careers
explicitly and clearly than Where taught/experienced previously, and these are in psychology curriculum Skills & knowledge To be aware of accessible to students. areas The adjacent table Customer and business Reflection on personal presents information of this awareness Social performance should include type: a list of desired graduate Organisational understanding Occupational reflection on impact on others; skills culled from various Interpersonal skills Applied How psychological knowledge sources (left column) with Consumer behaviour Counselling applies to a work context suggested areas of the psychology curriculum where these skills might normally be Communication skills Genre writing; practised or experienced. We Influencing Communication involves have found that employability Report writing Potentially all areas listening and questioning skills can readily be linked to Clear, structured, correct writing skills psychological theory and Oral presentations hence to a variety of tutorial Project management Time management; activities, and we will turn to Research dissertation Planning Multiple influences on project; some examples now. Research methods Organising Degree of autonomy exercised In the field of the psychology of individual Degree of interdependence differences, there are several with others; Teamworking Any topics involving scales and psychometric tests Positive and negative aspects Listening groupwork that can help students reflect of teamworking; Interpersonal sensitivity Counselling/coaching on and gain a realistic Dealing with difficult people; Negotiating understanding of their own Your own impact on others abilities and aptitudes. These, Mainly research methods Processes used in research along with a well-developed Research and analysis Research dissertation irrespective of topic; grasp of their career goals, Data handling (quantitative) Multiple ways of handling data have been found to correlate with higher levels of Critical thinking employability (Eby et al., Understanding All areas ‘Self-explain’ new concepts 2003). Students in our focus Analysis of different points of view groups had felt that there was a link between personality Problem solving and career choices, and Recognise and avoid biases in Cognitive psychology Recognise biases when you personality traits have been thinking (psychology of thinking, fall prey to them yourself shown to correlate with such Confirmation bias reasoning, decision making) outcomes as job satisfaction, Overgeneralisation job success, salary and selfefficacy (Rode et al., 2008). Professional/personal attributes Studying research (self-management) methods is an obvious area Initiative where students can develop Adaptability Self: How to monitor own useful skills in data analysis Responsibility behaviour and improve on it All areas and ethos of and interpretation. Businesses Time management based on feedback and selfdepartment/institution rely greatly on generating and Resilience reflection analysing data, and research Ethical understanding and skills are useful to them behaviour (Akhurst, 2005). A Appropriate assertiveness background in statistics Numeracy and IT skills Potential uses of software should therefore help make Software familiarity outside psychology; a graduate more employable Data mining All areas Technology and associated than someone without those Applying formulae and identifying techniques change continually skills. outliers Methods are of course a central part of the research Employability skills and where they are most likely to be experienced and practised project, the culmination of a student’s studies. Yet undergraduates are often unaware that the project constitutes an excellent example of project management. sound proposal, organise a participant psychology or other cognate areas such Apart from research, data gathering pool, book equipment and labs, manage as counselling psychology. For example, and analysis, students have to liaise their time, meet tight deadlines, and so on. traditional theories such as social with others to organise and manage Action planning and goal setting can cognitive theory can be expanded upon their project, produce an ethically be incorporated into topics in social to include examples of how self-efficacy,
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