Guest Perspective – Page 6

Guest Blog: Career Paths for Psychology Majors

Alan Carniol (C ’05)

It was probably around this time in my senior year that I started to panic. As a psychology major, I didn’t know what my career options were or how my education could help me get a job. Worse, when I shared my major at career fairs, I often received, “When we need a therapist, we’ll call you,” or the quickly overplayed, “So you can read minds. What am I thinking right now?”

The good news is that there are a ton of jobs that benefit directly from psychological know-how and the skills learned in a psychology major. I’ll discuss some here.

Marketing: Understanding what different people want and connecting products to these wants. The work is rarely developing advertising slogans. More often it’s about data. Qualitative data includes running focus groups or following people in daily life and recording actions. Quantitative data includes collecting surveys, tracking purchases, or measuring online activities.

With this data, products are designed, prices are set, sales channels are selected, and branding is chosen. Straight out of college, you can land a job in market research. From there, you can enter marketing strategy and design marketing campaigns.

Talent Management: How to make an organization stronger by making people happier, better incentivized and more productive. This field includes: hiring, training, executive coaching, structuring compensation (e.g. to make employees collaborative or competitive), building cultures (e.g. connecting cultures of two recently merged companies), and teaching managers to be more effective.

Entry-level jobs include recruiter, human resources analyst or human capital consultant (like at Deloitte or Philly local Gap International). Some jobs require more education. Columbia has a Master’s in Organizational Psychology, and there are other Master’s and PhD programs in Organizational Behavior.

Product Development and Design: Creating products to fill human needs. Building a new product requires design, engineering and understanding of human behavior. The number of opportunities is limited for non-technical experts, but design firms such as IDEO hire people into positions with titles like Human Factors Specialist.

Consulting and Finance: Using data and analysis to determine the value of resources and to make recommendations about these resources. At this point, on-campus recruiting may have finished, but know that the analytical skill set you’ve developed through psychological research can be strong preparation for jobs in these fields.

Entrepreneurism: Building something out of nothing. The web and new web technology, some tailored to non-techies, have made starting a company pretty low cost. As an entrepreneur, you may be called upon to do any or all the other jobs I’ve described.

Education: Education is an industry hungry for innovation and talent. Yes, Teach for America, NYC Teaching Fellows, and individual charter schools would love you in the classroom. In addition, national charter school management organizations like Achievement First or KIPP need help identifying methods to improve education and launching new schools.

Counseling and Therapy: You are probably familiar with some, but not all, of these opportunities. These include social work, family counseling, and clinical psychology. There is a growing field known as life coaching where you enable psychologically healthy individuals to achieve their life goals. Some opportunities exist straight out of school, though often you need additional training.

Wrapping Up

If any of these opportunities intrigue you, reach out to career services and ask for companies who have recruited Penn students in the past. Also, contact Penn alums in these fields and ask for a 20-minute phone call to learn about their experiences.

At the end of each call, don’t ask for a job. Instead, ask for the names of two or three more people to speak with in this industry. Eventually, from these conversations, you will be invited for interviews.

To your success,
Alan

Alan Carniol C’05 is the founder of two companies Career Cadence and Interview Success LLC. There, he uses his psychology major training to design new products, develop marketing strategies, and analyze data qualitatively and statistically. Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, Alan received an MBA from Yale School of Management and worked as a municipal financial consultant for Public Financial Management Inc.

Should I Join A Startup? Examining the Pros and Cons

by Ada Chen Rekhi

Startups are the hot new thing these days, and everyone wants to get into technology startups with high profile companies like Facebook, Twitter and Zynga making headlines and millionaires being created overnight. But should you join one?

As a recent Penn grad, I’ve seen both sides of the table. After graduating from Penn in 2006, I moved to Redmond for my first job at Microsoft. After that, I headed down to Silicon Valley to work for a small online games startup Mochi Media. I had an amazing experience at Mochi, working with some of the most fun and brilliant people that I know, and making great friends. Even better, the company was acquired for $80 million last year. Since then, I’ve recently co-founded my own startup, Connected, which provides contact management without the work.

