How To Advance Your Psychology Career In 2026? A Careers In Psychology Podcast Episode.
- Connor Whiteley
- 15 hours ago
- 15 min read
As we enter the new year, let's start thinking about how we can make 2026 a productive year that sets us up for the future and enhances our psychology journey. Whether it's big steps towards your dream psychology role or small steps, it's still important, valid and a useful step towards you becoming a fully qualified psychologist or mental health professional. Therefore, in this careers in psychology podcast episode, you'll learn how to plan your year to enhance your resume, how to develop your psychological skills in big and small ways and this episode includes lots of thought-provoking questions to make 2026 a great year for you. If you want to make 2026 a successful year that takes you further towards your dream psychology job, then this will be a great episode for you.
Today's psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Careers In Psychology: A Guide To Careers in Clinical Psychology, Forensic Psychology and More. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.
What's Your Dream Psychology Job and Goal?
Firstly, I highly encourage you to think about your goal. You need to understand what you're working towards so you can understand how to get there, what skills you need to develop and what's driving you. Since if you know what's driving you then this will help in the low moments when psychology just feels flat out impossible.
Your psychology goal might be to become a clinical psychologist, forensic psychologist or a CBT therapist. Or you might want to become an academic or psychology researcher as well as you might want to become another type of mental health professional.
Psychology opens so many doors to you, so you need to research psychology careers, understand what each psychology profession involves and what suits you best. You can research this online, listen to podcasts like this one or read my book "Careers In Psychology" for more information.
Also, it's okay if this changes over time.
For instance, when I first started my psychology journey, I was dead set on becoming a clinical psychologist, because that's all I knew. I wanted to work with clients, improve lives and I just flat out loved clinical psychology. Yet now, I'm starting to consider a career in educational psychology because I'm very knowledgeable about the UK education system, I've been working in education for 7 years and you can still use clinical psychology knowledge in education settings.
It's a big change but I'm excited.
After you've figured out what your goal is for your psychology journey and researched what you need to do to become that psychological professional. It can be really useful to break it down into smaller steps on a piece of paper and it can make the process seem a lot more manageable.
For example, instead of just saying, I want to become a clinical psychologist that's a lot to achieve in a single year, so you need to break it down first. Therefore, you can write down the following:
I want to become a clinical psychologist so I need to:
· Develop my clinical and academic skills and experience so I can get onto the Doctorate of Clinical Psychology.
· Get clinical experience in special educational needs and learning disabilities.
· Get clinical experience in working-aged adults
· Get experience supporting older adults
· Get experience working in a child and adolescent mental health service.
Then clinical experience is only one part of the doctorate, you also need to show that you have the academic skills to complete the Doctorate to become a clinical psychologist.
· Achieve as best I can on a BPS-accredited undergraduate degree.
· Complete a masters
· Get involved in research projects to improve my research skills
On the whole, writing down what you need to achieve to increase your chances of becoming your dream psychology job can make it seem easier, less overwhelming and it allows you to pick what you want to achieve this year so you can develop your skills for your psychology journey.
Questions to consider at the end of this section:
· What is your psychology goal?
· What skills and experience do you need to get to that psychology goal?
· How can you break these down into more manageable chunks?
Pick Your Psychology Focus Areas for 2026
After you've done this, I highly recommend that you pick a few areas you want to focus on in 2026, because unfortunately you cannot become your dream psychology job in a single year. Your psychology journey is exactly that, a journey so you can't do everything I just listed above. If you focus on a few things in 2026, then you can develop those skills, learn a lot and become really good at those skills then you can focus on other areas next year and the year after and so on.
Therefore, if you want to become a clinical psychologist then maybe in 2026, you could focus on developing your communication skills, experience with children and young people and your research skills. That's it. You can leave learning disabilities, older adults and working-aged adults for other years.
If you want to become a psychology researcher then in 2026, focus on your research skills so get involved in as many research projects as you can. Then leave your conferencing skills, scientific communication and journal publications until next year.
Finally, for this section, if you want to become a business psychologist, then perhaps focus on developing your business experience in 2026. Maybe leave your business psychology learning until next year and so on.
