Applied Psychology - Industrial and Organizational Psychology

Industrial and Organizational Psychology

Industrial and organizational psychology focuses to varying degrees on the psychology of the workforce, customer, and consumer, including issues such as the psychology of recruitment, selecting employees from an applicant pool which overall includes training, performance appraisal, job satisfaction, work behavior, stress at work and management.

Career counseling is another aspect of counseling closely related to industrial/organizational psychology. Counselors in this field assist clients in a variety of settings ranging from schools to vocational to organization sites, to name a few. One of the main goals of the profession is to help clients realize their talents and dreams in response to a career and help them create successful job skills to then apply to their career search. Many times career counselors act as consultants to companies, other times they work as a team in academic and career counseling capacities, and other times they work for a social service agency specifically working with people who need assistance in the job search process.

Generally a Master's degree is needed to get into the field. As there are not many career counseling Master's programs, many enter the field with a degree in mental health counseling or community counseling.

Since jobs are such defining experiences for people, having the ability to gain helpful insight, tips, and encouragement from career counselors is a definite benefit. The career counseling field can only increase in popularity as people on average change jobs every ten years, instead of 30 years ago where many people stayed with the same company the majority of their working career.