Becoming an Assistant Psychologist in the UK can feel frustrating, competitive, and at times deeply personal – especially when applications don’t lead to interviews or offers. In this episode of Psychology, Actually, we explore why Assistant Psychologist roles are so difficult to secure, what experience is actually needed before applying, and how to navigate rejection without burning out or losing confidence.

We discuss the reality of psychology career pathways in the UK, including why many successful applicants have prior relevant roles, how to build experience strategically, and how to approach interviews as a two-way process – including checking whether a role truly fits you and whether employers can support reasonable adjustments.

If you’re an aspiring psychologist feeling stuck, overlooked, or questioning your path, this episode will help you reframe your journey and take your next steps with clarity and compassion.

Timestamps:

• 00:00 Why psychology graduates feel “behind” after uni
• 01:02 What university careers services actually do
• 02:13 Support available after graduation (and why it matters)
• 03:06 Why psychology careers feel confusing compared to others
• 04:26 Different mental health career pathways explained
• 05:40 Low pay early on and managing expectations
• 06:06 Understanding your career values
• 07:18 Why experience matters more than income early on
• 08:20 Building experience during university
• 09:18 Real example of paid student support work
• 10:35 Why your effort might go unnoticed (but still matters)
• 11:25 Creative ways to gain relevant experience
• 12:05 Mental health roles within universities
• 13:11 Building relationships for references
• 14:14 Why tutors need to actually know you
• 15:11 The long-term impact of mentors and lecturers
• 16:06 Mock interviews and building confidence
• \16:52 Practising interviews and finding your voice
• 17:52 Interviews are human – not designed to catch you out
• 18:59 Interviews are a two-way process
• 20:02 Checking job fit and reasonable adjustments
• 21:17 Diversity and inclusion in psychology pathways
• 22:17 Internship opportunities and widening access
• 22:57 Celebrating first Assistant Psychologist roles
• 23:55 Why AP roles aren’t entry-level
• 24:37 Managing expectations around experience
• 25:59 Discouragement and proving people wrong
• 26:40 Choosing your own career path (not others’)
• 27:49 Backup plans and flexibility in goals
• 28:30 Burnout, pacing yourself and taking breaks
• 29:25 Noticing when you’re ready for the next step
• 30:19 Following your natural interests and curiosity

Links:

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💡 To check out or join the aspiring psychologist membership for just £30 per month head to: https://www.aspiring-psychologist.co.uk/membership

🖥️ Check out my short courses for aspiring psychologists and mental health professionals here: https://www.aspiring-psychologist.co.uk/online-courses

Ask Marianne your most pressing psychology career question and she will send you a FREE bespoke reply! Grab your free psychology success guide here and fill in the most pressing concern box: https://www.aspiring-psychologist.co.uk (scroll to the bottom of the page)

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You graduate with a psychology degree. Your friends are starting graduate schemes, earning decent salaries and posting about promotions, and you're applying for assistant psychologist roles, getting rejected and wondering if you've made a mistake. Today, I'm joined by Sam Adam, a university careers consultant to talk about what no one else seems to explain clearly enough, why the psychology career path looks different, why assistant psychologist roles aren't entry level, and how to use your university career service properly, both before and after you graduate. Because you are not behind, you just need the right support to help you to move forwards. I hope you find this so helpful. If you do, please like, comment, and subscribe for more. Hi, welcome along to the podcast. I am Dr. Marianne Trent, a qualified clinical psychologist. Today, I am joined by Sam Adam, who is a careers consultant at Brunel University.

Hi, Sam.

Hi, Marianne. Lovely to meet you.

And thank you for being here, and thank you for pitching, kind of pitching yourself to me, because we got chatting via email this time, and I was like, "This sounds really interesting. I'd love to have you on. " So, thank you for reaching out to me. I know we are speaking today because you happen to work at Brunel University, but you're not acting for them or speaking for them.

Absolutely. Yes. Any views that I express today are mine alone, but as you say, I happen to work at Brunel University. Yeah.

Perfect. Thank you. So, I was flabbergasted when you told me what you do, because I genuinely had no idea that your job was a thing. And maybe that's because when I was at university, it wasn't, but actually you work with students who are doing their degree or their postgraduate study, and you have the capacity, capability, ability to work with people post-graduation as well, don't you?

