3 Employability Skills and Knowledge
When you signed up for a psychology degree, you may or may not have relished the idea of learning about research methods and statistics. By the end of the course though, we will not only show you that you can master the content, but we will show you how research methods and statistics provides a wide range of skills and knowledge that will be critical for employability after your degree, regardless of whether you continue in psychology or not.
The blessing and curse of psychology degrees is how it provides a broad range of (transferable) skills and knowledge, but it is not always easy to recognise what skills you have and how they map onto person specifications for graduate-level jobs. In this resource, we focus on our own research methods and statistics course, but you can apply the same advice to all your other courses. We start with graduate destinations for what skills and knowledge a psychology degree can lead to, we highlight relevant graduate attributes from the University of Glasgow, and finally present skills and knowledge mapping for what we cover on RM1.
3.1 Graduate destinations
At the start of your degree, we recommend pretending you are looking for a job tomorrow. You are not locked into a decision but looking early means you can explore what essential and desirable criteria they list on person specifications. If you wanted that job tomorrow and you do not possess several criteria, your odds of getting an interview are slimmer. However, if you check the criteria a year in advance of when you are applying for jobs, it gives you the time to develop your skills and knowledge for when you will be in that position.
For some resources, the British Psychology Society (BPS) outline career options in psychology. Predictably, they are psychology-focused and you are probably at least interested in a psychology career since enrolled in this degree. However, a sizable number of graduates do not work in psychology once they graduate. The BPS career destinations survey (2017) reported that 67% of respondents needed a psychology degree for their current job, while 60% had a job in the field of psychology. On the other hand, a Jisc and Prospects report (2024) on what graduates do reported a much wider range of jobs. The highest percentage (page 96) for graduates with a psychology degree include childcare, health, and education; legal, social, and welfare; clerical, secretarial, and numerical clerks; health professionals; and smaller numbers of business, HR, and science professionals.
A psychology degree can take you lots of places within and outside the field of psychology, so it is important you can identify the skills and knowledge you have. Before we move onto graduate attributes and skills/knowledge mapping, one thing to keep in mind is your position as an MSc conversion students. You simply do not have the time to reach the depth and breadth in one year that an undergraduate psychology student can achieve in three or four years. However, your unique selling point will be your combination of the conversion degree with your previous degree and experience. Many of our MSc conversion students have already completed years in the workplace, so keep this in mind when job criteria ask for related work experience, as that might be the thing that sets you apart from other applicants.
3.2 Graduate attributes
The University of Glasgow lists graduate attributes which are the academic abilities, personal qualities, and transferable skills that all graduates can develop over their degree at the university. We recommend reading over the document but they separate the attributes into:
Subject specialists
Investigative
Independent and critical thinkers
Resourceful and responsible
Effective communicators
Confident
Adaptable
Experienced collaborators
Ethically and socially aware
Reflective learners
You can find more information on graduate attributes and opportunities available to you on the university Careers, Employability, and Opportunity page.
3.3 Skills and knowledge mapping from RM1
For graduate level jobs, most of the person specification criteria are split into four sections:
Education
Experience
Knowledge
Skills/abilities
For example, if you look at jobs.ac.uk for psychology jobs, they are mainly academic roles where you would be in the position to apply for something like a research assistant as you graduate. They would ask for a psychology degree (or related) under education, relevant experience such as working with patients/participants, relevant knowledge dependent on the role like research design or neurodiversity, and skills/abilities such as computer skills, data analysis software, and writing skills.
In RM1, we break the course down into three types of skills: subject knowledge, research skills, and data skills. Note the items within each type of skills is a non-exhaustive list for demonstration purposes. As you move through RM1 (and other courses on the degree), we recommend keeping a note of everything you do to refer back to once you start applying for jobs.
For example, you will learn about research design and statistics for subject knowledge, literature review tools and reference managers for research skills, and using R/RStudio to wrangle, visualise, and analysis data for data skills.