Overall, by focusing on a few areas in 2026, you're increasing your chances of becoming really good at those skills and decreasing the risk of you becoming burnt out, overwhelmed and stressed that you'll never reach your dream psychology job. If you're stressed, you can take a breather and remind yourself, "I know I have a lot of other skills to develop, but by the end of this year, I'll be great at x, y and z and this will allow me to be closer to my goal,".
Questions to consider at the end of this section:
· What psychology areas do you want to focus on in 2026?
· How will you achieve these areas?
· How will these areas benefit your psychology journey?
Consider Applying for the Doctorate
We all understand that it is extremely rare to get onto a doctorate course first time, because these courses are so competitive and last time I heard, for every one single space on the Doctorate of Clinical Psychology course in the United Kingdom, there are 4 people applying for it. I imagine that it's very similar for the doctorate of educational psychology amongst the others.
However, it can be a good idea that you apply for a doctorate in 2026 just to familiarise yourself with the application process. If you get onto the Doctorate of your psychology career first time then that's amazing, brilliant and I wish you the best of luck. Yet if you don't, that's okay, normal and your feelings of sadness are understandable.
Nonetheless, because of you understand the application process, you'll be better prepared for next year and the year after. As well as the application process will reveal your gaps. You might think you're a brilliant reflective practitioner but in reality, you might struggle to explain your reflection verbally or in written form. That's a skill you can practice next year.
Applying for the clinical, educational psychology or whatever doctorate course you might be a powerful step forward in your psychology journey even if you don't get in.
Personally, in 2026, I'm planning to apply for the doctorate of educational psychology for the first time. I don't intend to get onto the doctorate but by that time I'll have a year's experience in special educational needs and I would have had 6 years of part-time experience in mainstream schools. As well as both types of employment have given me a lot of knowledge and experiences within education.
Also, this goal has given me motivation to look more into educational psychology and develop skills that I know I'm going to need in the application process. For example, how to write professional reflections, a deep understanding of applying psychological concepts and theories to the classroom amongst others.
My attitude is apply for the doctorate as best as I can, but if I "fail". I'll be a lot more knowledgeable about the process and I'll have a greater awareness of my weak areas so I can focus on them in 2027.
Questions to consider at the end of this section:
· What’s stopping you applying for the doctorate?
· What doctorate courses do you want to apply for?
· What can you do between now and when the doctorate courses open to give yourself the best possible chance of success?
Commit to One Act of Psychology Learning Every Week
Another useful tip is to carve out one hour a week or simply commit to learning one new thing a week for the entire year. It could be as small as watching a single YouTube video a week on a particular psychology skill you want to become better in, reading a single chapter of a psychology textbook or you spend some time every week researching a psychology topic.
The entire point of this tip is that you are learning every single week in small chunks, and some weeks, you might have some extra time to learn a big chunk of a topic. Other weeks, you might be really pressed for time so a small chunk is all you can achieve.
That's fine, because you're learning, you're moving forward and over time, you will learn so much more than you realise.
A lot of people think in psychology that if you want to move forward in your career, you need to do massive acts. Like studying an entire Masters, doing other postgraduate courses and more. These options are obviously still important but if you learn a single thing a week for 52 weeks by the end of 2026, you would have learnt 52 things.
You would know 52 more things than you did at the start of 2026. That's really valuable.
Towards the end of this podcast episode, I’ll talk about my “fail to success” mindset and this can be a critical mindset shift to develop in 2026 to help you succeed.
Personally, on my weekly To Do List which is always massive, I specifically include “nonfiction learning sessions” and I typically give it a weighting of 4 Major Things. Essentially, this means I need to spend about an hour a week learning different nonfiction things. Originally, these were reading sessions and I would try to read 50 pages of a nonfiction book every week, but as my psychology journey has changed I’ve had to make these learning sessions more flexible. For example, the other week, I used them to research “ending clinical work with an autistic person” because I really needed that for my job. This week I’ve been learning about how to shape some future psychology content for the podcast with your interests based on my Spotify Unwrapped this year for the podcast.
