Industrial and Organizational Psychologist Career Profile
Industrial and Organizational Psychology fields and careers ...
Industrial/Organizational
Psychology Consultant
Nearing the completion of his undergraduate degree in psychology, Eric Gerber knew that he wanted to work in business, but he also knew that he didn’t want to get buried in spreadsheets and accounting procedures. Instead he wanted to work with the people in organizations.
Gerber discovered that the field of Industrial and Organizational (I/O) psychology offered a perfect fit for his interests. He saw the integral connection between employee satisfaction and the bottom line, and he understood how I/O psychology research supported this connection.
He also knew that he wanted to apply principles of human behavior and motivation to workplaces in order to help diverse businesses solve critical issues. Early on, he knew that the consulting field would offer him this opportunity.
I/O Psychology Links
“I always had the sense that I wanted to be in the consulting space,” Gerber said recently as he took time away from his current consulting position with RHR International, a management psychology consulting firm to talk with AllPsychologyCareers.com.
What Gerber now knows he acquired through his PhD in I/O psychology, a unique career path, and an academic career he tailored to fit his personal situation and goals.
Instead of entering a graduate program with a plan to finish it in five years, Gerber wanted to combine practical experience and academia. As he worked on his degree, he held a position with a small consulting firm of about 8 employees, most of whom had attended the same graduate program that he was enrolled in at the University of Georgia in Athens.
At this firm, Irwin & Browning, he mainly concentrated on the industrial or “I-side” of I/O psychology, what professionals typically label as the “individual” side of the profession. They often refer to the “O” side as the “we” side since it focuses more on how people interact together within the organization.
His consulting projects centered on helping organizations identify basic skill sets required for certain jobs, usually manufacturing jobs. Gerber said some clients needed assessment tests, for example, to identify job candidates who could perform basic math problems for particular jobs, or perhaps a simulation test that identified a candidate’s ability to function positively on a team.
Within the I/O world, these tests are referred to as selection systems, and Gerber advanced from selecting the tests to actually implementing the tests for clients. Becoming proficient with selection is tedious work that is statistically based, but Gerber said it’s a great way to learn how people go about their jobs, and what they need to be successful.
When Irwin & Browning was acquired by a bigger consulting firm, Right Management Consulting, Gerber stayed on to learn about a proprietary methodology tool that the firm had developed. The tool was used to help companies understand what attracts people to some companies or industries over others, such as working at a technology company over a trucking or food production company.
The combination of working and going to school prolonged Gerber’s years at University of Georgia, but gave him the valuable experience of “learning and applying, and then applying and learning.”
Would he recommend this approach to others? “Not necessarily taking 10 years to finish school, but getting experience in what you want to do when you get out is invaluable,” he said.
After leaving Right Management, he once again took his career on an unexpected path by not heading straight into another consulting position. A corporate position with Home Depot attracted him because of the wide range of I/O functions and methodologies he would learn, including change management.
Gerber defines change management as helping manage the human side of any type of organizational change, and it involves everything from creating the messaging to employees on why change is happening, to what types of skills employees will need to know and learn in the new organization.
“When I got to Home Depot, it was about a $40 billion company, and over the course of the time I was there, it grew to about an $80 billion company,” Gerber said.
Rapid growth necessitated that the company implement efficiencies, so Gerber helped them centralize functions that were distributed across the country. He also helped people understand how their jobs changed by new software installations, and how processes changed.
Much of I/O psychology deals with change for either organizations or individuals, and that’s where the insight of consultants schooled in psychology becomes especially critical for businesses, Gerber said. I/O consultants enable and accelerate change, or explain impediments to change, whereas someone with strictly a business slant, such as an MBA-type person, will focus primarily on profitability, market share and all the other financial functions.
“We [I/O consultants] wouldn’t be the people you would hire to improve the efficiency of your supply chain, but if the leader who is running the supply chain is struggling with getting his team engaged and onboard and committed, then you would hire us,” Gerber said.
Change management was only one of four I/O jobs that Gerber held at Home Depot. He also got experience in other areas that allowed him to pursue additional goals he had been moving toward all along.
“I have to tell you that it became clear to me, over time, what the subtleties and nuances of success looked like,” he said, referring to what he learned at Home Depot about executive coaching, leadership and succession planning.
For a time, Gerber was part of the annual evaluation process of Home Depot’s 5000 leaders, which included executives to store managers. He also had responsibility of succession planning for the company’s key leaders and executives, and lastly for assessing and identifying individuals within the company who could move into executive positions, and what development programs these individuals needed to complete before stepping into key positions.
Gerber especially enjoyed these last roles in talent management and executive development, but he credits his three and half years at Home Depot as giving him the perspective on what it’s like to work for a corporation – experience he wouldn’t have gained if he had worked only as consultant.
Gerber today finds himself working almost exclusively with executives of the “C-suite,” which refers to positions such as the chief executive officer, chief financial officer and chief operating officer, of Fortune 500 companies.
“If it has to do with matters of senior executive talent and performance, then it’s within my area of expertise,” he said.
That means he assesses individuals for “fit” into senior executive roles, and also develops and accelerates individuals to assume higher levels of responsibility so that they’re able to move into those roles.
Identifying future executives, or executive succession, involves the “I-side” of the I/O equation to assess individuals, but also relies on the “O” or “organizational” part once the individual moves into the new position.
Because the executive inherits a new team, must navigate a senior team of leaders, and must quickly become productive, he or she benefits from additional coaching. Additionally, some of these new executives come from outside the company, and that involves helping them learn and navigate a new corporate culture as well.
Gerber said the data show that when a company hires an executive from the outside, and requires that individual to institute a major change, such as going to market with a different brand, that the leader is successful only about half the time – if left to his or her own devices. But with the support of an I/O consultant, the success rate increases dramatically.
This is a reason why businesses need the expertise of industrial and organizational psychology professionals – even during recessionary periods. Gerber said that tough economic environments still require executive succession and development, and also cost cutting and changes in business strategy. These are all issues that I/O psychology professionals help businesses and its leaders address.
I/O professionals also specialize in personnel issues, training and training evaluation programs, ethics, diversity, job design, technology in the workplace, work-life balance, employment law, and a host of other topics.
If you are interested in applying psychological science to workplaces by working in human resource and personnel departments, working as a consultant, or you desire to teach and conduct research at a university, you should consider getting a master’s or PhD in industrial and organizational psychology.
Also, learn more about the psychology career licensing processes and what the requirements for licensure are: Psychology Career Licensure.