We can further break things down for what skills and knowledge you will learn, develop, and demonstrate in the process of completing each assessment on the course:
| Assessment | Subject knowledge | Research skills | Data skills |
|---|---|---|---|
| MCQ | Research design; Measurement; Probability; Philosophy of science; Metascience; Statistics | Ethics | RStudio functionality |
| Data skills 1 | Statistics | Reproducible workflows; Data wrangling; Data visualisation | |
| Data skills 2 | Statistics | Reproducible workflows; Data wrangling; Data visualisation; Data analysis | |
| Stage One Group Report | Research design; Measurement; Subject-specific domain knowledge; Statistics | Ethics; Literature reviewing; Critical evaluation; Academic communication; Computer skills; Team work | |
| Stage Two Individual Report | Research design; Measurement; Subject-specific domain knowledge; Probability; Statistics | Literature reviewing; Critical evaluation; Academic communication; Computer skills | Reproducible workflows; Data wrangling; Data visualisation; Data analysis |
3.4 Example job specification criteria
As a final demonstration, we have taken a real job advert for a research assistant position to outline the kind of skills/knowledge they are looking for, and highlighting whether you will develop it in RM1, your conversion degree, or whether you would need further development.
An undergraduate degree that has relevance to the project. BPS accredited undergraduate degree in Psychology (desirable).
This post is multi-disciplinary, so they invite candidates from a range of subjects. However, a BPS-accredited degree is listed as desirable, so the skills and subject knowledge are beneficial. Keep in mind sometimes people do not quite know how to classify an MSc Conversion degree, so you can explain in the cover letter your degree provided BPS-accreditation.
Understanding of behavioural research methods and questionnaire design and analysis.
In RM1, you learn about different quantitative research methods and designing/analysing questionnaire data for your research report. Supplementing this with RM2 and your dissertation would tick off this criterion.
Knowledge of theories and research in traffic and transport psychology and/or behavioural change.
This is where the specification is asking for subject-specific domain knowledge. You would need to demonstrate this from another course, previous degree, upskilling, or your dissertation if the topic fits.
An awareness of ethical considerations for conducting research and knowledge of the BPS Code of Human Research Ethics.
We cover BPS human research ethics on RM1, so you would be able to demonstrate this in addition to RM2 and your dissertation.
Competence with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint
In RM1, you will mainly use Word and R Markdown for your stage one and stage two research reports. For data skills, you should have a basic understanding of spreadsheets but you might need to supplement this with further learning about Excel. For example, the university supports Coursera and LinkedIn learning courses if you need to upskill in Excel. We do not cover presentations in RM1, so you would need to demonstrate PowerPoint skills through other courses, previous experience, or upskilling.
Good writing skills
In RM1, you will demonstrate good writing skills via your stage one and stage two report. You will then supplement this with essays, reports, and your dissertation elsewhere in the degree.
Bibliographic research skills
To support your stage one and stage two research reports, we cover literature review skills and using a reference manager as research skills within RM1. You will also be able to demonstrate this through other essays, reports, and your dissertation elsewhere in the degree.
Time management and organisation of research/teaching schedules
RM1 is a large course with several assessments, combined with all your other courses and commitments. So, you would be able to mention managing multiple assessments and courses in your degree. For organising research/teaching schedules, this will be related to your dissertation and previous/future experience as this job role has potential teaching responsibilities.
Confident communication styles
We already covered writing skills but oral communication is not something you would be able to demonstrate from RM1 specific to assessments. The stage one report does involve team work though, so you would able to link communicating and problem-solving with a diverse group.
Competence with standard analytical packages, such as R Studio (Desirable)
It is a desirable criterion but this position specifically mentions using RStudio. We directly cover data skills using R/RStudio so you would be able to tick this off alongside RM2 and your dissertation.
Competence with Adobe software including Photoshop, Premiere Pro and After Effects (Desirable).
It is a desirable criterion but this is not something we cover on the degree. So, you would need to upskill yourself and maybe you have experience using Photoshop from a previous degree or job role. This is a pretty unusual request for a psychology research assistant position, so this is where as an MSc Conversion student your previous degree or work experience might occasionally provide a unique selling point.
Experience in presenting to an audience
We do not cover presentations on RM1, so you will need other courses involving presentations and previous/future experience to tick off this criterion.
Experience in conducting and management at least one project, collecting and analysing data, and writing a report.
In RM1, you plan a research project in a team for your stage one report, and analyse data and write a stage two report. You will also write a full research report in RM2. You will not collect data yourself in RM1, but you will for your dissertation if you use primary data.