On every list of “excellent degrees for a career in business,” nestled amongst the business administration, economics, and accounting degrees, you will always find someone insisting that a psychology degree will benefit you as you climb the ranks of corporate success.
Indeed, psychology is a valuable field of knowledge and skill for those entering some business careers.
If you are looking to earn a bachelor’s degree in psychology, you have more career options than you might expect.
Here are a few careers that allow you to apply the knowledge you gained from your psychology degree program to the most benefit.
8 Lucrative Business Careers for Psychology Degree Holders
1. Human Resources Management
HR is a field dedicated to managing an organization’s most valuable resource: its people.
Employees require special care and attention, and human resources professionals are tasked with drafting and enforcing policies and programs to keep the entire staff happy and healthy.
A psychology degree is valuable in HR management because it equips you with a deeper understanding of people’s thought processes and behavior patterns, giving you the right skills to help workers navigate the workplace successfully.
2. Workforce Insights Analysis
Plenty of psychologists is fascinated by the human mind but not particularly interested in interacting with humans themselves. In this case, a more data-driven role in workforce insights analysis might be suitable for your career.
This type of analyst is tasked with researching and reviewing employee performance, management processes, and workflows with the goal of improving productivity, training, and company satisfaction.
3. Professional Business Development
More and more often, workers are eager for their employers to supply career development opportunities.
Professional business development professionals are responsible for helping organizations develop and provide training invaluable workplace skills.
These professionals often work for consulting firms that craft seminars and workshops for a variety of clients across fields. Psychology can be a useful foundation for this line of work because it allows you insight into learning processes to improve the effectiveness of your training.
4. Organizational Effectiveness Management
Senior business leadership and management teams might have a strong, cohesive vision for their company — but without an organizational effectiveness manager, they might not know how to make that vision into reality.
Organizational effectiveness management teams create a roadmap for achieving leadership’s vision through organizational goals and management processes.
In larger organizations, these professionals might be part of the management staff, but you can also find available positions in consulting firms in this field.
5. Executive Coaching
Managers are tasked with organizing work processes and delivering positive outcomes for the business.
In contrast, coaches work to help employees identify their strengths and strengthen their weaknesses, gaining valuable knowledge and skill that can improve their performance today and prepare them for more advanced responsibilities in the future.
Executive coaches tend to work with high-level business leaders, which makes this a lucrative career field for those equipped with the psychology experience to excel.
6. Team Development Management
Team development management is a field dedicated to improving the productivity and performance of business teams.
Often, team development managers work with business management to design and implement different processes important for high team performance, like onboarding and feedback delivery.
Because different teams are composed of different individuals, different approaches are required for each group.
Thus, you gain a bit more creative liberty in this role than you might in other business positions that utilize psychology degrees.
7. Change Management
A field that continues to grow in popularity, change management is focused on preparing and guiding an organization through a significant change.
Change is difficult for businesses and the people within them, and change managers who understand human psychology can reduce stress levels and ensure productivity before, during, and after the transition period.
To be effective in this role, you will need some familiarity with business strategy to develop effective plans for the intended change, so you might need to return to school for an MBA or work for some time in a business leadership role.
8. Behavioral Analysis
Perhaps the business career with the closest ties to psychology, behavioral analysis involves evaluating employee behavioral and social issues and developing strategies to eliminate undesirable behavioral patterns in the workplace.
Because undesirable behavior can arise due to a number of complicated factors — biological reasons like hunger or fatigue, cultural reasons like competition, environmental reasons like bright lights, etc. — behavioral analysts must complete extensive research.
If you are fascinated by psychological research, this might be the ideal business career for you.
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