What Can You Do with a Master’s in Psychology? 7 Rewarding Careers

Psychology involves the study of the mind and human behavior. If this field interests you, earning your bachelor’s degree in psychology can help prepare you for positions such as caseworker, social worker, and human resources generalist. But what types of roles are you qualified to fill if you get your master’s degree, further advancing your career in psychology?

1. Clinical Psychologist

If you’re interested in working one-on-one with people, you may want to use your master's in psychology to secure a clinical psychologist position. In this particular role, you would spend your days helping patients with a variety of mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders. From condition management to finding ways to promote positive change, you can have a major impact on your clients in this higher-level psychology role.

2. School Psychologist

Perhaps you want to work with students. In this case, your career in psychology could take you to a grade school or high school setting. Your role in this position might involve creating mental health activities for students to engage in, teaching parents how to help their children succeed in an academic setting, or even educating the community about how learning contributes to a student’s mental health. If the activity impacts a student’s mental health, you’re likely to be involved in some way.

3. Industrial-Organizational Psychologist or Occupational Psychologist

Another option is to take your master's in psychology and use it to benefit the workplace. That’s the role of an industrial-organizational psychologist. This psychology professional applies various psychological principles and theories with the goal of improving a work environment. This might require addressing issues relating to communication, performance, or productivity. It may also involve increasing employee job satisfaction or promoting workplace safety.

4. Forensic Psychologist

With a forensics background, you can pursue a variety of careers in psychology. Among them are serving as a counselor in a correctional facility, acting as a supervisor in a jail, or being an advocate for victims of crime. As a forensic psychologist, you can also use your education and skills to help police agencies solve crimes by giving them some insight into the mind of the criminal. There are countless forensic psychology career paths to consider.

5. Human Resource Manager

Some masters-level psychology careers don’t have the field’s name in their title. One is the position of human resource manager. Because this job involves overseeing the hiring and training of new staff, a deeper understanding of the human mind and behavior can help you succeed in this role. It also provides the skills needed to strengthen the relationship between the company’s management team and its ground-level employees, which is yet another human resource manager job function.

6. Program Coordinator

If you like the idea of overseeing programs versus people, you may want to use your master’s in psychology to become a program coordinator. In this role, you would be responsible for overseeing a community or business-based program from the initial planning stages to its successful execution. Your knowledge of people and their behaviors would help you each step of the way, whether by getting program participants to do their part or by appealing to supporters for financial or physical contributions.

7. Director of Services

This higher-level career in psychology involves using your education and skills to provide a company or agency’s clientele with a higher level of customer service. This might involve teaching employees more efficient communication methods or problem-solving techniques. It could also include doing a bit of research to learn more about where customer service deficiencies may exist, then coming up with ways to resolve these issues. Your primary goal in this role is to find ways to improve customer relations, then working with the staff to put these improvements into place.

Ready to Earn Your Master’s in Psychology?

If you’re ready to pursue one of these careers in psychology, Saint Leo University offers an online master’s in psychology program. This 36 graduate-credit-hour program involves taking one course during each eight-week term. It is also limited to no more than 15 students per cohort, providing you access to an educational experience that is more personalized to you and your needs.

Saint Leo’s master’s in psychology program includes courses such as Advanced Social Psychology, Learning and Cognition, Physiological Psychology, and Psychology of Teaching and Practice. Six of the credit hours are also dedicated to the final Capstone Project, which is when you get to research and write about an area of psychology that interests you most.

Contact our Office of Admissions today to learn more about this program or to begin taking the steps to enroll.