Speaking of Psychology: Planning for a successful career, with Garth Fowler, PhD

Succeeding in any profession takes careful planning and skills that may not be obvious to people at the start of their careers. In this episode, psychologist Garth Fowler, PhD, talks about the benefits of having an individual development plan and introduces a set of videos that can help psychologists and other professionals take the next step in their careers.

Garth Fowler, PhD, is the associate executive director of graduate and postgraduate education and training at the American Psychological Association. Fowler joined APA in May 2012 after serving as the assistant chair in the department of neurobiology at Northwestern University. Throughout his career, Fowler has been active in training and education at the graduate and postdoctoral level. 

He has served as a consultant to universities and research institutions on developing training grants and implementing individual development plans for young scientists. Fowler and his APA colleagues have developed a series of individual development plan training videos aimed at recent psychology graduates.

Audrey Hamilton: Progressing in one’s chosen career is not simply about showing up for work every day. So what do you do to succeed? In this episode, we speak with one psychologist who is helping young psychologists create individual development plans or IDPs. He along with colleagues at the American Psychological Association, has put together a set of short YouTube videos that spell out how IDPs can get your career on the right track from the start.

Garth Fowler: IDPs are a tool that rely upon self-assessment. Identifying your career goals, your values, your skills and your abilities. When done correctly, they provide a framework for developing career milestones that move you toward a desired career outcome.

Audrey Hamilton: I’m Audrey Hamilton and this is Speaking of Psychology. Garth Fowler is the associate executive director for the office of graduate and post-graduate education and training at the American Psychological Association. He has developed and delivered hundreds of seminars and workshops for young scientists who are just embarking on their careers. Specifically, he is an expert on creating and implementing individual development plans. These are programs that help students and post-doctoral scholars achieve their career goals. Welcome, Dr. Fowler.

Garth Fowler: Thanks for having me.

Audrey Hamilton: What exactly is an individual development plan and how does it help a student successfully launch a career?

Garth Fowler: An individual development plan is a resource that individuals can use to actually plan out what their career trajectory is going to be. It’s a series of steps that they go through that involve looking at their own skills and abilities – what their own interests are. Doing research on the type of careers out there that utilize those skills and those abilities and that might match their interests. And then trying to put down and say well, if I really wanted to have that job say in two years or three years, what would it take for me to be really competent and successful? To have someone look at my resume and say, that’s the person I want to hire for this job because they are matching what I need right now.

Audrey Hamilton: We know, specifically in these individual development plans, we’re talking about all kinds of careers. Specifically we’re with the American Psychological Association, so let’s focus a little bit on psychology careers. We know there are a lot of options for graduates with a psychology degree. They may not be always terribly obvious, you know, leading to this impression in some quarters that there aren’t a lot of jobs for psychology graduates. Is this true? What should psychology graduates or people interested in psychology as a career be focusing on in order to be successful?

Garth Fowler: I think you’re right. I think there’s a lot of bad publicity for psychology majors and for lots of majors that if it doesn’t really track to some specific job then it’s probably not worth while doing. I think one of the things that an IDP helps people realize is that jobs out there and careers are not actually just titles – they are compositions of skills and competencies and abilities that make you successful or that you need. So I would say anyone that is majoring in, let’s say psychology, develops a lot of skills and abilities that they can use later on. The quantitative skills, the analytical skills – they become experts in understanding how behavior works and how, let’s say, the brain works. And those skills, those abilities to think broadly and be analytical, are very useful in a number of careers. 

Of course, as you move further through what we call the educational pipelines, so as you go from being an undergraduate to say a graduate student with a master’s degree or an individual with a doctoral degree, you are focusing more on a specific set of careers. So if you’re getting a doctoral degree, you’re probably really interested in say doing professional services or doing research or doing both. And so, I think the idea here is to tell people think clearly about what kind of skills and abilities you acquire during your education and training. And also, think clearly about the jobs out there and what they’re asking people to do. 

In my particular job, I don’t do research here, but I still need to be very analytical. I have to look at data. I have to look at reports. I have to look at information that’s coming across my desk about the status of employment and training and be critical and analytical about it. And that was training I got in my doctoral program in a very different way. 

So I would say we hear that oh there are no jobs for psychologists or there’s no jobs for these types of people. But I would say the skill set that you have is applicable to a lot of very rewarding jobs. You just have to think about it in that kind of competency and skill set.

Audrey Hamilton: Well, what can be done to better inform psychologists about their options? I know you’re working on some YouTube videos to help students put together individual development plans. Can you talk about that and is this anything new?