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So, from the minute our students arrive in their first year of undergraduate studies, we are trying to connect with them in any way that we can through employability lectures, and obviously our social media, and lots of different employability events that we run. And then, we offer the service once students have graduated for up to three years. And I think that's really important, especially for psychology students. So, I work with three different cohorts, psychology being one of them, and my psychology students are the ones that book in more once they've graduated for help with applications to training programmes, PhDs, master's courses. Once they go away and get their work experience and then need help with making those applications. So, I see a lot of psychology students who've graduated, which is wonderful.

Yeah. I mean, I think we're a pretty special breed. I won't lie. But yeah, it sounds really, really lovely. And I think especially for people that may not have family support or may not have family that have been through education or don't understand psychology, because it is very different, I think, isn't it?

Yeah. Yeah. It's very different compared to, say, my economics and finance students who will maybe want to get onto a graduate scheme when they finish. And I think it can sometimes be a bit confusing and unsettling for psychology students when they hear their friends who are studying maybe business or something and they're like, "But I need to be getting onto a graduate scheme now." And there's a lot of unpicking, I think, to be done to help them realise that actually your path might look a little bit different to your friends who are studying perhaps more business focused subjects and going into those graduate schemes or graduate jobs. So, it's quite different. And I think it can be a really confusing range of jobs to understand. I mean, obviously, your focuses is clinical psychology. My students, many of them want to go into clinical psychology, but it could be psychological wellbeing practitioner or psychotherapist or any of the mental health roles that are out there.

And it can be really overwhelming trying to understand the differences between them all for students. But I really enjoy working with my psychology students, so I'm always really happy to see them.

Oh, nice. So yeah, the podcast, I am a clinical psychologist, obviously, and so it's going to probably be heavily weighted towards clinical psychology. But we've got a special season, which probably has already happened looking at educational psychology by the time this one comes out. And we do look at relevant roles. And I basically think about it as being anything that you can do post psychology graduation and just having people that are psychologically informed out there in the world, I think is no bad thing. Yeah, I absolutely know what you mean, because when I was an aspiring psychologist myself, so post-graduation, some of my friends were at the time on salaries that felt pretty nice. And I was on about 13,000 pounds a year, and sometimes I was working six days a week to get that salary. It really, I don't know, you have to really care about the work you do and the people that you're doing it with.

And it's just a bit rubbish, really, that you don't always get the new remuneration that you should ideally receive. And I know salaries have increased somewhat since I was an aspiring psych, but yeah, it's definitely looking around thinking, "Wow, they are earning nice money. Their clothes are, they're nice. They're able to move out and live independently. And I am not any of those things."

Yeah. And I think that's a really important point. And it sort of comes back, I suppose, to people's own career values, what is important to you in a job and is it making a difference for other people? Is it developing your own learning? Is it financial security that there are lots of different things that matter to different people and those can change over time, but it's an important part of what we try to do as career consultants to try to help people to understand what their career values are and what is important to them at any given time because yeah, there's a big difference.

Yeah, there really are. There really are. And before we hit record, I was saying that I'm obviously a terrible economist, economist is the term, a terrible economist because I make about 45 pounds a month from this podcast, and yet it costs me many hundreds of pounds, and I've done this for four years. And so I'm clearly doing this because I passionately care about this content being available. But yeah, if I was doing economics or if I couldn't afford to bank role this myself, I'd have had to have stopped it, right?

Yeah. And I think that's ... I don't know if this is an unusual segue, but whilst you were talking there, I was just thinking, well, that's why it's so important to get work experience whilst you're going through university, just because it's important for you to find out what you enjoy, which challenges you enjoy, and is that what you want to do rather than making a lot of money from the outset when you leave university? Because the decisions ... We all make decisions at different times, and we're all ready to understand ourselves and what we need at different times. But the earlier you can start taking part in experiences, the earlier you're going to start understanding what is important to you and which challenges you thrive on and what it is that you want to be contributing to the world and what you want to keep learning about.

So yeah.

