Careers for people with Psychology degrees

Part 2

What do I need to do?

Planning your career is a process to which there are four parts and you need to start at the beginning.

Self awareness

To be able to define your own skills, interests and motivation. You also need to be able to promote these strengths orally and in writing and identify areas for personal development.

Opportunity awareness

To apply research skills to finding and investigating opportunities available to you and to identify the specific skills and qualities required in your selected options.

Decision learning

To relate self awareness to occupational knowledge and to evaluate how your personal priorities or constraints may affect your career decisions. To identify the steps needed to reach your goals.

Transition learning

To be able to use different sources of vacancy information, to know what makes an effective application, to be able to discriminate between the different recruitment and selection processes used by opportunity providers, and to know how to present yourself at interviews.

Who can help me?

If you need individual advice and guidance to discuss your options, call at the careers service, above the reception lodge, opposite the chaplaincy centre.

This will give you a huge amount of information on all the issues around graduate career planning.

It also tells you what's on each term. For example, we offer group sessions on a variety of topics such as interview skills, CV writing, making applications, teacher training, postgraduate study and job search. You will also find a list of employers who choose to come to Lancaster University to do presentations about their graduate recruitment, and a variety of professionals who come to talk about particular career areas.

You can book a 20 minute appointment with a careers adviser to discuss your personal hopes and ambitions. These appointments tend to be more beneficial if you've done some initial research first, in the careers service's information room. We do not tell you what to do with your life but help you come to your own well-informed decisions.

You are assured of a warm welcome and do not be afraid to ask if you are not sure about anything. The amount of information can be overwhelming, and only you know what sort of help you need.

Your lecturers are experts in their fields so be sure to tap into that resource and also consult your departmental careers tutor, Dr Melissa Allen.