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Shayna Main

December 15th, 2021

Alumni advice: How to get into a career in behavioural science

0 comments | 7 shares

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

Shayna Main

December 15th, 2021

Alumni advice: How to get into a career in behavioural science

0 comments | 7 shares

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

Thinking creatively, increasing your digital footprint, educating others on key topics and following your curiosity were just some of the excellent tips shared by our panellists at LSE Careers’ recent Careers in Behavioural Science panel.

Chaired by Professor Liam Delaney, the panel featured experienced behavioural science practitioners and LSE alumni Max Beilby, Maddie Quinn, Kash Ramli and Kimberly Richter. During the session, they reflected on the industry and how to get started, predicted future in-demand skills and provided practical tips on job titles to search for.

Read on to find out some of the key takeaways from the session…

What skills are in demand in the sector?

Panellists agreed that behavioural science roles typically require a mixture of technical knowledge and experience and ‘softer’ transferable skills. For example, at interview you might be expected to demonstrate:

  • being able to analyse and manipulate data robustly
  • knowledge of survey design
  • ethical nous
  • knowledge of programming languages
  • confidence in undertaking literature reviews
  • testing at speed through experimental design
  • ability to engage others
  • ability to manage projects
  • promotion of the value of behavioural science
  • agility to move between industries
  • ability to learn quickly
  • ability to communicate impactfully using stories and anecdotes
  • ability to distil concepts for different audiences.

What’s in a job title?

Panellists’ advice? Look beyond the job title to the actual content of a role.

Behavioural science as a discipline is in its relative infancy – and many organisations may not yet appreciate the value you can bring. You can use behavioural science insights in fields such as user research (UX) and data science, and some organisations will have different titles for very similar roles, so always take the time to read between the lines of any role description.

How can you get started?

One fantastic way of getting started in the industry is joining summer programmes – these include the summer schools from Ogilvy and Cowry Consulting. Alternatively, panellists also said they’d seen success by building out the behavioural science function from within an organisation.

You can also check out the following resources:

Global Association of Applied Behavioural Scientists

Nudgestock

 

To catch up with the full event, you can watch the recording of the panel on CareerHub.

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About the author

Shayna Main

Careers Consultant, LSE Careers

Posted In: Careers Advice | Healthcare and wellbeing | Human resources | Insider tips | Marketing | Public relations and communications | Skills development

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