Yeah. I never planned to work at uni, but I did. So I didn't work in my first year, but during my summer holidays of my first year, the student support service wrote to me because I was a psychology student and said, "Actually, we've got these roles called student support workers who go with people who've either got permanent disabilities or transient disabilities like broken arms or broken legs to facilitate them getting to their lectures and to be able to stay in them and take notes and engage fully with their curriculum." So it was a one-to-one service. And so they invited me to apply and I did and I got the job and I did really value what I did. And at the time they were paying me 6.50 an hour, which at the time was a really good rate. And so I learned quite a bit, I would say, in that role, even though it wasn't something that I was planning on applying for.

So yeah, I would say, yeah, if you can, do consider working, but obviously it does take away some time then from your ability to be able to study. It's interesting that I would then have to get up for nine o'clock lectures, which were not my own, which was a bit of a kicker. But then once I was up, I was more likely to be at uni and then I had time to study and to do things. And it was interesting when I got together with my friends who I used to live with at uni, and it's now been 26 years since we started uni. But I was talking about this job when we got together in Cambridge for a weekend to celebrate our 25 years, and I was talking about the job that I had, and all three of them were like, "You worked at uni, did you?

I've got no memory of that. " And I was like, "Well, you definitely knew. You must have known." It's probably because you guys were all asleep when I was getting up and going to these lectures and doing things, and I'd just meet you at uni later. So yeah, you might well be struggling doing all the stuff, but it's for you and it's for your own journey and to support the people that you work with, but everybody else may not even notice.

Bless you. Yeah. And that's a really important point is that I know a lot of students have jobs, often sort of full-time jobs, a longtime, full-time study. So I appreciate it's really difficult. And that is the kind of thing that your careers consultant, that you will have a careers consultant, whichever university you're at, can help you with. One of the things that I recommend to my students is the text-based service, Shout. And I don't think they're taking new recruits at the moment, but that's something that you can fit around the other responsibilities that you have. And even if you're just doing an hour here, an hour there, you are building experience that's going to be helpful. And there are lots of responsibilities you can take at university. So at Brunel, we have peer mentors where you sort of support new students with their study skills.

And I just think anything that you do that is supportive of people in any way, shape or form builds upon that bank of experience that you've got to help take you to the next level if you want to work in mental health. Someone once described it to me as a ladder, and I think that's a really good way to look at it. Maybe you start working at Tesco's on the customer service desk, you're helping the supermarket shoppers, and then maybe you do some mentoring or something, and you're helping people with how to study, and then you're sort of moving up the ladder all the time. So that job that you did at university sounds absolutely perfect.

Yeah, and it was paid. I'm aware that also universities, certainly I speak for Warwick University because one of my friends works there. They'll have departments that support students with their mental health and with their wellbeing. And so there might well be paid opportunities there where you can get involved with doing more mental health aligned work that helps you and helps your fellow students at university. Is that something that all universities have to have? Do you know, Sam?

All universities will have some kind of service, and it varies at universities. As a university, we went through quite a big restructure last year, so our services have changed, but there may be opportunities. And if not, it's always helpful, I think, just to go and talk to the people that work there to find out about their jobs as well. It's another source of information to help you start making up your mind about, well, what type of mental health work would I like to do? So even a conversation is an amazing start, but yeah, I think universities all have some kind of wellbeing service.

Yeah. Okay. Thank you. It's just reminding me of when I was looking for jobs and I was a postgraduate. I went to university in Glen Morgan in South Wales, which is now I think called University of South Wales. But I stayed in really regular contact with my academic supervisor for my dissertation. His name was Martin Graff, and he was lovely, but I feel like I asked him for more references than anyone else in the world. So I was always really nice to him and stayed in contact with him and was telling him when I'm moving on and all of this jazz. And I think he probably breathed silence of relief when I started a master's and then relinquished him of any reference responsibilities. But university academic staff, it's run of the mill. It's part of it for them. Whereas some people are like, "Oh, people won't remember me, or they won't know who I am." And if they don't know who you are, then I would say, make sure they do know who you are so that when they're writing a reference, they can speak honestly about you and your aptitude for psychology.

