Careers and Employability

University of Aberdeen Psychology students are considered highly employable upon graduation. This is due to two main factors:

1. A degree in Psychology can be applied to any career which involves people, opening up a wealth of potential job opportunities.

2. Our Psychology programmes provide you with a rich and varied range of transferable skills that employers value, gained through a mix of theory and methods courses and further developed through project work. . These skills are summarised by our ASPIRE framework: Adaptable, Self-reliant, Proactive, Independent, Resilient, Engaged.

A degree in Psychology from the University of Aberdeen provides the basis for many career choices, both in Professional Psychology and in careers with a psychological element.

A BPS-Accredited Psychology degree from the University of Aberdeen provides avenues for future study towards a range of professional careers in Psychology. These include:

Clinical Psychology: Clinical psychologists deal with a wide range of mental and physiological issues, including; depression, anxiety, and learning difficulties.

Educational Psychology: Educational psychologists work with children and young people in educational settings. They might deal with issues such as learning difficulties, disability, social and emotional problems.

Forensic Psychology: Forensic psychologists tend to work within the prison service and are involved in implementing treatment programs, modifying offender behaviour and reducing stress for staff and prisoners.

Occupational Psychology: Occupational psychologists work within an organisation to improve job satisfaction and safety of individuals. This may include examination of human factors and ergonomics.

Sports Psychology: Sports psychologists engage in activities such as: counselling referees; advising coaches; helping athletes with personal development.

Health Psychology: Health psychologists work within healthcare and help individuals deal with the psychological and emotional aspects of health and illness. They also support individuals who are chronically ill.

A psychology degree from the University of Aberdeen provides a great basis for career options with a psychological element. These include:

Human Resources (HR): Human resource officers typically offer advice and help to implement organisational policies related to personnel. Their main aim is to ensure the right balance of staff within an organisation, that they can work to the best of their ability and are supported adequately.

Social work: A social worker's main role is to provide support to individuals and enable them to help themselves. They work with people such as young offenders; people with mental health conditions; the homeless and the elderly. Tasks might include conducting interviews, managing packages of support and counselling.

Marketing: Marketing involves identifying customer demand in relation to a product or service and improving purchase levels. This might involve analysing market research, assessing distribution, looking at product design and considering pricing and promotion.

Counsellors: Counsellors work closely with clients to explore feelings, reflect on past experiences and work towards a positive conclusion to their current situation. Counsellors offer clients time, empathy and respect; they do not offer advice.

Education: Teachers work in both primary and secondary education. Their job role includes activities such as the development of lesson plans, assessment of academic progress, supervision of multiple children and organising learning resources.

Data Analysis: This career path involves using psychological research methods and statistical skills to analyse complex datasets, discover patterns in human behaviour, and generate insights. This can involve working with a range of companies including tech, healthcare, or marketing.

Behavioural Data Analyst: This role often involves working with large datasets and predictive models to inform business strategies. In this field, you might work in areas such as e-commerce, app usage, or healthcare.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) / Machine Learning: Psychology graduates with programming and data science skills can contribute to fields like natural language processing or human-computer interaction. With this career path, you can work in designing AI systems or improving machine learning models.