Link to slides
Link to Linkedin profile
Sarah is from Washington state, and attended Olympic High School. At high school Sarah liked being involved in lots of activities - she did cheer, soccer and fast-pitch softball. She also helped out in the sports med-room. She liked being around the sports teams and was interested in sports medicine and helped the athletes. She was a good student and enjoyed taking challenging classes and took several AP classes (lots of sciences). When considering what to study at university she considered different science subjects but couldn't see herself immersed in classic science like physics or biology, so she decided to study psychology - she applied to a program to study for a Bachelor of Science rather than Bachelor of Arts because it offered more options in science and math classes (especially statistics).
Sarah received a full-ride scholarship to attend Pacific Lutheran University for 4 years. PLU is not a large school, and she thinks she benefited from several opportunities because of this. She was able to get real research experience while studying psychology. She contributed to a grant proposal for psychology research. They won the grant! This meant she could work on the work in the department, get research experience, and get paid (not much but that was okay as because she was getting real research experience). During this work she also was able to contribute to paper publications which is pretty unusual for an undergraduate student.
PLU is a D3 school and for sports this means they had a good sports program but the students are not getting sports scholarships to attend the university. She was able to work in the sports med room again as a student athletic trainer, which she enjoyed.
At the end of her time at university she had decided she wanted to continue with studying and complete a PhD. She was accepted to Baylor University which is in Texas. She had to decide which field to specialize in and followed the path of behavioral neuroscience psychology (Def: Any or all of the sciences, such as neurochemistry and experimental psychology, which deal with the structure or function of the nervous system and brain.). She was curious about how the human brain worked.
Her research looked at people who do not have normal aggressive behavior. When most of us face certain stressful situations we know what is acceptable behavior in terms of becoming aggressive because our brains let us know (chemicals in the brain, and other behaviors) but some people's brains don't give them the right information and they behave differently in those situations. Her work required her to do lots of experiments with people to study brain waves! People in her study were hooked up to machines that can measure brain wave activity. She loved this work because it was science research and it had practical applications as the new learnings could help therapists who work with people with these types of challenges.
During grad school she taught Statistics - she really enjoyed doing this as she got to engage with students and learn the best way to help them understand statistics.
Sarah was learning she really loved solving problems. She liked to use data to help people see things from a different perspective. She liked to change peoples minds by using numbers.
When grad school was wrapping up she had to decide what to do next. She thought she wanted to be a college professor as she enjoyed teaching, but was persuaded by her professor to follow a research career path. She became a Post-Doc researcher. A post-doc researcher is someone who has their PhD and is considering an academic research path. Post-Docs usually design and manage their own research, apply for grants for research, and write academic papers. Often post-docs apply for positions to be research professors at research universities as they want to continue with an academic path.
Sarah realized while doing her research that it wasn't for her. She started to find the research boring and there wasn't enough practical relevance to the work. She started to think hard about what she was good at and liked to do. She liked people (she'd enjoyed working with students), she liked statistics, and writing statistics programs and she liked psychology. She then started to search for a job that matched her interests. She spent almost a year applying for jobs - she realized perhaps she'd identified a new area of work that would combine people, experimenting, and implementing the findings.
Eventually she found a position in a group at Nordstrom that was dedicated to making people at work happy! It was the Nordstrom People Lab. She worked on a project at Nordstrom to change the hiring process - they were having a hard time hiring people who fitted into the culture of the company (head office/ technology department). She did research on this problem with people in the company and came up with a new hiring process called 'Audition Hiring' where the person being interviewed had to work alongside someone on the team on a problem. This experience then helped Nordstrom decide if the new person would fit well into the team - was this new person going to be someone they could work alongside. Working together provided better information about whether they should hire that person than just asking questions like a normal interview.
Now Sarah works at Redfin, which is an online service that helps people find and buy houses. The company hires many real estate agents that are critical to the success of the company. Sarah's job is to find ways Redfin can engage with the real estate agents to make sure they love their work and are super happy to be part of Redfin.
She loves what she is doing now. The field of People Analytics is now becoming a recognized field of work in industry. This is a new field and it’s a field that is expected to grow by 30% in the next few years - so lots of opportunities in the future.
Sarah wishes that when she was back in school that someone had told her that following a 'typical' path isn't normal. Just because you study psychology in college doesn't mean you have to be a psychologist. She believes you should think about what you're good at and what you like to do and then explore career options from there. It might not be obvious at the beginning where you future job is but if you keep looking you'll find work that you'll love.
Sarah has some great online resources at the end of her slides if you'd like to learn more about People Research.