Garth Fowler: Well, I’ll start with the second part. IDPs really aren’t that new in that regard. You ask what the biggest challenge is helping graduate students and post-docs learn about all the different jobs out there. And that’s the biggest challenge. How would someone learn what I do unless they actually say shadow me or call and talk to me? And so part of the IDP resource that we’re developing is giving examples and providing ideas in describing approaches to learning more about all the different jobs out there. One of the things we talk about in IDP is something called the informational interview where you essentially would find someone who say someone would be interested in my job – they meet me at a conference – they could send me a follow-up email later saying “I was really impressed by your talk on IDPs and I am also interested in graduate development, education and training. Would you mind if we had coffee after tomorrow’s session? You could just tell me in twenty minutes a little bit about what you do, how you got there, how your training matched you.” 

And actually, when most people get an email like that, they’re happy to respond. It sounds really intimidating and it’s hard I think to get graduate students and post-docs to do that. But that’s one of the ways to go out there and say well, how would I get a job like yours or are there other jobs like yours? Do other associations have individuals in charge of graduate and post-graduate education training like we do at the APA? And would I be able to apply for that job or would I be successful? I think that’s the biggest challenge, getting them to think beyond oh well, most people who usually study psychology ended up being X. When the data shows right now in workforce and reports that come from the National Science Foundation and from National Institutes of Health and other groups that that’s not the case anymore. There used to be this really what we called traditional track and it’s not there. There are fewer opportunities in some regards – there’s not as many faculty positions that there used to be. But there’s also a lot more new opportunities that people should be investigating. And so, that’s I think the biggest challenge and that’s where we’re really trying to focus.

Audrey Hamilton: And frankly maybe more creative and interesting careers than you have ever thought of. I mean, we have highlighted in Science in Action and on our website people who work playing video games all day. They have a PhD in psychology. I mean I’m not saying people out there, that’s what you should be doing or be focusing on, but thinking outside the box just seems to be a real big focus right now. Not only in psychology, but other careers, as well.

Garth Fowler: I think you’re right. It is kind of this thinking outside the box. And it’s also taking advantage of just seeing what people are willing, you know, what people are doing. So, I like your example of playing video games. Where I went to graduate school, Microsoft was right across the river and you would be surprised at how many people with graduate degrees were getting hired by Microsoft to do things like lets product test this part of Microsoft Word. Let’s have this. Let’s have that. Psychologists are well-versed and prepared to have that type of job. They might have to learn some computer coding on the side. But that’s a new skill set that you’ve added and here you are doing something really amazing and different with your degree.

Audrey Hamilton: So let’s imagine I’m a psychologist. I’m not, but let’s imagine I am. I have a fresh, new doctorate. I’m heading to my first post-doc position or maybe my first job. You know, what are the first things I should do when I start this new job to make sure I’m getting the best out of that experience and to position me for the future?

Garth Fowler: Yes, so that’s a good question. In our video series and the resource that we’re developing, we actually start with some characters. We kind of storyboard this and say we pick two characters and their names are Hunter and Amanda and we say they’re both about to start their post-doc and we actually walk through two ways that you can approach it. One is just arrive and hope that someone tells you what you’re going to do today and they have a plan over the next two years or however long this is that’s going to get you somewhere and if you just come in and hunker down and work really hard, when the two years is over you’ll find a job. 

Or the other approach is to come in and think critically about what you’re being asked to do – what your job and daily requirements are. But also, how do they help you develop new skills, new abilities? Where is the opportunity to say maybe I’m not so great at public speaking, so while I’m in this post-doc I’d like to try and get more opportunities to do that because some day, I would like to be this spokesperson for psychology careers at the APA or something like that. 

So we tell people when you start a new phase of your training or a new phase of your career, sit down and think what am I going to gain from this? What opportunities are there for me? And think, what would be the next set of jobs I could take that would match that? So, it’s kind of thinking a little bit forward. It’s kind of maybe trying to predict – that’s where it gets hard, like can I predict exactly what jobs are going to be open? I don’t think you can, but you can develop a really broad skill set so that when a new and interesting job comes across your desk, you can be like “I’m really qualified. I should probably apply for that job.” Just to see what would happen.

Audrey Hamilton: So what if you’re not a psychologist or a psychology major? What other fields are these IDPs useful for and when should people start developing one?

Garth Fowler: Yes, that’s a really great question. We’re starting to see this idea of an IDP going across all disciplines and all stages of education, which I think is really exciting but it also really I think drives home the idea that during your graduate education or during your post-doctoral education one of the things you should be focusing on is developing competencies and skill sets that will serve you for the rest of your life, not just writing one paper that will get you your next job or something like that.

Audrey Hamilton: Great, well Garth, thank you so much for joining us. I appreciate it.

Garth Fowler: Thanks for having me.

Audrey Hamilton: To see the IDP videos and to learn more about the IDP process, please go to our website. With the American Psychological Association’s Speaking of Psychology, I’m Audrey Hamilton.