Would you take a pay cut for a job that looks worse on paper? Sometimes the move that feels like a step backwards is exactly what your career needs next. In this episode of Psychology, Actually, Dr Marianne Trent explores when a sideways or seemingly backwards career move, like dropping from a Band 5 to a Band 4 assistant psychologist role, could actually help you grow. Drawing on a real Reddit case study and her own career journey, including nearly two years spent away from psychology altogether, Marianne unpacks how to weigh pay, experience, wellbeing and life circumstances when deciding your next move. She shares a practical framework for working out what you're really optimising for, whether that's money, learning, time or relationships, plus reflective questions to help you decide with confidence.

#CareerAdvice #AssistantPsychologist #ClinicalPsychology

Highlights

• 00:00 Introduction - When a step back moves you forward
• 01:15 Why I made this episode - The Reddit post that inspired it
• 02:28 The Band 5 to Band 4 AP dilemma explained
• 04:05 Have you reached a plateau in your current role?
• 07:12 Energy, grief and life circumstances - when you can't do more
• 09:30 Money, cost of living crisis and travel expenses
• 11:55 My 2 years away from psychology - home care to office temping
• 15:40 Banding isn't everything - Band 4 vs Band 5 AP roles
• 18:42 What are you optimising for? Money, learning, time, wellbeing
• 21:10 How to manage your six career priorities
• 22:45 Breadth versus depth of experience for DClinPsy
• 24:50 Pay, overtime, shift allowances and pensions
• 26:30 6 Decision-making questions to ask yourself before you move
• 30:15 Final thoughts - Your life gets a vote too

🎧 Listen to the Pensions episode mentioned in this episode here: https://player.captivate.fm/episode/63990610-9942-4287-bcb6-cef9be814b2d/ Or Watch on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lv5QFsNVCQ

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⚠️ Disclaimer

This content is for informational and educational purposes only. It does not constitute medical, psychological, or professional advice. Any actions taken based on this content are at your own risk.

© Dr Marianne Trent

Would you ever take a pay cut for a job that looked worse on paper? Because we're taught to think that career progress means more money, a better title, and a step up. But some of the most important moves I've made in my career have been sideways. And one of the moves took me entirely away from psychology for almost two years. So how do you know when a move that feels like it might be backwards or possibly sidewards has potential to take you forwards? I'm Dr. Marianne Trent, and this is Psychology Actually. Hi, welcome along to Psychology. Actually, I am Dr. Marianne Trent, a qualified clinical psychologist. It's really lovely to have you here. I was inspired to do this episode after seeing a Reddit post, and it really made me think about so many aspects of my own career, my own journey, and that of supporting qualified psychologists, even advising people outside of psychology roles when they're considering what they're going to do for work, what they should apply for, whether they should go for interviews.

And I though it might be useful to have a conversation about that here with you. So the post in a nutshell was that someone had found themselves in a band five NHS assistant psychologist role, been there for almost 18 months. And now they're sort of at that point where they're like, "I think it's time to move on, but I'm not really seeing any other band five roles. I'm seeing maybe lots of band four roles start to come up, but I'm used to the money. And then I also used to get travel, so that kind of boosted it a little bit and I'm not really sure what to do." So I guess I've got a couple of thoughts around that. And firstly, it's when you're looking to progress in your career, it might well be that you feel like really, in order to stand out on an application form, I'm probably going to need to get some extra skills, some extra experience, some enhanced level of depth of understanding on what I'm already doing that I think maybe I might have reached the plateau for in my current role.

And believe me, that does happen. And at that point you might be like, "Could I do some other bits in this role? Could I speak to my manager? Could I think about doing, I don't know, some service or some audit or taking on a special project that helps me to gain more skills and experience? Maybe I might be able to start supervising a member of staff. Maybe I might be able to start putting together a group and then running that in conjunction with someone who might be qualified or another member of the team or even shadowing some different members of the MDT team if you're in that sort of service, that sort of role so that you can really feel like you are still being shaped, you're still growing, you're still learning because I don't think there's anything more stagnating than feeling like you're not really getting anything new.

