Why I Give Career Advice

I remember the first time I got asked for career advice as a supervisor.?

I’d been working with an early career psychologist for over a year and our focus had been on clinical skills. But mid-week he emailed me wanting to talk about his current work conditions. He wasn’t happy, but he also wasn’t sure if he was ‘allowed’ to be unhappy. Whether this was just what you had to put up with when you were new to the industry.

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I was a bit surprised, because if I was ever asked about a topic in advance, it usually went like this:?

“Can we talk about trauma presentations next week?”

“Can we talk about ACT vs CBT next week?”

“Do you know much about AOD?”

After 16 years of practising, clinical topics were easy enough to prepare for, but career advice? I wasn't sure about that. I'd had a career, but did I have anything useful to share? Was it a good use of his time and money?

The more I thought about it, the more clear it became. This was an important conversation for an early career psychologist. Early in my career no one sat me down and answered my questions about how much money is fair, what hours are ‘normal’, how many clients to see a day, how to say no or how to ask for what I need as a professional.?

I learned that the hard way.?

I spent a lot of time underpaid and unaware of my options for work. I didn’t really know how to ask for a pay rise, how to say no to more clients, how to look for better opportunities. I also spent years believing that being a psychologist meant working from 9am-5pm, 5 days a week, with up to 8 clients a day. The few times I heard about a psychologist doing something different, I figured they knew something special or that they had some other source of income.

I just didn’t know what I didn’t know.?

So I sat down with him and we talked openly about the industry. We talked about pay, including what I was being paid and what I had been paid in previous roles. We got on Seek together, where I showed him jobs that he would easily qualify for, where he’d get better conditions - better pay, better benefits, less work and a shorter commute.? I explained the ways companies were making money off psychologists - DVA, OpenArms, Medicare, NDIS or Workcover. I explained how much a session was worth, referencing rates available online.

I could see him writing furiously and I was again struck by the fact that we just don’t know what we don’t know. He told me this had been incredibly helpful, because he now felt justified in asking for a raise and other conditions. He knew he could reference what I’d shown him and this helped him to feel that his request was reasonable.?

He asked for a meeting and the company agreed. After some back and forth, he got the pay rise.?

I was stoked for him. The extra pay was great, but knowing his worth was the longer term payoff. And I realised I’d had a conversation with him that I never got to have when I was starting out. So I began to have many similar conversations with other psychologists I was supervising. We talked about what it means to be a psychologist, about pay, about hours, about the reality of our work. I aimed to help people avoid the mistakes I made.

I believe that these conversations are just as important as clinical discussions, because our work is never just a set of clinical skills applied in a vacuum. We work in a dynamic space and our lives are dynamic too. We need to reflect on how the conditions we work in as psychologists affects what we deliver to our clients. But just as important we need to talk about how it affects us as people.?

So when it comes to career, if you’re an early career psychologist, don’t be afraid to ask. And if you’re a psychologist with years of experience, don’t be afraid to share.?