As someone who’s in the startup community, I often speak with alumni who reach out and ask: should I join a startup?

The pros and cons of joining a startup

Choosing whether or not to join a startup is a deeply personal decision. Startups are definitely not the best fit for everyone. The reality of startups are two-fold: they can be intensely rewarding and uplifting experiences, but are also often long hours and low pay with a high variance on your results. Here are some of the pro and cons I’ve observed in startups:

Pros

Wearing lots of hats – At any small and rapidly growing company, it’s all hands on deck. Startups offer fantastic opportunities to wear multiple hats and really get to know what it’s like to run an organization.

Big career opportunities – Working at a startup can present big opportunities to step up and lead a time. As your startup grows, your scope of responsibility and experiences grow alongside it. Careers can progress much more quickly inside of startups.

Learn by doing – In startups I love that so much learning takes place by simply rolling up your sleeves and doing, with fast feedback on how well you’re doing. Startups tend to encourage a culture of learning by experimentation, and small projects have the potential to become game-changing projects.

Passionate people – Startups are almost invariably made up of passionate, excited people who are working there because they truly want to be working there. I love the energy and passion in small teams that believe in the idea that they’re working on.

Cons

Less Specialization – While startups offer opportunities to wear multiple hats, it’s rare to find opportunities to focus and become a deep domain expert in one area. As a startup marketer, I was a generalist with responsibilities ranging from managing press and events to product decisions around launch, pricing and engagement. In a larger company, there are more opportunities to get deep and specialize.

Career Development – With exceptions, startups are not run by people who have extensive people management experience and see it as their goal to shepherd personal career development. While startups can offer opportunities for career growth, the responsibility for this largely falls on you, the employee.

Less Stable – Everything moves quickly in startups. Everything is fair game to change, including the startup’s name, the business model, and your role in the organization. Being part of a startup means being comfortable with constant large and small changes, and comfortable with the potential risks involved.

More Hours, Less Pay – Generally, you’ll work harder and get paid less while at a startup compared to your comparable role within a larger company. Very young companies often don’t offer the same type of compensation and benefits packages as larger organizations.

Finding success in startups

Startups come in all sizes and shapes, and your experience can be very different depending on the team and business you choose. It’s like finding a shoe that fits. Every company is different, and the differences are magnified by team size.

As some final piece of advice, make sure you understand your career goals, what you hope to get out of the experience and how it all fits together. Good luck on your startup adventures!

—

Ada Chen Rekhi is co-founder and head of user growth at Connected (http://connectedhq.com), a startup based in San Francisco which provides contact management without the work. Connected was recently acquired by LinkedIn, and Ada is now on the Product Marketing team there. She is a recent Penn alumna who graduated in 2006. You can connect with Ada on her blog at http ://www .adachen .com or on Twitter as @adachen. Ada will be posting about her day on our @PennCareerDay feed on Wednesday, November 9th. Check back here next week for details on that!

Guest Blog – Learning to Let Go: The Toughest Lesson to Learn

by Alyssa Schwenk, CAS ’10

When I was at Penn, I had a certain routine: up at 9, class, gym, library until 3. A late lunch with friends, then into the Daily Pennsylvanian offices to report, write, and edit until the wee hours. I’d break for dinner around 7, return to the office, go home around 12:30, catch up with roommates, do homework, and send emails until about 2:30, when I’d crash. Lather, rinse, repeat. I loved it.

Now — two months into my second year teaching in D.C. through Teach for America — I can’t give you a daily schedule. I have the broadest strokes: Up at ten till six, at school by seven, and the kids come at eight. After that — who knows. While there’s an academic schedule, no two days even resemble one another. Some days, my math lesson goes amazingly, and every one of my 23 kindergarteners can count to 20 (trust me, it’s a big deal). Other days, there’s a tough-tough-tough conversation with a parent, an administrator, or a social worker. Or there’s an earthquake. So it goes. It’s an experience unlike any other, and one that I’m incredibly proud of doing on a daily basis.

