Psychology degree/want change and more money - advice ?!

[Londdi]

Hello everyone,
I am 33. I graduated year ago with psychology degree and I also became single parent few years back. I realised that I don’t want a man in my life and I’m so happy and content single with one child. However, I live in London and and I’m on benefits atm. I work as reception in a gym and my salary is not great but somehow better than all the jobs in psychology I looked at I could do with my degree. I searched for psychology jobs with nhs and the pay is just terrible . Now realising I might stay single raising my child (who is 7 now) I would rather job with better pay. Psychology is passion but the pay in healthcare and the horror stories about case load - I don’t want it. Anyone any career advice what could I do? Did anyone change from psychology degree ? I was thinking about HR or accounting… but any ideas welcomed

I think that psychology graduates used to be quite sought after in advertising. Not sure if that's still the case, but maybe worth investigating

Why HR?

Why accountancy?

They're quite different careers to be on your short list. What interests you in them?

The reason I did a psychology degree was because I had no idea what I wanted to do as a career and it was recommended to me as something that has really far reaching applicable skills... so you can do pretty much anything really! I have ended up in mental health but I'm not patient facing

Marketing? Market research?

Psychology really should set you up for lots of careers. If you want a job with Psychologist in the title, you almost always need an MSc these days. Occupational psychology or educational psychology or counselling psychology etc.

But there are 100s of other things you are qualified for. HR or advertising or marketing or sales etc. almost any graduate level job will consider someone with a good psychology degree.

Look up government research profession lots of psychology graduates and varied roles across different government departments. Your skills will likely be numerical so very valuable.

What was your plans/ hopes when you were completing your psychology degree? If you want an actual career as a chartered psychologist you will need to gain really good experience in the relevant area- and this does involve starting at the bottom at times- health care worker, teaching assistant, mental health worker etc. then you will need to apply for a funded doctorate which are very difficult to get on.

Other popular areas would be research jobs, civil service etc.

I did a psychology degree about 100 years ago. Never did clinical practice but it’s had some relevance to my career in HR. If you’re interested in why people do what they do then organisations are a good place to study that and try to influence their behaviour.

What kind of salary are you looking for? You often need a second degree to work as a psychologist in a specific field, are you looking at assistant psychologist jobs? They are often poorly paid, so that may be what's putting you off.

Many jobs don’t require a specific degree.

Does your university career service help their graduates? Some do and it might be worth speaking to them if they do.

I have a psychology degree and now work in tech, I'm a software product manager. I think psychology understanding helps me with user research and ux design. I work out how technology helps people to do the things they need to do. I find it really interesting.