If you're interested in an academic career in psychology, there are a few things you really ought to know that you might not be able to learn from the faculty in your graduate program. What follows is a list of things that everyone interested in being a psychology professor should know about the realities of the academic job market, but the list focuses exclusively on things that some faculty occasionally forget to discuss with their graduate students. As with all of the advice given on this site, however, recall that many of the things stated below are generalizations, and generalizations always have exceptions.

1. Teaching-oriented colleges and universities greatly outnumber research-oriented universities. This fact is so obvious that you're probably wondering why I even bring it up. I bring it up because this fact has an enormous impact on your ability to become a professor. If most of your potential employers value teaching a little more (or a lot more) than they value research, you better be prepared to prove that you're a great teacher. On the other hand, maybe you have decided that you are only interested in working at a research-oriented, PhD-granting university. If that's the case, you need to realize how limited your job opportunities will be. Consider the fact that in 2002, there were only about 160 universities in the United States that granted PhD's in psychology. Some people would call these "research-oriented schools", because to some, a school can't really be very research-oriented unless it has a PhD program. Now in any given year, only some of these schools hire new faculty in their psychology departments, and you have to remember that even among those that are hiring, most of them won't be hiring in your area of expertise (i.e., clinical or social or cognitive or whatever). So the number of jobs that you can apply for at one of these schools in any given year is very, very small. To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, consider that in the 2002-2003 hiring year, there were only about 15 social psychology jobs available at research-oriented, PhD-granting schools (e.g., schools like Michigan State, SUNY-Buffalo, Temple University, etc.). And there's no question that there were more than 100 applications submitted for each of those jobs. So no matter who you are, if you insist on having a job at a research-oriented university, the odds are very heavily against you.

2. Without at least one first-author paper published in your field's top journal, it is exceedingly unlikely that you will obtain a tenure-track job at a research-oriented university. There are usually so many applications for the openings at research-oriented universities that it is almost certain that there will be many applications from people who have published first-author papers in your field's number one, most prestigious journal. Remember that when an assistant professor position opens up at a top research university (or any other school, for that matter), many of the applications come from assistant professors at other schools who are looking for a different job. So if you're a recent graduate, you may be competing with people who have a lot more experience (and more impressive vitas) than you do.

3. Postdoctoral experience (in the form of a postdoctoral fellowship, a visiting professorship, some time in a tenure-track job, or some time doing research in the private sector) is gradually becoming almost a prerequisite for landing a tenure-track job in psychology. Everyone knows that there is only so much a person can learn in five or six years of graduate school. So research-oriented universities are more impressed by applicants who have some research experience beyond graduate school, and teaching-oriented universities are more impressed by applicants who have some teaching experience (and often, research experience too) beyond graduate school. It is becoming pretty common in psychology for people to do two or more postdoctoral fellowships or visiting professorships before they get their first tenure-track job. (A visiting professor is someone who does everything a regular professor does, but who knows that their job contract will end after a fixed period of time.)

4. Without at least one first-author paper in one of the top three journals in your field, it will be a bit of a challenge for you to get a job at a teaching-oriented college or university. The number of people who have published a first-author paper in one of your field's top journals is very large, and even schools that put more emphasis on teaching than research have a lot of highly-qualified applicants to choose from. All else being equal, a school that has to choose between an applicant who is a great teacher with only a mediocre publication record, and an applicant who is a great teacher with an impressive publication record, will obviously choose the second candidate.

5. Some faculty advisors conduct research in such a way that makes it very difficult for their graduate students to publish first-author papers in top-tier journals. Don't forget that publishing in top-tier journals usually requires impressive data that take a very long time to collect. If you do experiments in your field, papers in your field's top-tier journals probably include multiple experiments that all corroborate a coherent set of arguments. If you do correlational/survey research in your field, papers in your field's top-tier journals probably also include multiple studies, but if not, they include single studies that are very complicated and time-consuming to conduct. One of the dirty little secrets of research, however, is that most studies don't turn out exactly the way you expect. In fact, most studies never get published because the results turn out to be so uninteresting or ambiguous in meaning that they don't warrant publication. Thus, high-quality research takes an incredible amount of time to conduct. And this means that in order for a graduate student to publish in top-tier journals, he or she usually has to have a faculty advisor that will give the student enough time, enough research participants, enough lab space, enough encouragement, and possibly even some grant money in order to conduct a successful research program. For whatever reasons, not all faculty support their students to this extent, so some students find themselves making a career-altering choice on the day that they choose their advisor.

6. Some faculty advisors tell their students not to waste their precious time in graduate school teaching classes, but for some students, this is very, very bad advice. Teaching classes is certainly very time consuming, and there's some validity to the argument that time spent teaching is time not spent doing research. But the only students for whom the "don't teach" advice is good advice are students who insist that "I will either work at a great research university or I will leave academia and do research somewhere else". It is obvious that teaching-oriented schools greatly outnumber research-oriented schools, so most students who succeed at becoming professors do so by taking jobs at teaching-oriented colleges and universities. Furthermore, many teaching-oriented schools are just as serious about teaching excellence as Harvard, Stanford, Ohio State, and UT-Austin are about research excellence. So it is a grave mistake to tell yourself things like, "San Marcos State College? Who's ever heard of that school? With my PhD from the University of Colorado, they would be downright lucky to hire me." Well, as it turns out, last year San Marcos State College got 75 applications for their opening in counseling psychology, and 16 of those applications came from people who had experience teaching full-time at liberal arts colleges. Although San Marcos evaluated their applicants on a number of dimensions, strong teaching records counted a whole lot more than graduating from elite graduate programs, because at San Marcos, great teaching is the priority.