I joined TFA immediately after graduating Penn in 2010, surprising even my closest family and friends. In September of senior year, excited and anxious about the future, I’d decided to apply. I wanted to try something new, to push myself farther: It was time to put myself in a situation that was bigger than me, one that made an impact in the world. I also was struck by how unbelievably lucky I’d been to spend four years at Penn, for being from a family with the savvy to make that happen, even if we didn’t have the resources. I wanted to give back. Like most major life decisions, it wasn’t exactly planned, but in retrospect, it made perfect sense.

Everyone I’d asked about TFA said, “It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” While I appreciated the enormity of the work, I also saw the phrase and the sentiment as partly cliché: If closing the achievement gap were easy, obviously it would have happened. Of course it was tough. I was expecting hard and frustrating and a learning curve on teaching. I was expecting to experience situations that I had never encountered. I was expecting steep statistical odds and long nights and a struggle.

But I was not expecting the crash course in emotions, acceptance, and letting go. It’s all in how you look at it. Nothing can ache more than watching a child, who you see every day, who you taught to do multiplication and whose shoes you tie and whose milk you open, not getting what she needs and deserves. But nothing can bring you as much joy as that same child figuring out how to really do subtraction for the first time. Nothing is more frustrating than seeing a student dealing with a situation that can’t be fixed through hard work and strategizing, but nothing is more empowering than seeing that student learn to read, count, and think independently. Even just eight weeks into the school year, I can already see enormous growth in my five-year-olds. Seeing my hard work pay off in such a concrete, immediate and life-changing way — so soon after leaving college — is a rare and amazing privilege. It’s that ability to affect change in my students’ lives that keeps me going on a daily basis.

Branching Out Beyond Art History & East Asian Studies

by Irene Tieh

Before I arrived at Penn in the Fall of 1994, I had to decide on whether I would enroll into Wharton or the College. At that time, I did not have any proof that I knew Chinese (Chinese language classes were rare back then) and had to forego the dual degree Wharton/College program. Everyone I knew told me that the obvious decision would be Wharton but I really wanted the opportunity to find out more about myself at college. Born in Taiwan but raised in Texas, I really wanted to have a better understanding of both eastern and western cultures which was why I decided to major in both Art History and East Asian Studies.

I learned from Professor Nancy Steinhardt that I could submatriculate at the same time and earn a Masters degree by the time I completed my Bachelors. The Fine Arts library granted me my own shelf space since I accumulated such an enormous amount of books for completing both degrees. The ability to read, write, filter and discern vast amounts of information really helped me throughout my career. Most importantly, studying both eastern and western cultures through art and history enabled me to pursue a global marketing career. Each marketing position I took on for either the art, beauty or education industry required me to wear several hats.

Since I double majored and submatriculated at Penn, the extensive demands of those job positions did not overwhelm me. I became more efficient at managing and prioritizing my workload. I also felt more prepared to conduct competitive market research and as well as present findings in a boardroom since I did so much research, writing and presentations at Penn. Furthermore, I had the cross-cultural communication skills that enabled me to work with several different countries and markets at the same time.

Now that I have spent several years marketing products and brands, I am applying my learnings and best practices to help individuals figure out how they can continue to flourish at college or in their career. What matters is not what you majored in during college but what you do with the skill-sets you acquired along the way. Keep learning, nurturing and applying your skills sets!

*Irene Tieh will be contributing to @PennCareerDay on Twitter during our International Careers week (October 17th-21st) to discuss her studies and career in China. Check back next week for Irene’s full bio!