Link to Linkedin profile
Sarah is from Washington state, and attended Olympic High School. At high school Sarah liked being involved in lots of activities - she did cheer, soccer and fast-pitch softball. She also helped out in the sports med-room. She liked being around the sports teams and was interested in sports medicine and helped the athletes. She was a good student and enjoyed taking challenging classes and took several AP classes (lots of sciences). When considering what to study at university she considered different science subjects but couldn't see herself immersed in classic science like physics or biology, so she decided to study psychology - she applied to a program to study for a Bachelor of Science rather than Bachelor of Arts because it offered more options in science and math classes (especially statistics).
Sarah received a full-ride scholarship to attend Pacific Lutheran University for 4 years. PLU is not a large school, and she thinks she benefited from several opportunities because of this. She was able to get real research experience while studying psychology. She contributed to a grant proposal for psychology research. They won the grant! This meant she could work on the work in the department, get research experience, and get paid (not much but that was okay as because she was getting real research experience). During this work she also was able to contribute to paper publications which is pretty unusual for an undergraduate student.
PLU is a D3 school and for sports this means they had a good sports program but the students are not getting sports scholarships to attend the university. She was able to work in the sports med room again as a student athletic trainer, which she enjoyed.
At the end of her time at university she had decided she wanted to continue with studying and complete a PhD. She was accepted to Baylor University which is in Texas. She had to decide which field to specialize in and followed the path of behavioral neuroscience psychology (Def: Any or all of the sciences, such as neurochemistry and experimental psychology, which deal with the structure or function of the nervous system and brain.). She was curious about how the human brain worked.
Her research looked at people who do not have normal aggressive behavior. When most of us face certain stressful situations we know what is acceptable behavior in terms of becoming aggressive because our brains let us know (chemicals in the brain, and other behaviors) but some people's brains don't give them the right information and they behave differently in those situations. Her work required her to do lots of experiments with people to study brain waves! People in her study were hooked up to machines that can measure brain wave activity. She loved this work because it was science research and it had practical applications as the new learnings could help therapists who work with people with these types of challenges.
During grad school she taught Statistics - she really enjoyed doing this as she got to engage with students and learn the best way to help them understand statistics.
Sarah was learning she really loved solving problems. She liked to use data to help people see things from a different perspective. She liked to change peoples minds by using numbers.
When grad school was wrapping up she had to decide what to do next. She thought she wanted to be a college professor as she enjoyed teaching, but was persuaded by her professor to follow a research career path. She became a Post-Doc researcher. A post-doc researcher is someone who has their PhD and is considering an academic research path. Post-Docs usually design and manage their own research, apply for grants for research, and write academic papers. Often post-docs apply for positions to be research professors at research universities as they want to continue with an academic path.
Sarah realized while doing her research that it wasn't for her. She started to find the research boring and there wasn't enough practical relevance to the work. She started to think hard about what she was good at and liked to do. She liked people (she'd enjoyed working with students), she liked statistics, and writing statistics programs and she liked psychology. She then started to search for a job that matched her interests. She spent almost a year applying for jobs - she realized perhaps she'd identified a new area of work that would combine people, experimenting, and implementing the findings.
Eventually she found a position in a group at Nordstrom that was dedicated to making people at work happy! It was the Nordstrom People Lab. She worked on a project at Nordstrom to change the hiring process - they were having a hard time hiring people who fitted into the culture of the company (head office/ technology department). She did research on this problem with people in the company and came up with a new hiring process called 'Audition Hiring' where the person being interviewed had to work alongside someone on the team on a problem. This experience then helped Nordstrom decide if the new person would fit well into the team - was this new person going to be someone they could work alongside. Working together provided better information about whether they should hire that person than just asking questions like a normal interview.
Now Sarah works at Redfin, which is an online service that helps people find and buy houses. The company hires many real estate agents that are critical to the success of the company. Sarah's job is to find ways Redfin can engage with the real estate agents to make sure they love their work and are super happy to be part of Redfin.
She loves what she is doing now. The field of People Analytics is now becoming a recognized field of work in industry. This is a new field and it’s a field that is expected to grow by 30% in the next few years - so lots of opportunities in the future.
Sarah wishes that when she was back in school that someone had told her that following a 'typical' path isn't normal. Just because you study psychology in college doesn't mean you have to be a psychologist. She believes you should think about what you're good at and what you like to do and then explore career options from there. It might not be obvious at the beginning where you future job is but if you keep looking you'll find work that you'll love.
Sarah has some great online resources at the end of her slides if you'd like to learn more about People Research.