can often carve out your own job/position. Our communication skills tend to be vastly superior to most Biz Bros and Tech "Experts", and something definitely worth highlighting. All of those soft skills we learned doing hundreds/thousands of intakes and consults need to be highlighted. If you can also bring some data analytic skills (read: stats) and programming (database and also writing code/scripts)....you are in a prime position to make some serious money. Don't waste your time getting certificates in programming stuff unless you really know what you are doing bc most of those advertised programs and certificates are meant for entry-level programmers who want to advance through tech heavy stuff....not corp management.

Six Sigma and Lean are two training programs/certs that are popular in certain industries like manufacturing, but not things I'd recommend to do w/o there being a specific need, and ideally a company paying for the training. Six Sigma has been around longer and the lingo is pretty common and useful, but the actual training probably wouldn't fit what most of the industry jobs are looking towards psych to fill. Lean though....that is a broader training that could be helpful. I've done courses in both, and while it'd be overkill to do them, being familiar with some of the lingo would be helpful. Also being familiar with leadership training would help. Check out the syllabi and reading lists from some top MBA programs and you'll get a good idea of what you should read.

In regard to actual jobs....there are a bunch of eHealth startups looking to hire psychologists to "oversee" mid-levels, while other startups love the idea of having a psych involved in team planning and corp culture kind of stuff. Don't believe hollywood and think jobs like the lady on "Billions" actually exist, but there can be some related jobs like doing psych screening for reality tv shows, which I DO NOT recommend, but people still take them. Those are mostly contract jobs, but if you do one...you can often do more. They are full of liability and ethically the producers can be....pushy. There are also jobs in pre-employment screening...but that is more I/O kind of stuff that you'd need to learn.

 

[PsyDr]

I consult for a few industries. Hourly pay is decent. Except for the first offer, full time gigs were never worth my while.

Application depends on what you're doing. At minimum, you need a basic understanding of the specific application, the industry and its lingo, what you are contributing in terms of resulting actions and ROI, the backgrounds of the individuals involved, etc.

 

[VirginiaIsForLovers]

I know some folks that started out right away in industry jobs (with clinical PhDs) but they seemed to be planning in that direction. All are in the tech/app sector.

Agreed, I'm seeing a lot of this. A former colleague is now in SF and working in the tech/app industry. Initially did consulting for them, and moved their way up to become Director and VP's of Clinical Product/Content Development

 

[cotn_psych]

@PsyDr I am interested in how you set yourself up for contract consulting? Is this something you do at night/weekends or do you take time off from regular job?

I was recently contacted by a recruiter for a remote consulting gig but the message was so vague and hourly pay was 1/2 of what I make at the regular job that I turned him down. Wondering if you find the consulting work on the side worth it?

 

[PsychPhDone]

@PsyDr I am interested in how you set yourself up for contract consulting? Is this something you do at night/weekends or do you take time off from regular job?

I was recently contacted by a recruiter for a remote consulting gig but the message was so vague and hourly pay was 1/2 of what I make at the regular job that I turned him down. Wondering if you find the consulting work on the side worth it?

@PsyDr also wondering if you set up an LLC for this?

 

[WisNeuro]

@PsyDr I am interested in how you set yourself up for contract consulting? Is this something you do at night/weekends or do you take time off from regular job?

I was recently contacted by a recruiter for a remote consulting gig but the message was so vague and hourly pay was 1/2 of what I make at the regular job that I turned him down. Wondering if you find the consulting work on the side worth it?

When you're in private practice there is no "regular" job for the most part. Your schedule is whatever you want it to be. No one really has to work nights/weekend, but if you get offered a decent case with a time limit, you may be willing to sacrifice a few nights or a portion of a weekend for a 5 figure paycheck.

 

[R. Matey]

I consult for a few industries. Hourly pay is decent. Except for the first offer, full time gigs were never worth my while.

See, I think this might be another barrier for me since my guess is doing evaluations would be just as financially rewarding. I've read a few data science forums out of curiosity and the complaints there very much tracks with what @albatross_at_crossroads is describing. Some are even thinking of leaving data science for more traditional CS jobs where the expectations are more clear. What's nice about applied psych is that we can just leave and do clinical if we want to.