Now, of course, energy wise, sometimes that suits us. So when I was just back from having my second baby and when I was going through some grief stuff with my dad, then energy wise, I probably wouldn't have been wanting to do things that were a very steep learning curve for me. So a little bit of variety was okay, but actually I didn't have the resources personally at that time to be doing more. You might feel different. You might be like," I've got all this energy, I've got all this enthusiasm, but I've either reached the plateau for this job or when I'm asking for more roles, when I'm asking for more responsibility, when I'm asking for a little bit of flavour and variety in the work that I'm doing, for whatever reason that isn't coming to me, you then get to decide, "Well, what am I going to do about that?

Am I going to look elsewhere?" And of course, none of us are in this to work for free. Even though we genuinely care about people, if we're working in mental health, I would hope that you're genuinely moved by the distress of others because really I think when we're working in mental health, that is really important because the money is not always amazing. So you have to have another why. But of course, if you've got fixed cost bills to pay, maybe your mortgage, your rent, your travel costs, you might even have dependents that you need to help support or solely support, then actually dropping down from a band five role or a band seven role to a band six role to do training, that is and can be a very big consideration. Now with the current cost of living crisis, and of course if you have been getting travel reimbursements, I don't think we're getting much more than actually the cost of the fuel at the moment.

So if you are going to be in a base where you are not travelling, you're just going to your place of work and then you're going home at the end of the day, then actually if you're spending less on fuel, that kind of travel expense might not feature as much for you. It might just be like a psychological norm that you're used to seeing a certain amount of money come in, but of course some of that will have been money going out because you've had to pay for parking costs, you've had to pay for your fuel, for your trips to get out and see your clients. Some of it might be a bit lifestyle as well. Maybe if you are out and about, you're used to being able to work in an agile manner or work from home sometimes. And so some of that might be a little bit of a culture change to you as well.

When I was freshly graduated from university, I actually took a completely unrelated role because I needed to prioritise my own needs above my career needs. So at that time I was saving up to go travelling. So my primary concern was being able to be in a role where I could do as many hours as possible at a higher hourly rate than I'd already been on. So I was a home carer and I absolutely loved that work, but I couldn't suddenly invent more home care clients for the company. And so I kind of left the industry altogether and then started doing work as a temp worker in office buildings in Milton Keynes. And the money for that was higher as an hourly rate and it also meant longer days. So I was working nine, I think until 6:00 PM. So long days. And then there was also the potential to do overtime on a Saturday as well.

So that really did boost my income, which then allowed me to save to be able to have the six months off to go around the world. And that was of priority for me, but it did mean I took almost two years out of what I was doing until I then found my way back into a relevant role because actually as soon as I got back from travelling, I went back to doing that temp work, but someone had offered me a permanent job. So I went back to one of the teams that I'd been in, but I do not consider that wasted time. I consider that personal enrichment development, personal development for me and stuff that actually still really helps me on tricky days is reflecting on some of those incredible memories that I had when I was in my early 20s. I think something else that might be helpful to say is my experience of working as, for example, an assistant psychologist in a team is that often I felt like I was doing work that was higher up than kind of the band four I was doing.

And a lot of the roles I was seeing advertised were maybe suitable for band five people to be doing, but for whatever reason, they were just band four roles. So please don't think that it's like a demotion if you're applying for a band four role. And I know pay wise, it might feel that way. But similarly, I've worked in band seven roles that really I was ready to be at an eight A, but there wasn't the budget to be able to support a preceptorship shift. So it might be that you're in a role at the moment where you are gaining that seniority of experience. If you're looking at your key performance indicators, that you are gaining some of the skills that you would be able to say, "Well, I am at that level, but for whatever reason, there isn't the budget there to support that." So try not to be too led on the bandings is what I would say.

That said, of course, if you find yourself in a role where you're doing things vastly above your spine point, then do discuss that with your manager and your supervisor to consider whether rebanding might be an option or whether actually someone else in the team should be doing some of those roles. I think also it can be helpful to think about the kind of different reasons why we might want to optimise our career. And broadly speaking, I think they are money, learning, time, wellbeing, relationships, and future options. So for me, it was not a case that I could always keep all six of those kind of ducks in a row, but it's allowing myself to prioritise one or two of those at any given time. And that might suit me for now, but it might not necessarily suit me forever. So it's really empowering myself to make the choice for whatever version of myself is present at this time.

