FlightWay / Careers / Industrial-Organizational Psychologists

Engineering & Science

Industrial-Organizational Psychologists

Apply principles of psychology to human resources, administration, management, sales, and marketing problems.

Sector: Engineering & Science
Preparation: Zone 5 — extensive preparation needed
O*NET code: 19-3032.00

What you'll actually do

The activities O*NET rates highest for this occupation, most important first. Numbers are out of 100.

Providing Consultation and Advice to Others

central to the job — rated 94/100 for importance.
Getting Information

central to the job — rated 93/100 for importance.
Making Decisions and Solving Problems

central to the job — rated 92/100 for importance.
Establishing and Maintaining Interpersonal Relationships

central to the job — rated 91/100 for importance.
Interpreting the Meaning of Information for Others

central to the job — rated 91/100 for importance.
Analyzing Data or Information

central to the job — rated 90/100 for importance.

Apply principles of psychology to human resources, administration, management, sales, and marketing problems. Activities may include policy planning; employee testing and selection, training, and development; and organizational development and analysis. May work with management to organize the work setting to improve worker productivity.

What it takes

Two numbers per line: the level the work expects, and how important it is to doing the job well. Both are O*NET ratings, already on a 0–100 scale.

Skills

Reading Comprehension

Needed at a high level (68/100), and rated 85/100 for importance.
Active Listening

Needed at a high level (66/100), and rated 85/100 for importance.
Writing

Needed at a high level (70/100), and rated 81/100 for importance.
Speaking

Needed at a high level (66/100), and rated 78/100 for importance.
Critical Thinking

Needed at a high level (64/100), and rated 78/100 for importance.

Knowledge

Personnel and Human Resources

Needed at expert level (93/100), and rated 98/100 for importance.
Psychology

Needed at expert level (85/100), and rated 95/100 for importance.
Education and Training

Needed at expert level (92/100), and rated 87/100 for importance.
Administration and Management

Needed at a high level (68/100), and rated 76/100 for importance.

Abilities

Oral Expression

Needed at a high level (70/100), and rated 85/100 for importance.
Written Comprehension

Needed at a high level (70/100), and rated 85/100 for importance.
Written Expression

Needed at a high level (70/100), and rated 81/100 for importance.
Oral Comprehension

Needed at a high level (68/100), and rated 81/100 for importance.

How people get in

O*NET places this occupation in Zone 5 — extensive preparation needed. That is a statement about what employers typically require, not a rule about you.

Education

Graduate school — a master's, a PhD, an MD or a JD, depending on the field.

Experience

More than five years of related experience is common before the title is yours.

Training

This is a long runway. Start the prerequisites early or the timeline slips a year at a time.

What it pays

These are typical science compensation bands by employer tier — sector-level figures, not a measured salary for Industrial-Organizational Psychologists specifically. Treat them as the shape of the market, then check a real posting for the number.

Pfizer · Nat"l Labs · MIT

$110k – $200k

Biotech & Pharma Mid

$90k – $160k

Startups & Academia

$65k – $110k

How the work tends to run

Each line below is read off a single O*NET activity rating for this occupation — named, so you can disagree with it.

Most of the day happens at a screen.From “Working with Computers”
Long-running relationships carry the work; the same people come back.From “Establishing and Maintaining Interpersonal Relationships”
Part of the job is other people’s output, not only your own.From “Coordinating the Work and Activities of Others”
You own decisions rather than execute someone else’s.From “Making Decisions and Solving Problems”
Rules and standards are checkable and someone checks them.From “Evaluating Information to Determine Compliance with Standards”

How FlightWay scores your fit against this

No black box. Here is the whole method, factor by factor.

1. You answer a short quiz: Your answers build a profile across the same 161 O*NET dimensions this page is describing — skills, knowledge, abilities and work activities. Same axes, so the comparison is like-for-like.
2. We correlate the two profiles: Fit is a mean-centered cosine — a correlation between the SHAPE of your profile and the shape of Industrial-Organizational Psychologists. Centering matters: raw similarity between any two occupations sits at 0.70–0.85 because all work shares a common profile, so without it every career would look like a match.
3. The number you see is personality fit only: "Would I want this work" and "am I ready for this work" are different questions, and averaging them answers neither. So readiness — what your résumé, coursework and projects prove — is scored separately and shown next to fit, never blended into it.
4. Every factor is visible: You can open any match and see which dimensions pushed it up and which pulled it down. If you disagree with the number, you can see exactly where it came from.

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Occupational data on this page comes from the O*NET 30.3 Database, published by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). O*NET is a registered trademark of USDOL/ETA. FlightWay is not endorsed by, and USDOL/ETA is not responsible for, anything built on that data — see our terms. What is ours is the comparison, the score and the plan.