Employability

As part of our dedication to providing meaningful experiences, we integrate key employability strategies within our curriculum and extracurricular provision.

Paid research internship scheme

We are dedicated to providing meaningful opportunities for our students, and as testimony to this, we have provided opportunities for our students to take part in a Paid Research Internship Scheme.

An early version of this scheme was previously trialled, in which approximately one-third of our students opted to volunteer to assist with staff research. Given its success, 2015 marked the first year of our paid scheme, in which approximately 20% of our current second year undergraduate students were employed as Paid Research Interns across a range of staff research projects.

Our Internship Scheme continues to grow and we can offer paid opportunities both to second year undergraduate students as well as our Masters Conversion students. As well as our students gaining important research methods and other graduate level skills from this scheme, we also have an impressive track record of having our student’s work published in academic journals.

Take a look at our research papers published by our students!

Examples projects included:

The Sensing Brain

Looking for Cancer: Eye Movements in Medical Image Perception
The effect of feedback on mood and motivation in different ambient light conditions
Impact of self and other’s body shadows on sensory processing
The response of auditory and visual neural activity to arousing stimuli
Pupil dilation and sensory processing mechanisms
Feeling voices and sensing emotions: Subtypes of Alexithymia
Response to uncertainty and Authoritarian personality traits
Effect of emotive stimuli on attention
The role of working memory in attentional tasks
How to tingle: Reliable elicitors of the Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR)
Perceptions of Autistic and Non-Autistic Voices During Special Interest Conversations

Substance Use and Appetite

Are Beer Goggles real?
Bar Lab Research
Testing the validity of alcohol placebo methods

Social Cognition and Communication

Are emoji emotional?
The potential impact of extra-legal factors on jury decision making
The impact of loneliness on processing social cues
The implicit association between fonts and expressive qualities
Online health messaging- the role of personality traits and social media behaviours
A community-based approach to making behaviour more sustainable: uncovering implicit attitudes to climate change and assessing their significance for climate action

The Ageing Brain

Memory and spatial navigation: How does prior knowledge help new learning in memory in middle age and elderly populations?
Memory and spatial navigation: Using Minecraft to assess the effect of prior knowledge on new learning and memory

Find out about our internship schemes

Email Dr Liam Cross

Tom Leatherbarrow, winner of EHU Student Employee of the Year 2016, as a result of his work on our Internship

Student participation

We encourage student participation in departmental research. This approach is designed to allow students to experience the importance of research (and the associated processes) in the subject of psychology.

There are two ways in which you can participate in our research:

Students studying PSY1117: Real World Psychology must complete studies for course credit.

Everyone else (including non-Psychology students, Psychology students in years 2 and 3, academic staff, members of the general public) can participate in research for a small payment.

All studies are ethically approved and you will receive information about each prior to signing up. The data collected in each study is kept confidential and anonymous and only used for research purposes.

Study opportunities

Essential Skills in Applied Psychology module – a compulsory module in the first year dedicated to developing our students academically, personally and professionally. Here we focus on building lifelong skills which equip our students well for their future ambitions. In particular, we encourage key transferable skills such as: collaboration, team-work, creativity, communication and problem-solving.

Applying Psychology module – a second year module in which invited guest speakers present insights into the relevance of psychology across a range of psychology-relevant careers. This module also hosts a Mock Assessment Centre, in which our students actively engage in the process of writing job application forms, psychometric testing and being interviewed.

Here are some of the organisations who have supported our Mock Assessment Centre events:

•Enterprise, West Lancashire Borough Council

•Royal Air Force (RAF)

•Autism Initiatives

•AEC – Airborne Environmental Consultants Ltd

Students talk to staff from Royal Air Force.

Students talk to staff about graduate employability.

This is what our students say about their experiences of our Mock Assessment Centre:

‘The feedback from the employers gave me so much more confidence in myself’

‘Getting to know other students from the course as that’s what university is about, I also came out of my comfort zone doing something different’

‘Receiving one to one feedback from the employers because it allowed me to know what I individually need to work on in the future’

Reflections and Future Directions module – a final year compulsory module in which our students are encouraged to consider the broader nature of psychology in practice.

Students showing their certificates from participating in the Dragon's Den project. There are also some Psychology academics standing with them.

We have typically structured this around a “Dragon’s Den” event which requires groups of students to develop an initiative in any area of applied psychology, but with particular emphasis on how it can be applied to the commercial world.

After developing the initiative, our students must then pitch it to a panel of ‘dragons’ as well as other students within their year group.

