The Careers Festival is back, bigger and bolder

The British Psychological Society's Psychology Careers Festival is back for a second year and this time around promises to be bigger and bolder than before.

Taking place in November, the week-long festival celebrates everything that is great about careers in psychology. It will include five stages of talks and presentations, discussions about career paths and access to expert advice on how to kick-start your career.

Browse the interactive PDF to find out which 'acts' are appearing across our five stages, including keynote speakers Dr Marianne Trent and Dr Tara Quinn-Cirillo.

Here is a snapshot of some of the events coming up during the week…

Monday 6 November

Keynote speaker Dr Marianne Trent is helping launch our festival on Monday morning at 10. Marianne is the owner of Good Thinking Psychological Services and host of The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast and has had a fascinating and varied career journey so far.

Dr Trent will be speaking about the skills she gained from her qualifications which she still uses every day, and what she loves most about what she does. She'll be sharing her top piece of advice for a psychology graduate thinking of taking their training forward.

Other highlights of day one include:

• 11am – 'The Importance of Work Experience and Transferrable Skills' – workshop hosted by The University of Liverpool
• 11:30am – 'My Super Mind!' – For GCSE and A-Level/Highers students, thinking about where studying psychology can lead
• 12pm – 'How Psychology interacts with Influencer Marketing?' with Dr Alan Gray
• 3pm – Maths anxiety and women in STEM and scholarship opportunities, with Khudaija Ashfaq Ahmad

Tuesday 7 November

Our second careers festival day hosts a packed schedule of diverse and fascinating speakers, including (at 11.15am) Denise Olukitibi, who works as a senior product manager in the government's Central Digital and Data Office.

Denise is the founder of Teach Her, a community organisation dedicated to creating pathways for women of colour into digital, data and technology careers. She will be speaking about how her psychology training informs her career in product management and her role providing training and support in a community start-up.

Other Tuesday highlights include:

• 10am – 'Division of Health Psychology – the whats and the hows'
• 1:30pm – 'A career within the Civil Service – how Occupational Psychology fits in' – Dr Antonia Dietmann
• 1:30pm – Employment Opportunity – Where roles within Beyond Autism can lead you – David Anthony from Beyond Autism

Wednesday 8 November

Alongside traditional pathways for psychologists, there are a host of careers which are indebted to psychology, employing those with psychological expertise and training. At 2pm on Wednesday Dr Carolyn Mair, fashion business consultant and chartered cognitive psychologist, will be speaking about applying psychology in the world of fashion, the barriers she has overcome and her work as a consultant.

Carolyn is an author – her book The Psychology of Fashion was published in 2018 – and is frequently cited in press and media. Before becoming a psychologist, she had a career as a visual merchandiser and graphic designer.

Other Wednesday highlights include:

• 9:30am – 'Division of Clinical Psychology – the whats and the hows'?
• 10am – Practising as a Counsellor – Punam Farmah
• 1pm - The diverse applications of neuropsychology – Dr Alistair Teager
• 5pm – Virtual Employers Fayre

Thursday 9 November

Our fourth day is a Senate House Library and BPS Joint Researchers Day. We welcome guests from across different psychological disciplines to talk about their insights into being a researcher, and what they research. We'll also be hosting expert tables where our delegates bring those burning research related questions.

Friday 10 November

On Friday, we host our Wider Psychological Professions Day, where we take a deeper dive into the psychological professions within the NHS commissioned psychological healthcare.

Our keynote for the day is Adrian Whittington, a clinical specialist in psychological therapy for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and the National Clinical Lead for Psychological Professions.

Adrian provides professional leadership and advice across national NHS teams, and is passionate about making the NHS more psychological. His keynote will lay out the routes and opportunities to create a career within the psychological professions, which is currently the fastest growing group of occupations in the NHS.

Other Friday highlights include:

• 10am – A 'Day in the life of' a Psychological Professional within the NHS
• 1:30pm –'The Clinical Associate in Psychology Role – the whats and the hows' – from the CAP Trailblazer group, GTiCAP and CAP Professionals

Saturday 11 November

Our festival's Closing Ceremony takes place at 2.30pm on Saturday, as our final keynote Dr Tara Quinn-Cirillo takes the stage. Tara is a counselling psychologist with over 20 years clinical experience, but has now grown into a range of other roles including broadcaster, collaborator, social enterprise founder and podcast host, as well as running her own independent practice.

Tara is passionate about furthering the public's understanding of mental health issues and the ethics of good quality knowledge dissemination, and will be sharing her experience of stepping outside traditional 'expected' psychology roles into a 'world of opportunity'!

Other Saturday highlights include:

• 10am – A 'day in the life of' a probation services officer – Kitty Pott
• 12pm – 'Educational Psychology – My career journey' – Elizabeth McGrory

Tickets cost £15.99 for members, £19.99 for non-members and £6 for students. This registration gives you access to every part of the BPS Psychology Careers Festival week. You will get to choose which sessions across our 'stages' you'd like to attend within the line-up. If costs are a barrier to attending this event, or you would like to receive your membership discount (providing us with your membership number), please contact [email protected].

See the event page for the full interactive programme, more information and to register.