In addition, I count listening to podcasts as nonfiction learning, because I enjoy podcasts, I can learn a lot from them and sometimes I listen to an interview and it gives me a brilliant insight that I can use in the future going forward. As well as on my YouTube watch later list, I have a tips video on how to write a good personal statement for the Doctorate of Educational Psychology courses in the UK. I need to watch that.
Finally, for this section, whilst it isn’t psychology-related, these nonfiction learning sessions allowed me to learn about the Irish Free State, Irish War of Independence, their isolationist economy and more. Therefore, you can see that just by learning one thing a week, over time you can learn a lot of valuable skills that will benefit your psychology journey.
On the whole, in 2026, every single week, I will push my knowledge forward, I will be learning more about different areas of psychology and I will be developing my knowledge to enhance my psychology journey and hopefully give me extra knowledge that I can use in job applications, interviews and as an aspiring practitioner.
Questions to consider at the end of this section:
· How much time could you dedicate a week to learning about psychology?
· Be honest with yourself, why can’t it be more time?
· How are you going to use this focused time to learn about psychology? Are you going to listen to podcasts, read books or watch courses and videos?
The Importance of Job-Crafting In Your Psychology Journey
This is a perfect idea if you're in a non-psychology job and like most people you can't afford to do years of unpaid work experience that clinical psychology requires. And this is where I will admit I am extremely lucky because I'm a teaching assistant in a SEN school, this is giving me a lot of experience with children with learning disabilities. Yet one of the reasons why I switched from clinical psychology to educational psychology is because I just cannot get enough clinical experience at the moment. Since I cannot afford to do years of unpaid work in mental health services.
Anyway, if you can't do honorary work or volunteering in mental health wards, then you can do something called Job-Crafting. This is where you tailor your job and use your current job to develop your psychology skills and move you further along on your psychology journey.
For example, you might be an office worker in an insurance company. You're already developing communication skills, interpersonal skills and perhaps "dealing with resistant people" skills. All of those are very important skills to a psychologist.
However, you could see if your insurance company has any research projects going on, and if they do, you could get involved in them to develop your research and academic writing skills. You could see if your insurance company has a mental health program and get involved in that to develop your skills, and you could take the lead in group projects for leadership skills.
However, if your workplace doesn't have these opportunities available to you. Then you can try and make these opportunities for yourself. For instance, talk to your boss or manager about running a mental health activity once or twice a week for 8 weeks. Then you could do a mini-research project as part of it. You could give your fellow employees an anonymised mental health scale before, midway and after your intervention and see if it's helped anyone.
Sometimes you need to get creative with your Job-Crafting and these don't need to be massive, life-changing steps that will jump you to getting onto the doctorate of psychology training course of your dreams. Instead, it can simply be about improving your skill set and experience so you can get a more psychology-based job in the future.
For instance, originally, I became a teaching assistant at a special needs school to develop my clinical experience, so I'm more likely to be able to get an assistant psychologist role instead of jumping straight from the teaching assistant to doctorate of clinical psychology.
This realisation is useful because it helps you break down your goal into even easier-to-manage bits. For example, instead of wanting to get an assistant psychologist role straight out of university, which is next to impossible to achieve then feeling like a failure. You can think about what psychological skills you need to be an assistant psychologist and how you can develop those skills in your current job.
My practical tip for you would be write down the skills and experiences you need for your dream psychology job, and write down how you can develop those skills in your current job or current life situations. For instance, something I read constantly in assistant psychologist job descriptions is something along the lines of "an ability to share psychological information with sensitivity and compassionately to distressed family members". This is one of the reasons why I went on The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast and wrote for the British Psychological Society on male sexual violence, because I had to discuss rape (a highly sensitive and emotionally distressing topic) in an easy-to-understand and compassionate way.
I can mention these experiences in future job interviews and applications.
Just think about it. It won’t be easy but it will be worth it.
Questions to ask yourself at the end of this section:
· What skills do you need to develop on your psychology journey?
· How can you use your current job to develop these skills?
· What opportunities can you try to create for yourself to develop your psychology skills?
Take Risks in Your Psychology Journey
The final tip I have for you to help advance your psychology career in 2026 is to take risks. If you always play it safe then you aren’t going to progress very much in your psychology career, if at all in 2026.