So like I said, if I'd been looking for new roles when I just lost my dad, then it might have been that I prioritise a role that was higher paid so I could perhaps do fewer days a week and that was close to home so that it didn't impact on my relationships and didn't take me too long to get to. I would love your thoughts on this. How are you juggling your six components? Do let me know in the comments whether you're watching on YouTube or on Spotify. And people have been like, "Why don't you ever mention Apple Podcasts?" I know lots of you listen on Apple Podcasts as well, but currently there isn't a facility to be able to drop episode specific comments, but there is an opportunity for you to rate and review the show. So if you're listening on your phone, if you go to the show and then scroll down and then you can click read reviews and write a review, I would be so very grateful.

I think there can be a pressure to think, "I need to know everything. I need to know everything." And I think it's that kind of juggle of breadth of experience versus depth of experience. And so it might just be worth a quick check in with actually, am I putting pressure on myself to know all of these things or could I give myself permission to really, really go deeper on my knowledge and my skills in this area? So to focus on my depth of experience, because believe me, at interview, if you've got depth of experience when you're asked a question, you'll be able to just give a really lovely answer rather than trying to scrabble around for something that seems like it makes sense. I know also when speaking to people about pay, sometimes when you change to a different role, sometimes especially if you're going to a more senior role, there can then be the expectation that any overtime that you do is just part of the job.

And of course, we don't necessarily want you to be losing money from doing shift allowances or shift enhancements or from time and a half that you might have been earning from doing overtime. So all of these are important things to consider as well, of course, of any pension implications. So we should be thinking about our pensions, even if you were younger. I wish I'd been savvy enough to start investing when I was in my 20s. One of my friends was a pension advisor at the time, and I remember just thinking, "Oh, how boring. How boring? I wish I'd listened to him because I would be significantly better off than I am now." If that sounds intriguing to you, please do check out two episodes I did with Ian Dempsey, who is a financial advisor. I often think when you're trying to make a decision, you can't go far wrong with opening up a notebook.

I like my remarkable notebook, but you might actually prefer pen and paper and scribbling down your answers to some questions. If you don't like writing, you might find it helpful to drop yourself voice notes, perhaps on WhatsApp. That's my favourite place to drop myself memos. And I think some good questions to mull over are these. What will I genuinely gain from this move? What will I genuinely lose from this move? Am I still developing where I'm currently working? What does my life need from my job right now? If nobody could see my job title or my salary, which role will I actually choose? And seeing as this is a pretty good reflective journal exercise, let's drop in one more for you to consider as well. Am I making this move because it genuinely is going to help me or because I'm frightened that my existing experience isn't enough?

If it's the latter, you might find it helpful to talk to someone supportive, a supervisor, a manager, someone else who knows your position and understands the context in which you work, because of course we can't know that that is a genuine, genuine opinion that our brain is serving us up. It might just be a lot of fear. There might not necessarily be too much evidence for you to draw that conclusion. So I often think that getting a second opinion from someone that you genuinely trust and has insight into your situation is a really good idea. That said, if your career of choice is psychology and you're striving for the doctorate in clinical psychology, why not check out the aspiring psychologist membership, which you can join from just 30 pounds a month with no minimum term. I do also offer therapy and coaching sessions too. So even if your career of choice is not psychology, I might still be able to help you to achieve your goals.

So in summary, I think what I'd say is that our careers don't always move in kind of forward increments. It's not always a neat linear upwards trajectory. Sometimes the right move for you will be sideways. Sometimes it might pay less if you can afford for that to happen. Sometimes you might feel that the job title doesn't maybe sound that impressive. And sometimes, like I did, sometimes it might take you away from your ultimate career goal, but hopefully you're doing that for a very important reason. And I think it's with hindsight when we look back on our journeys that we sometimes see just how important those sideways or different moves were for us being where we are right now, the sense we made of that, what we learned about ourselves on the way there. I would absolutely love your thoughts on this. Please do drop me a comment on YouTube or on Spotify, and please do follow the show or subscribe to the show wherever you watch or get your podcasts.