Yes. Thank you for making that point because it's something we are always trying to remind students, make sure that you get to know your tutors because sometimes, because we're quite a visible service, well, fairly visible service, students are able to book one-to-one appointments with us. So they do ask, "Can you write a reference for us?" But we can't because we don't have that insight into the work that they've done. And I think it can be easy to not build that relationship with your tutor, but it is important to do that so they can comment in positive ways rather than just saying the general, "Yes, this person attended." But if they don't know you, it's difficult for them to be able to comment. And I'm sure that your tutor will be really delighted to see the progress that you've made because when you ... Well, I can only speak for myself when you work in a university and you support people and then people achieve what they want, that's why we do the job.

So I'm sure your tutor will be very happy to see how you've managed to get where you wanted to be. Yeah.

And I think it's really lovely when I think back to some of the people who did teach me. So there was Alan Granfield and Lance Workman and then Martin Graff. And these people stay with you. They become part of your psychology identity even when you move on. So it might be that people are listening to this podcast or watching it on YouTube and they're like, "I know that person. I know them." And they've been part of my experience and my journey. And I think that's a real gift. People tell me that sometimes when they're preparing for interviews, they hear my voice and think that I'm on their team or even people that I've worked with in person when I was in the NHS, they're like, "Well, you're still with me. What would Marianne say?" And I think that's the biggest privilege.

Yeah, that's really lovely to be part of people's stories like that. And another part of the service that the universities do offer is mock interviews. So for anyone who's got an interview coming up, and if you're still within the time that you can access the career services at the university, then know that you can probably book in for a mocker interview. And the people that I work with tend to say, "Oh, I feel much more confident now that I've done it like that. " And it can be nerve-racking even to do a mock interview. Often people say, "Oh, I'm feeling really nervous. I'm not there to judge. I'm not there to give you a place, not to give you a place. I'm just there to help you improve what you say so that for the real interview, you can smash it. " And so yeah, that's something to look into if you've got any interviews coming up.

Absolutely. And I think that the more experience you can get of doing interviews, the better because you're more likely to get those tumbleweed moments in the mock one rather than the real one. That's why in the aspiring psychologist membership, I'm trying to do regular kind of examples of interview Q&As so that people are having a go at that because I think there's also something incredibly powerful about learning to hear your own voice and taking up room and taking up space and knowing that it's okay to have an opinion. And when your opinion is formed based on your own values, your own experiences, or whether you're backing that up with kind of research and clinical practise. And for me, it's only really when I've begun to speak out loud and to take myself seriously and not cringe at the very idea that I would have an opinion or people would want to listen to me is when you start to begin to rise, I think.

Yeah. And I think it's also seeing from the other side as well that people interviewing you are really just human beings and people genuinely, I think, want to make interviews positive experiences so that you are able to express your own opinions and give the best of yourself. I think things have changed from the bad old past where interviews were perhaps set up to be quite terrifying. And I think there's a lot more focus now on making interviews a positive experience for people because who wants to go and work somewhere where they've been terrorised by the interviewers. But yeah, I think it's ... I like the way you say hearing your voice out loud and it's sometimes when I ask the first question, people are like, "Oh, I don't really know what to say." And we all need a little bit of warming up, I think, of settling into an interview, but also settling into how to present oneself in an interview.

It's not an easy process, but it's definitely something that you can improve upon with practise. So I think it's really nice that you offer that practise as well.

Yeah, I hear you. It isn't easy. And there is that power imbalance, isn't there, that they've got something that you want. Although sometimes during an interview, we're thinking, "I don't want this. I've realised I don't want this job." But that's important as well because you're not just going and saying, "Hi, Amy, hire me. " You're going, especially if you're able to go for an in- person interview, you're going to see whether you think that they can be lucky enough to work with you or whether you'd like to do that. And even when you get offered a job, you don't have to say, yes, I've been in the position of going along to interviews kind of speculatively to see what I think, to weigh up my options and having a few interviews and then kind of waiting to see what happens and really having an idea of what my first best preference would be.

And you don't have to say yes, even if you haven't got something else. If you think this is not going to be for you, you can say no, can't you?

Absolutely. And we spend a large amount of our time at work and it's, of course, everybody wants to get their first role, but if it doesn't feel right for whatever reason, as you say, that's the purpose of an interview as well. It's for you to check out, is it right for me? Is it going to work for me? And also in the case of perhaps students, graduates who need adjustments to be able to operate in the workplace, some employers are better at providing those adjustments that they're absolutely legally entitled to. And so you're also checking out, is this going to be a supportive employer for me and my needs?