 

[LOVE_Brains]

I made the shift from clinical psychology to industry during my postdoc. I was a very productive grad student with 30+ pubs and had good internship/postdoc but got a little burned out writing and clinical work was really tedious for me. Overall, very happy with the switch. I miss some things about academics but for the most part those are pretty minor compared to the QOL now.

Currently title is business analyst where my role is to do demand forecasting, broad business intelligence, advise on business strategy, IT administration (not so much help desk, but tier 2 support to guide business units on process changes for the IT department) and project management.

Things I wish I had had more training in before going to industry in addition to data analysis and learning coding in R, python etc are skills in project management, supply chain management, or some sort of IT analysis (think SQL data mining of electronic health records). These skills are very much in demand and easy to translate from graduate school. SQL development is really useful as is some sort of database engineering/devops. Lots of good training from IBM, coursera, etc. Six sigma is also really easy to understand once you have a basic understanding of stats and analysis, just have to learn the jargon and you can quickly translate your grad school training to industry.

Joining a consulting firm can also be a really good transition and there are lots of mental health startups out there in need of good subject matter experts.

Hi, I am currently in a doctoral program, and I have been exploring jobs in the industry. I have data analysis and coding skills, and I am trying to gain some of the other skills as you've mentioned above. Do you think getting that PhD has helped you in your industry career, or do you think it would be wise to make that shift earlier than later if I see myself fitting better into these roles rather than clinical work or academia? Do industry jobs value a doctoral degree or is it more skills-based?

 

[cotn_psych]

Hi, I am currently in a doctoral program, and I have been exploring jobs in the industry. I have data analysis and coding skills, and I am trying to gain some of the other skills as you've mentioned above. Do you think getting that PhD has helped you in your industry career, or do you think it would be wise to make that shift earlier than later if I see myself fitting better into these roles rather than clinical work or academia? Do industry jobs value a doctoral degree or is it more skills-based?

Industry is always going to be more skills based. Businesses care much more about what you have produced and how those skills can make the business more profitable. No one really cares that I have a PhD. The other skills I mentioned are useful because that is what industry knows and it is easier to sell yourself with those credentials. I also left the psychology/mental health field entirely so it may be my experience is not normative to other PhDs who have made the transition.

However, the analysis skills and some of the stuff I did later in the PhD and postdoc definitely prepared me more than if I had left at my masters. At that point in my career, I didn't have the R skills or project management skills that I do now so from that standpoint it was useful to finish the PhD.

If you are looking for mental health industry jobs, it can be helpful to have the PhD because it can definitely help get you in faster to more senior roles and you can present yourself as more of a subject matter expert, rather than just another programmer.

Something to consider is that the other psychology disciplines (e.g social or cognitive) do a good job of preparing you for consulting, data science etc. I know several people who pivoted in grad school with mentors and departments by changing the focus of their dissertation and ended up leaving the clinical area while still getting a psychology PhD. The best scenarios in this case had the student sharing time between their clinical mentor and a mentor in another department so that their original mentor didn't lose the support of the grad student but it allowed the student to get out of clinical training and only pursue research.

Getting a PhD in clinical psychology is very versatile and can set you up for a lot of different roles. I am glad overall that I completed it and grad school was really an important part of my development, it gave me a lot of skills that I wouldn't have otherwise.

 

[smalltownpsych]

A psychologist has a broad set of skills that can be applied to a variety of settings. As mentioned above, communication skills are a key strength and people respond well to that. Clinical skills and sales skills are very closely related and I spent ten years in sales as I completed undergrad and Masters. I am currently applying my skill set to developing my own company and it seems to be heading in the right direction. The nice thing about using my psychology skills in this business is that it is directly related and I can use my clinical skills to directly generate revenue while I am building infrastructure.
Also, just wanted to add, I am tired of putting effort into other peoples success. It’s kind of like when my wife and I were renting and we kept improving the places while we lived there because that is just what we do. I have always put my heart and soul into any job that I have worked at and I have always walked away with very little. Not this time.