You should always weigh up the advantages and disadvantages before you make a decision when it comes to your career, but sometimes you just need to take a few risks and see how it works out. If you’ve been considering applying for a job, then just apply. If you’ve been thinking about getting involved in a research project at your university or your workplace then just do it. If you’ve been thinking about talking to a psychologist to help you understand a particular career in more depth, then just talk to them.
Even if they say no, at least you actually did something.
Instead of you just being a wannabe mental health professional or psychologist who says they want to do something and be a psychologist, but they don’t actually take steps towards it. Don’t be a wannabe, actually take steps to become a psychologist.
In addition, one of my mindsets is “fail to success”. If in 2026, you want to learn 52 new things in a year, because that’s one thing a week, but by the end of the year, you’ve still learnt 30 new things about psychology. That is still amazing. That’s 30 more things than you knew compared to the beginning of the year.
That is great and that means you’re thirty steps closer towards your psychology goal.
Another example is even if you applied for 30 assistant psychologist positions and you didn’t get any of them. You failed to become an assistant psychologist, but you still did it. And hopefully, you would have been given some feedback, areas to improve on and it’s all experience for the future. That is what you need to focus on. Just because you failed at something, it doesn’t mean it was wasted.
Take risks, or you will never achieve anything in your psychology journey.
Personally, in 2025, I’ve taken a few different risks. I started being podcast interviews again and this is a risk, because they used to make me anxious, nervous and I used to be a terrible interviewer. Yet that risk really did pay off because I got to catch up with my friends again, I got to learn more about psychology and you, wonderful listeners and readers have also enjoyed the episodes a lot.
Of course, I “failed” some of my risks. I finally plucked up the courage to contact an educational psychologist, I invited him on the podcast and he apologised but declined because he was too busy. That’s okay. I still took a risk and I’ve learnt that I have the professionalism and the courage to contact psychology professionals I don’t know and invite them onto the podcast.
Additionally, I took the risk of going on The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast this year with Doctor Marianne Trent to talk about male sexual violence. That was nerve-racking, scary and I was anxious about the interview but it went really well, and I want to do more guest appearances in the future. The same goes for my article for The Psychologist magazine.
If I didn’t take the risk then none of these great opportunities would have happened.
Questions to think about at the end of this section:
· What psychology opportunities are you scared of accepting or taking?
· How could you overcome these fears?
· What’s holding you back in your psychology journey?
Careers In Psychology Conclusion
I have to admit that I am really happy with this psychology podcast episode because it really got me thinking, it’s gotten me excited for 2026 and it makes me want to be a psychologist even more. And even though I won’t be a psychologist by the end of 2026 (if ever), I’m going to have learnt a lot of brilliant, fascinating and exciting facts and other things along the way.
Therefore, at the end of this episode, I would recommend that you go through the questions, think about your personal answers and action them into your own life.
To wrap up, just as a little recap, here are the ways how you can advance your psychology career in 2026 (and all the years afterwards):
· What’s your dream psychology job and goal?
· Pick your psychology focus areas for 2026
· Consider applying for the doctorate
· Commit to learning one small thing every week for the year
· The importance of job-crafting in your psychology journey
· Take risks
I really hope you enjoyed today’s business psychology podcast episode.
If you want to learn more, please check out:
Careers In Psychology: A Guide To Careers in Clinical Psychology, Forensic Psychology and More. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.
Have a great day.
Business Psychology Further Reading
Blustein, D. L., Ali, S. R., & Flores, L. Y. (2019). Vocational psychology: Expanding the vision and enhancing the impact. The Counseling Psychologist, 47(2), 166-221.
Demerouti, E. (2014). Design your own job through job crafting. European psychologist.
Devotto, R. P. D., & Wechsler, S. M. (2019). Job crafting interventions: Systematic review. Trends in Psychology, 27(2), 371-383.
Lent, R. W., & Brown, S. D. (2020). Career decision making, fast and slow: Toward an integrative model of intervention for sustainable career choice. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 120, 103448.
Robertson, P. J. (2018). Positive psychology and career development. British journal of guidance & counselling, 46(2), 241-254.
Whiteley, C. (2021) Careers in Psychology. CGD Publishing. England.
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