Career prospects
After your studies
Since behaviour plays a role absolutely everywhere, you can find psychologists working in a wide range of functions and sectors, including aid, education, human resources management, public policy, counselling, training, coaching, sport and advertising. However, no matter how different the fields of work are, the psychologist's mission remains the same: to contribute to quality of life and society by changing unhealthy and undesirable behaviour.
Possible occupations
- Healthcare psychologist
- Work and organisational psychologist
- Behavioural change advisor
- Scientific researcher
Continuing your studies
After obtaining your Bachelor's degree you can enter the labor market. However, most students opt to continue on to a Master's degree. Obtaining a Master's degree gives you several advantages, including increasing your career opportunities. With a bachelor's degree in Psychology at Radboud University you can progress to:
Labor market orientation: put your degree to work!
To prepare you for the job market, Radboud University offers various forms of labor market orientation, so that you can start planning your future during your studies.
For example, every faculty has a Career Service, where you can go with questions about and help with labor market orientation. They offer career advice interviews and skills training, among other things. You can also contact them if you want to gain a few months of practical experience by doing an internship.
Transferring to a Master’s programme in Psychotherapy in Germany
We are aware of the recent changes in Germany, and although our Bachelor’s programme is multi-faceted (broad), which is what polyvalent means, it is not yet clear if our programme is considered Polyvalent under German law. However, we believe that (university) graduates in Psychology can pursue many more interesting jobs in Psychology, even if they do not become a Psychotherapist under the German Psychotherapist law. With a Bachelor’s and subsequent Master’s in Psychology from our university, you could become a registered clinical psychologist, a family counsellor, a neuropsychologist, a behavioural therapist, a rehabilitation therapist; there are so many possibilities!
To focus more on the field of mental healthcare; our Master’s programme in Clinical Psychology makes you eligible for our post-Master’s programme to eventually become a registered clinical healthcare psychologist or a psychotherapist in the Netherlands. However, this programme is Dutch-taught and followed by several years of post-academic education (after your Master’s) in order to become licensed. This means that you would need to study the Dutch language, and of course you would need to prepare yourself for a career here in the Netherlands. Every year, we do see a number of German students who successfully enter this Master’s programme. They usually begin in the English-taught Psychology BSc, and then take up a Dutch language course sometime during their BSc studies. In our experience, German students are fluent in Dutch already after a few years of practice, but of course it fully depends on the individual and how much time is spent studying.
However, if it is your goal to become a psychotherapist under the German Psychotherapist law, you might consider applying for a polyvalent Bachelor’s programme in Germany instead. Furthermore, you are advised to keep an eye on this website for the most recent changes, and to continue to ask the German education institutions about the admission requirements for a Psychotherapy Master’s programme in Germany, especially when it comes to the content of your Bachelor’s programme.