Quaker to QuickBooks: The job search isn’t as easy as an alliteration, but things eventually pan out

by Rohini Venkatraman, C’10

Through college, the “next step” in my life had always been pretty clear-cut. I’ve sort of always had a vision for myself – goals, wishes, motivations – and there was usually just one option that made sense. Most of the time, there wasn’t much of a choice anyway. School for example. “Graduating” 8^th grade only meant the start of high school. And well, college wasn’t exactly optional after attending a college preparatory school.

I’ve heard that a majority of students change their major at least three times during college. I changed it once: from Undeclared to Psychology. While college is a time for social and academic exploration, my academic exploration was within the limits of foundational and sector requirements. And throughout my four years, I took pride in the fact that you can really do “anything” after having studied something like Psychology.

Well, you sure can do “anything” with a major like Psychology, which is why I spent a majority of my senior year panicked about “my future” and “the rest of my life.” I felt like my peers, especially those in Wharton, were on a concrete career path. Some had jobs lined up before senior year had even started and others were swept up within the first month. Hell just the fact that they were running in and out of Huntsman wearing suits was enough to remind me that they (seemingly) had their lives together and that I didn’t. But I didn’t try to actively change this early on. I spent the entirety of my first semester and even some of second trying to identify my “dream job.” My plan was to identify it, then apply (and hopefully get offered the job). Needless to say, this myopic lense was exactly how not to approach the job search.

My panic attack hit somewhere in February when I suddenly realized that my sophomore and junior friends were being offered summer internships and I still didn’t have a fulltime job.

The next thing I knew, I was sitting at a table at Saxbys with an all-too-large cup of coffee poring over PennLink. Any opportunity that seemed even remotely relevant to my course of study or passions (Psychology, writing, technology) became an option. I began emailing out my resume like crazy. Resume spam would be the best way to put it. I couldn’t even give you a list of all the companies to which I applied (not ideal, if I had to go back and do this, I’d probably, in the least, maintain a list).

Several weeks after this episode, I received a call from an unknown number. It turned out to be an HR representative doing an application screener for a rotational program at Intuit (the maker of TurboTax, QuickBooks, and now Mint.com) based in Mountain View, CA. My job is just to make sure that your general interest in the opportunity fits she said. I was only barely listening as I racked my brain trying to remember any details of the opportunity. A couple rounds of interviews later, I found myself employed.

Fast forward to today, I am an Associate in Intuit’s Rotational Development Program, a full-time 2-year rotational program with a focus on developing key functional and leadership skills. My specific focus is in Marketing and Product Management. In addition to six-month rotations in each, I will also have the chance to explore areas like Design and Corporate Strategy & Development during my time in the program. So no, I didn’t find one perfect job. I found four. I graduated from Penn over 12 months ago (where does the time go?!) and I’m still figuring things out. And the weirdest thing is that this is completely normal.

The beauty of Intuit’s rotational program, and well, the post-college world in general, is that it allows you to explore the vast array of opportunities that exist out there. The lack of structure is a blessing in disguise. It allows you to determine your interests and strengths (you’re even allowed to fail once in a while). Don’t think you need to know what or where you want to be coming in, because the truth is, nobody does. You’ll find yourself standing at more and more forks in the road and each time, you’ll learn a little more about yourself.

Last Wednesday evening, I was sitting on an Intuit patio enjoying wine (yes, fun still exists in the real world!) with coworkers who have years of experience on me. I told them I was still trying to figure out what I’m doing with my life, to which one responded, “You know, so am I. I don’t think anyone ever knows. You just sort of fall into roles and then they take their course.”

To throw out some numbers, I applied to around twenty positions, heard back from five, had interviews at three and got offers from two. Don’t spend your senior year of college worrying about your future (think about it, just don’t worry about it). You have the rest of your life to do that. Drink college to the lees. Realize how privileged you are to have world-class professors standing in front of you everyday sharing breaking research findings. Appreciate the fact that the people you have grown to love over the past four years are always just a stone’s throw away. And remember that with an open mind, determination, and a stamp like “University of Pennsylvania” on your resume, things will eventually (and always) fall into place.