So important. Are you seeing? So I feel like an important part of my podcast is about inclusivity and how not all psychologists look the same. Some may be able to walk on their own two legs, others might look very different. And we've even had a recent episode where we had a trainee psychologist who's registered blind and uses a guide dog. I feel like I'm trying to amplify that psychologists can look all kinds of different ways and have all kinds of different experiences. Are you seeing more of that diversity coming through in more recent years?

A little bit, and I'm all on board for more inclusivity. It's something that I feel really passionately about as well. Certainly in the NHS Trust near the university that I work at, they run a programme called Catalyst Programme, which is a six-month assistant internship programme that is aimed at students that would not otherwise be able to access work experience for whatever reason. So they wouldn't be able to voluntarily work. And of course, there could be many reasons for that. Universities themselves run different schemes. So at Brunel, we unfortunately, we haven't got the funding this year, but I ran a very small internship programme for, this wasn't psychology focused, but it was for students with any kind of disability or learning difference to gain an internship at the university. So we had kind of five students scattered around the university gaining experience that they could then put on their CVs.

So there are pockets of money out there within universities and outside. They aren't always easy to find, but it's worth, again, checking in with your career service to see if they know of any local initiatives that are running because the catalyst programme run by the north, I think it's Northwest London Trust, it's an amazing programme. And every year, I'm really keeping my fingers crossed that it runs, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it runs in 2026.

So there are things out there, but sometimes you have to dig around a little bit and ask the people in the know to see what's out there, but it's important. Yeah.

Sounds fantastic, that Catalyst programme. Just before I logged on and opened up this browser for us to speak, I was on LinkedIn because I often am. If you're not already connected with me on there, I'm Dr. Marianne Chank, come and say hi. And I'd seen that someone had said, "Oh, after almost a year and a hundred applications, I'm delighted to be able to say that I've got my first assistant psychologist post." And I was like, amazing, incredible. I'd say you're going really well to have got your first AP post within a year of graduating, because actually that isn't super common. So if people have done a placement year, that might speed them up a little bit. But when you're going for assistant psychologist roles, you're often competing against people that have already worked as a paid assistant psychologist, that might already have done a master's, that might already have done lots of relevant experience roles.

So by the time I started as a paid assistant psychologist, I had been travelling around the world independently. I'd been a home carer. I'd worked with students in the student support setting. I had worked in an office for probably getting on for a year, a number of different offices, and then I'd worked for a local council doing rehab and support work with disabled adults for two and a half years. And then I got a paid role as an AP. So people are like, "Why aren't I getting this? I've got my psychology degree, but a psychology degree is not a golden ticket to an AP role, is it, Sam?"

No, and I think the job title misleads people. I think this word assistant, often people believe, "Okay, so it's an entry level job." And as you say, it really, really isn't. But I think maybe if people just readjust their expectations, then they're, "Okay, so that's something I have to work towards." And I know you highlight that in your work, but it's something I'm frequently having to say, "Oh, okay. No, don't worry. The reason you're not getting these positions or these interviews is not because there's anything wrong with you. It's just maybe you need a little bit more experience first because it's not common to get that kind of position until a year, two years after you've graduated." I think I once heard of a student who had been offered a paid assistant psychologist role straight after graduating, but that was simply because they had done a placement year within that service.

The service knew them and asked them if they wanted to come back, but that is pretty much unheard of in my experience. So yeah, it's about building up that experience before you apply for those roles. And if people come to me and say, "I want to apply, I want to apply now." I'm like, "Great, I'll always support you. Just be aware that it might be that just set your expectations that it might be this time you don't get through because it might be that you need a little bit more experience and then you could use it as a practise if you don't get through this time."

Absolutely. Such good advice. And speaking of setting expectations, when I was at university, I was told in my final weeks of uni, "Don't bother with clinical psychology. It's very hard. It's very difficult. You probably won't get on. It's very stressful. Don't do it to yourself." And for me, I was like, "Well, no, that's not red rag to a bull." No, that's not going to work for me. But yeah, I guess talking about the fact that it is a challenging career, any of the HCPC psychologist routes are very challenging, but they aren't impossible and someone's got to do it. Why not you?

