Greetings! My name is Eric Landrum, and I’ve been a professor in the Department of Psychology at Boise State University for 20 years. Not that long ago, I was serving on a search committee and sitting in yet another session of telephone interviews where my department was hiring a new assistant professor.
Having been in the same department for two decades, I’ve participated in hundreds of telephone interviews. On that particular day, I was lamenting to a new faculty member (Elizabeth Morgan) about how unprepared some job applicants were for the interviews as well as their lack of skills and knowledge about interviewing preparedness and etiquette.
An applicant might have superb clinical or counseling skills, yet this same applicant might appear like he or she clearly did not receive much mentoring regarding scripts and schemas for successful interviewing. That lamenting turned into a book prospectus, and we went on to publish You’ve Earned your Doctorate in Psychology…Now What? Securing a Job as an Academic or Professional Psychologist with APA Books (Morgan & Landrum, 2012).
We each play multiple roles throughout our professional (and personal) lives, and in my own career, I’ve made the transition from job applicant to search committee member—from assistant professor to full professor to department chair. I’ve served on a number of search committees where our interest is in hiring a new assistant professor who would specialize in teaching clinical and counseling type courses for our undergraduate degree program in psychology as well as engaging in a scholarly research program.
By design, graduate faculty members typically excel in instilling the knowledge, skills, and abilities to be successful as a professional psychologist. Hopefully you have a great mentor whom you can rely on for the navigational guidance to make it from practicum to internship to first job.
Elizabeth and I wrote the book to supplement your mentoring and advising and to fill in the gaps when necessary. Let’s face it – graduate faculty members cannot always be experts in everything, so we hope to provide some expert advice about the job search with your doctoral degree. Your graduate faculty members may not be experts on knowing workforce trends, crafting cover letters, creating a curriculum vita, writing teaching or research statements, assembling portfolios, securing strong letters of recommendation, preparing for off- and on-campus interviews, and making the decision about a job offer. It is precisely in these areas that our book offers the most up-to-date and expert advice we can muster.
To be honest, I’m not that interested in using this blog post to sell books. I’m much more interested in helping doctoral students successfully navigate the job search process, especially those students who may not have local access to these types of resources.
In future blogs, I’d much rather address your questions than provide a chapter-by-chapter synopsis of the book. Comment on this post or email me at [email protected] with any questions, concerns, or situations that you’d like to see addressed in future blogs.
I also want to thank Time2Track for the opportunity to be a part of their Guest Blogger Series. So you are earning your doctorate in psychology—what’s next?
Eric is the lead author of The Psychology Major: Career Options and Strategies for Success (4th ed., 2009), also authored Undergraduate Writing in Psychology: Learning to Tell the Scientific Story (2008) and Finding Jobs With a Psychology Bachelor's Degree: Expert Advice for Launching Your Career (2009). He co-authored An EasyGuide to APA Style (2011), You’ve Earned Your Doctorate in Psychology...Now What? (2012), and was the lead editor for Teaching Ethically—Challenges and Opportunities (2012) and co-editor of Assessing Teaching and Learning in Psychology: Current and Future Perspectives (2013). He served as Vice President for the Rocky Mountain region of Psi Chi (2009-2011). He is a member of the American Psychological Association, a fellow in APA’s Division Two (Society for the Teaching of Psychology or STP), served as STP secretary (2009-2011) and will serve as the 2014 STP President.
- So You’re Earning Your Doctorate in Psychology…What’s Next? - August 20, 2012
Thank you, Eric. My past experience suggests that I will not be doing just one thing when I complete my PhD but will likely be assembling a mosaic of professional activities which bring together a number of my prior interests and competencies. Can you comment on those with psychology doctorates who are successfully blending clinical practice, agency work, faculty work, corporate consulting, writing etc.? My guess is that this may be more common than the person who commits to a single fulltime opportunity on faculty or in private practice.
Hi Hilary,
I think you are exactly correct in that no one will be a unitasker, whether going the professional or academic route. The comment you raised does not have a straightforward reply. I believe what people find is that they have to be “good” at different things at different points in their career — and those “things” vary so much from different institutional perspectives and approaches — any generic advice I could offer wouldn’t be much good.
What I do recommend for folks is for each to find that trusted advisor or mentor in an organization — and not necessarily someone in your own department or specialty area. Local conditions can vary so much — one setting might want a new hire to focus on community relations while another might want the initial focus to be on honing clinical skills. Over time the well-roundedness can pay off in being invaluable. One more idea to add — cognitive psychologists tell us that it takes about 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert — or about 5 years of full time work. So no one leaving graduate school is an expert at anything — developing that expertise will take time AND practice.
I hope that helps.
Eric