Psychologist Salary

Understanding a psychologist’s salary means you are looking at both the type of psychology they practice as well as the number years of experience they bring to the table. Pay for psychologists depend upon many different factors.

So you’ve successfully applied and been invited to an interview, and answered all the questions perfectly.  So far, everything looks promising.  Now comes a new challenge: negotiating for the salary you want.  Once you get to this point in the hiring process, you may find that all the psychology training in the world can’t save you from feeling just a little bit awkward about negotiating for compensation.  After all, you want to be paid an amount that reflects the knowledge, skills, and experience you’ve put in so much effort to attain, but you don’t want to seem as though you’re motivated only by the money.

Here are a some tips for negotiating your salary when you are offered a Psychology Job

The first step in figuring out what salary to ask for is determining what people in psychology careers similar to yours are paid, in order to establish an industry baseline.  Websites that offer salary comparisons or aggregated job listings such as Payscale.com are useful for determining average compensation according to experience level and location, whether your specialty is clinical psychology, forensic psychology, social work, counseling, or any other field within the discipline of psychology.

Once you know what the average salary level is for jobs similar to the one you are interviewing for, you will have a better idea of what level of compensation is reasonable to ask for, based on your level of education and experience.

Another factor to keep in mind when negotiating salaries is what salary range has been specified as part of the initial job offer.  You may be a school psychology professional with multiple certifications and ten years of experience, but if you ask for a higher salary than the posted range, you may have to present concrete justification for why the original job specification should be changed.  Keeping the salary negotiations within the scope of the job offer will result in a much smoother negotiation process.

Just as with any mental health related job, salaries change according to where you are located, how many years of experience you bring.  Your particular specialty also affects the salary you can negotiate.  Of course, in general, experienced psychologists with masters degrees in psychology earn the highest salaries.