Here are some examples of the pitches from our students in recent years:

•Safer Drinking for All (#SDFA)- intention to inform and educate on drug and alcohol spiking

•Wrestle for What you Deserve – a personality-informed intervention to address gender gaps in the workplace

•Using a board game to reduce youth crime

Our “Dragons” have been hugely impressed with the projects pitched to them as Fran Cassidy, founder of Cassidy Media Partnership and former marketing director of ITV/Carlton Television explained:

From the quality of the presentations and confidence of the students, I would say that their job prospects are extremely good.

Additionally, Manus Mynne, a TV producer and director who also judges at the event, added:

I was very impressed by the high standards of the initiatives presented by the students. Not only were the presentations confident and well thought out, the skills developed at the University clearly informed pitches that had real commercial worth.

You may be able to select language modules in French, Spanish or Mandarin, delivered at the Edge Hill Language Centre, as additional study.

Find out more about the Language Centre

You may have the opportunity to apply to complete a sandwich year placement as part of your programme, between your first and second year of study, to gain highly relevant work experience.

Find out more about sandwich years

You have the opportunity to apply to spend an additional year studying or working abroad. The opportunities at present are to spend a year (between Years 2 and 3) at:

University of Caen (France)
Mykolas Romeris University (Latvia)
Baldwin Wallace University (USA)
Bellermine University (USA)

University of Central Arkansas (USA)
Oklahoma City University (USA)
Riser University (USA)
University of the Fraser Valley (Canada)
Valencia University (Spain)

Lingnan University (Hong Kong)
Chuo University (Japan)

BSc (Hons) Psychology 2019 graduate, Robyn Ashfield, in front of a lake on campus.

Graduate success

Robyn Ashfield proved a trail-blazer for the Psychology department, the first student to study abroad via the Erasmus+ programme. Her spell at Mykolas Romeris University in Vilnius, Lithuania has inspired others to follow suit, and she made an impact during her studies in Eastern Europe with her fundraising efforts for the Autistic Society and Stroke Association.

She has also spent a summer volunteering in Ghana, assisting doctors and nurses at a mental health unit and volunteered at a domestic abuse charity in Blackburn (the WISH Centre).

We also now have opportunities in Japan, Hong Kong and Macau, although these involve a competitive process across the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS).

For an overview of all the international institutions the University already supports please take a look at our international pages.

Find out more

Study abroad BSc Psychology

Students on our Educational Psychology course are required to undertake educational work placements to aid their critical reflections of psychological theory in educational practice. Our partnerships with Educational Psychologists in the North West has enabled our students to undertake shadowing work within the second year of their course.

Work-related learning

Our dedicated Work-related Learning Officers regularly produce Placement Handbooks for our students with job and placement opportunities. Here are some of the opportunities which have been on offer for our students:

•Aaban Partnership Limited (a children and adolescent mental health service)- Assistant Psychologist

•ABL Health LTD – Counselling Assistant

•Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust – Personality Disorder Hub- Psychological Assistant

•Targeted Services, Wigan Council- Youth Support Worker

• ReEngage Northwest LTD- Wellbeing Coach

Careers in psychology

We aim to deliver a psychology degree that will afford students the skills necessary to give them the competitive edge in their chosen career paths. We therefore provide students with degrees that are accredited by the British Psychological Society (BPS). This provides GBC (Graduate Basis for Chartered Membership), which is an essential qualification for those wishing to enter into professional post-graduate training programmes in areas such as Clinical Psychology, Forensic Psychology, and Educational Psychology.

Many psychology graduates also go on to pursue careers in a range of disciplines. Our graduates will have the useful skills needed for careers and further training in many fields and often go on to work in disciplines such as:

Research and Development
Health and Social Care
Marketing and PR
Management and Human Resources
Education
Public sector work

Many jobs are open to graduates of any degree discipline (although sometimes further study is required), such as research, management, media, teaching, finance, law, marketing and management consultancy. In these jobs personal qualities and transferable skills are the most significant factors, rather than the specific subject studied at degree level. There are also a number of graduate training schemes available, where a degree in psychology puts graduates in a very good position.

A degree in Psychology will stand our students in good stead for a range of other careers. For example there are a number of companies that offer Graduate Training Schemes where a Psychology degree would be useful. Additionally, psychology graduates are very well suited to roles involving behavioural science, or public health interventions.

Whatever your interest, we offer the support and excellent advice needed to set you on the right path through our dedicated careers service team.