An Introductory Guide to Non-Academic Careers for Personality Psychologists

Albrecht C. P. Küfner1 and Ryne A. Sherman2

1Director at FactWorks, Berlin/San Francisco
2Associate Professor at Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL

Ryne ShermanAlbrecht Kufner

While most begin graduate school with dreams of becoming college professors, the mathematics of the academic job market indicate that at least some (if not many) grad students in personality psychology will need to look for non-academic careers. In this article we discuss the (a) the opportunities available to personality psychologists in non-academic careers, (b) the relative advantages of non-academic careers, (c) the unique advantages for personality psychologists pursuing non-academic careers, and (d) the things grad students can be doing right now to prepare themselves for careers outside academia.

Non-Academic Career Opportunities

The largest non-academic opportunities for people with an advanced degree in personality psychology includes work in industry (businesses) and government jobs as part of research departments. In the information age, the ability to gather and sift through large amounts of data is a highly valuable skill. Moderns businesses and government agencies rely on internal research teams to advise numerous departments including Marketing and Sales. These teams ask questions like: (a) what marketing materials get the highest response rates? (b) which current employees are most likely to leave the company, and (c) what sales strategies and products generate the most profit? (d) what problems are users experiencing and what makes users most satisfied? They then conduct research (sometimes called A/B testing, which we psychologists refer to as a two independent groups design) to answer these questions.

Advantages of Non-Academic Careers

Perhaps the most obvious advantage of a non-academic career is that there are more jobs. On an overall level, the economic situation does look good. Several countries report less unemployed citizens and even more so there are many open positions triggering the so-called war on talent and a shortage of skilled labor. Modern companies and government agencies are nearly always looking to hire talent, and for post-grad students, having an advanced degree (PhD, MA) is a strong indicator of talent. Second, non-academic jobs often pay significantly more than starting professor salaries and usually come with excellent benefits. Third, non-academic jobs do not have tenure clocks making them less stressful (at least early on) than assistant professor jobs.

Strengths of a Personality degree for Non-Academic Careers

All research psychologists have training in basic statistics and research methods, making them well-suited for many non-academic careers. Indeed, it is our experience that many grad students forget just how skilled they are. As grad and post-grad students, we often surround ourselves with others who have just as much, or even more, knowledge than we have. Thus, we do not realize just how few people in the world know how to conduct an actual experiment, a longitudinal study, and run the appropriate analyses with the obtained data. Further, personality psychologists are especially well-suited for non-academic careers. Compared to other psychologists, we tend to have more experience with survey design, multivariate statistics, and psychometrics - skills that are often highly desired. Personality psychologists are regularly trained in interview techniques as well, which is useful for research with focus groups and more qualitatively research.

Preparing for a Non-Academic Career

What should a current grad student in personality psychology do (right now) if he or she is interested in a non-academic career? Although you should be confident about your skills around statistics it is important to further develop your skills. While academia puts a high emphasis on pedigree, industry and government jobs care far less about where you were trained and far more about what you have done and can do. Perhaps the most important skill set you can further develop is quantitative skills. You should keep in mind however that many of the quantitative skills valued in psychology (e.g., latent variable modeling, growth curve modeling) are less valued in industry. Instead, multivariate statistical techniques (e.g., cluster analysis, factor analysis) and regression-based (big data) analytics (ranging from multiple regressions to, e.g., machine learning) are more valued. Businesses and government agencies emphasize the practical value of identifying group differences between people together (i.e., identifying customer groups or business verticals) even if a continuous model (i.e., no clear-cut groups) of differences fits the data better. Beyond quant skills, those preparing for non-academic careers would also benefit from picking up a number of programming skills. This includes R (for data analysis and graphing), Python (for web and text-based projects as well as data analysis), and SQL (for database management). As they are still the prominent software packages in business and government contexts, it is crucial that you know how to work with Excel (i.e., functions, cross tabulations) and build great power point slides. Finally, those looking at non-academic careers ought to look for internship opportunities to get experience working in non-academic settings. Many internships also pay, which can be a nice supplement to paltry graduate student stipends.

What Can Advisors Do?

As we conclude this essay, we think it is also worth mentioning a few things advisors can do. First, we think advisors need to be realistic with their students. The fact of the matter is, if every PhD advisor retired tomorrow, there still would not be enough academic jobs for all of their students. Academic careers are not a one-way street. Advisors should know that many of their students will end up in non-academic jobs and they should be prepared to assist them. Advisors ought to meet with their students early and often to discuss career pursuits and how they can be best achieved. Additionally, we believe that advisors and students would be best served by having open and honest discussions about career goals. In our experience, many students are afraid to tell their advisors that they are interested in non-academic jobs, fearing that their advisors will abandon them. Advisors will also have to sacrifice. There is no doubt that advisors benefit by having grad students spend every minute working on their own projects (rather than in internships, for example). However, advisors also have a moral obligation to help their students succeed. While many in the academy may feel that they do not know how to advise students towards non-academic careers, we hope that this essay provides personality psychologists with a good place to start.

P.S. If you are a grad student and would like to see how a real market research and consulting agency works - consider applying for an analyst position at our FactWorks offices in San Mateo, CA. For more information, please reach out/send your resume to y.febert@factworks.com.


Albrecht Küfner acquired his PhD in personality psychology at the university of Mainz, Germany in 2012. He worked in Mitja Back's lab in Münster, Germany until 2014 researching personality and social relationships. Albrecht is now a Director at FactWorks, an international high-end research and analytics company based in Berlin and San Francisco. He is leading global research projects for Fortune 500 companies in Financial Services, eCommerce and information and telecommunications technology.

Ryne Sherman received his PhD in personality/social psychology from the University of California, Riverside. He is currently an Associate Professor of Psychology at Florida Atlantic University. Ryne's students regularly complete internships with market research and psychological assessment firms in the US and have gone on to excellent research careers in both industry and government.