November 6, 2023
So, I originally titled this entry "What do with your life if you want to go to graduate school, but not straight away and don't want to apply for a fellowship." But that was too long. The answer is that you want to apply for a job.
This post is not about jobs in psychology or cognitive science in general, or what one can do with a degree in these fields. Maybe I'll do another post on that. This post is about research jobs - jobs that will help set you up for applying to graduate school if you don't want to go straight away (think about it, the average age of people entering Ph.D. programs is ~26, so most people are taking time after college to do something else and not applying straight away). This post is about the something else.
A lot of people apply for fellowships. But those fellowships are rare. This post is about jobs. Searching for them, and preparing for them.
The good news is that there are research jobs in psychology and cognitive science. Actually, there are a lot of them. But they are usually attached to a university, so the geography of looking for a job is similar to the geography of looking for a mentor for graduate school. There are, however, a few challenges, and there is a general timeline for this, so I want to go over those factors in helping people with this part of the process.
Here is some basic information:
1) Generally speaking, the majority of jobs in academic research are posted between Feb-May with an expected start date of Summer/Sept 1. This is for a few reasons. First, people in existing positions will know if they are going to graduate school and PIs (Primary Investigators) will then know if a new person needs to be brought in. Second, lots of grant decisions get made in March-April with new grants starting in Summer/Fall of that year, so people start to know at this time if they will have the money to support a new position.
2) APA (American Psychological Association), APS (Association for Psychological Science) and CHE (Chronical for Higher Education) all have job boards. Some post-bac jobs are posted there. But, here's the thing: It costs money (a lot of money) to post a job there (like $800-1200). Most PIs don't have that kind of money, so they don't do it. Instead, they post to listservs, on social media, or through other free forums. Sometimes, they don't even advertise at all, and just look locally. So, it makes a lot of sense to join a listserv in your area of study. In my field (Development), there's the cogdevsoc listserv, which advertises many jobs in developmental psychology and developmental psychopathy. If these fields interest you, great. Go join. (it's free!). If you are interested in another area, then look at societies (like SFN or Cognitive Science) to see what they have, or speak with your research advisor or a professor in that area, who can help (remember, this is what office hours are for!).
3) But because some jobs don't advertise, another strategy is to directly email a professor at another university asking if they are considering hiring a staff person in the future. Seriously, I get 2-3 of these emails per semester. They go like this: "Hello, my name is YOUR NAME. I'm a student at INSERT UNIVERSITY HERE. I'm graduating on DATE, and I was looking at your profile on the internet. Your research on TOPIC matches many of my interests and I was curious as to whether you would be running a search for a lab manager or research assistant in the near future." (Obviously, you tailor this to your interests and skills, and describe those interests and skills in much more detail. It also helps if you have research experience to discuss and a CV to attach. The idea is that this opens up a dialog between you and someone you might want to be mentored by, particularly if they are in a geographic location where you want to live.
4) A critical point here is that getting a research job is not the same as going to graduate school. That is, the match does not have to be perfect. The goal here is for you to get more research experience, not for you to be doing your own research. You want to look much more broadly than you would for a graduate program. The goal is to garner more experience - any kind of experience - not necessarily the specific experience in a research question that will drive you for 5+ years. So, again, be broad in your thinking.
5) Although the bulk of these jobs will be advertised Feb-May, they are available all year round. For example, I'm hiring someone to start in Jan, so I'm looking for a December graduate (in fact, I interviewed someone today). So, its always appropriate to be vigilant for these ads.
6) The last thing I want to mention is that I have mostly focused on research positions, like lab managers and research assistants. But there are also post-bac clinical experiences that you can apply for. Many of these are also advertised in the the spring, but they are present more year-round. Look at hospital websites (particularly hospitals that are affiliated with universities) as these often post openings locally, which is particularly important if you have a sense of where you want to be after you graduate.
Update (10/17/24): There is a lovely website: https://www.psychresearchlist.com/, which contains a lot of useful information about research jobs available in psychology, as well as paid internships for the summer (and lots of other useful information). You can also look at the job list that I maintain here for this blog.