Yeah. Thank you for raising that point because I love the fact that to you that inspired you to prove them wrong and to make it happen for yourself because people do these jobs. And yes, it may be a long journey. It may be difficult. It may not always go the way you want. You may not get the assistant psychologist position straight away. You may never get an assistant psychologist position. That doesn't mean you can't be a clinical psychologist without it. There are different routes. And I have students who people say that same thing to them. And I think it's for people to decide their own goals and to decide what they want to do and to hopefully find their own role models that they can relate to that can inspire them. And if for any of my students that are listening, if that's what you want, I will support you all the way because ... And some people may change their minds in two, three years time and think, "Well, I've given up my all and actually my circumstance of change and that's not for me now." And whatever you choose at any given point in time is okay for you.

But as career consultants, we're here to help you take steps forward and to try to achieve what you do want to achieve. And it can be important to just have a little backup in the back of your mind just in case you need it, but always go for what you want with the support and help of the people that know what you need to do to get there. And that's whether the misconception of the assistant psychologist comes in. I think often people get pit off because they're like, "Well, I've applied for all these positions. I haven't been successful, therefore I'm never going to be an assistant psychologist." Well, maybe build that experience first and then apply for the assistant psychologist roles. It's difficult.

It is. And you can never see what's going to come next, can you? So you never know if the next one would have a different outcome. But that said, if you're feeling burned out from your pursuit, it's okay to down tools and you might not be downing them forever. You might just be like, "I'm just going to stay where I am or I'm going to do this job until I feel..." It's a bit like an itch, until you be like, "Oh, you finish university and you think, I'm never going to study again. It's awful. It's awful." And then one day you're like, "I'd like to learn more about that. " And you find yourself Googling it and before you know you're signing yourself up to something. And I think the same is true with learning and being in our roles. We can be stretched and grown and be kind of energised and learning something new every day until you're not or until something turns your head and you're like, "Right.

Oh, okay." It's like when I first realised that I wanted a Volvo, you then see Volvos everywhere, right? And it's like that. When you are ready for a new job or a new challenge that activates you and it allows you to see all of those opportunities hopefully around you.

Yeah. And I think that's when you're thinking about what pathway you want to follow in a career, it's like, well, what am I naturally drawn to? What are the things that I follow on social media? What do I like Googling at what do I like reading about? Where does my natural interest lie? And then of course, as you say, those things will then come to you in abundance, but it's also paying attention to what do I want? What sparks my interest and where does my attention go naturally?

Absolutely. Thank you so much for your time and highlighting this very important aspect of what universities can do. Maybe not even just for psychology, but whatever your degree is, there'll be someone that's specialising and looking out for you. So thank you so much for your time, Sam. Thank

You so much for having me. It's been a really enjoyable discussion.

Oh, it really has. Thank you very much. Thank you so much to Sam for sharing her time with us so kindly. And I'm kind of reflecting on the episode and it's making me think that actually whilst I didn't need to work, but did end up working during my undergrad, many people are not in that position. Many people are working a full-time job against what is essentially full-time study as well, and having to squeeze their lectures in around shifts. And if you are having to do that, then please know that you are not alone. There are other people in that boat too. And my hat really goes off to you. And I really do admire you because you will not likely be able to have the same experience of university as some of your peers might be. You might well be out of bed earlier into bed later, having to shoehorn your study and your seminars and your lectures into an already busy life.

So I would love to know if this resonates with you. Please do let me know on social media. Please do share this episode to your stories if you have enjoyed it. Please do drop me a comment both on Spotify or on Apple. It would be so gratefully received. And if you have felt bad for me earning 45 pounds a month from the podcast, then if you would like to support my costs as a creator to help me to be able to create this really valuable psychology careers content, please do consider maybe buying one of my books, the Aspiring Psychologist Collective, the Clinical Psychologist Collective, maybe even the Grief Collective or an Autistic Anthology. Please do consider joining the Aspiring Psychologist Membership if you're serious about moving your career forwards. And of course you can join the channel either as a first look member or the backstage crew.

And that is available on Apple Podcasts, Captivate or Patreon and on YouTube. There's more information in the show notes, the description, and on the link in my social media bios. Thank you so much.

If you're looking to become a psychologist, then let this be your guys. With this podcast that you said you'll be on your way to being qualified, it's the aspiring psychologist.