training in behavioral science
There are many training options and paths you might pursue to create a career in behavioral science. This section includes a few interviews with people who have built successful applied behavioral science careers and a selection of different training options depending on your needs.
Getting Your Start in Behavioral Science
Elizabeth Kim is a Behavioral Scientist at Spotify. In this Action Design Radio episode, we chat with Elizabeth about her BeSci origin story, including the importance of acting on your curiosity, being versatile, and taking the initiative in a world where there’s currently more interest in behavioral science than there are jobs specifically made for BeSci experts.
Elizabeth offers inspiration and advice to individuals – from students to experienced professionals – who want to integrate behavioral science into what they do but are unsure where to start.
To shed some light on different career paths, we did a series of podcasts on different types of training that fall somewhere between a one-day workshop and a PhD. These aren't advertisements for the programs, but are meant to give you a sense of the type of things out there, should you decide to pursue a career in behavioral science.
Behavioral Science Bootcamps
In this episode, we focus on a ten-week bootcamp from Irrational Labs. Evelyn Gosnell is a behavioral economics consultant who focuses on the application of behavioral insights in product design, marketing, and organizational design. She is Managing Director at Irrational Labs, as well as the leader of their Behavioral Economics Bootcamp.
Behavioral Science Graduate Programs
In this episode, we are joined by Christopher Nave, former Director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Master of Behavioral and Decision Sciences program. Chris shares his passion for bringing together graduate students from diverse industries, backgrounds, and disciplines in order to study decision-making and better understand sustainable behavior change. Chris explains how measurement, data science, and experimental design are crucial to applying academic concepts like cognitive biases and heuristics to the real world.
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Graduate Programs
The annual Behavioral Economics Guide, published by Alain Samson and team, includes interesting articles and opinions. But the section I’d encourage you to check out is the list of training programs in the guide to see if there is one that looks like a good fit for you.
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Trainings and Bootcamps
There are many, many workshops, training and bootcamps out there. By their nature, these tend to be more focused on either a specific role (training for product managers) or element of behavioral science (workshop on habit formation).
Samuel Salzer pulled together a helpful list of these programs that you can peruse and see what might be of interest to you.
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Volunteer with Bescy
Volunteering with Bescy definitely helped me establish a career in the field. I was able to connect with other practitioners and leaders, learn about the different organizations using behavioral science, and build my resume to make the jump to application.
A Plug for the Penn MBDS Program
I do encourage you to check out the various programs and trainings available via the links above — and to consider which ones might be best for you. I’ll give a special plug, though, to the Penn MBDS program, where I’ve taught since 2020.
Types of Jobs
Behavioral science has a fairly diverse range of applications and career paths. Here are a few that you might research and think about which is most interesting to you.
It’s important to remember that no one option is better or worse than the other — there are tradeoffs to all of them. It entirely depends on how you want to spend your time and what impact you want to have.
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What we think of as applied behavioral science is the attempt of practitioners to learn and translate academic research — or learn the process of generating their own research — into real-world application. Some people who are interested in behavioral science might find this academic career path compelling. This likely involves getting a PhD in a social science like Psychology, Marketing, or Economics, conducting research, publishing papers, and navigating the pros and cons of academia.
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There are a growing number of behavioral science roles in international development organizations. These positions often — but not always — skew towards candidates with a PhD due to the complex nature of the implementation and impact evaluation of many development interventions.
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The modern movement of applied behavioral science got its start in government and there are a variety of roles available. These now span almost all levels of government, to include: municipal governments, state/provincial governments, federal agencies, cross-cutting federal teams, and international organizations. These teams, unsurprisingly, tend to focus on the design and implementation of public policies.
Worth noting here is that as you move “up” in hierarchy a few things happen. Scale and potential impact increases, but so does complexity and time to implement. You also put greater distance between yourself and the end beneficiaries of your work. Not bad or good, but just a tradeoff to keep in mind depending on what motivates you.
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Over the last few years there has been a big increase in the number and variety of behavioral science roles in industry. These include roles in product, innovation, marketing, human resources, data science, and elsewhere. It also includes roles on centralized behavioral science teams that typically work as internal consultancies.
As you would expect with such variety, the skills and credentials you might need will vary as well. But typically industry is more accepting of practitioners without a PhD — a trend that seems to be increasing. Often they are looking for some combination of knowledge of behavioral science concepts, experience applying them in their organization’s setting, and an ability to measure impact.
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Isn’t consulting part of “industry”? Well, yes and no. I’ve separated it here because of the diversity of consultancies. There are large firms focusing on commercial work (McKinsey, BCG), large firms focused on government work (Deloitte, Booz Allen Hamilton), boutique consultancies focused on behavioral science specifically (Behavioral Insights Team, ideas42), and solo practitioners.
These all have different implications in terms of the type of clients you work with, the way your organization makes money, the activities you’ll do on your projects, compensation, and more.
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OK, I know this one sounds weird to include. But hear me out. There are lots of roles that aren’t explicitly called “behavioral scientist” that still allow you to use behavioral science in your work. This takes some creative job searching, but I’d recommend focusing on roles related to innovation, user or customer experience, design and design research, and policy analysis. Depending on the focus of the team, your interest and experience in behavioral science can be a useful differentiator when applying. If, however, you find that you’re not able to actually do the work you’re interested in, I’d consider moving towards one of the paths above.
Finding a Behavioral Science Job
Finding the right behavioral science job can sometimes seem daunting — especially if it’s your first time. A couple observations that may or may not make you feel better: there are more and more behavioral science jobs being posted all the time, there are more and more roles that use behavioral science even if not formally called that, and there are more and more resources to help you. I’ve noted a few here.
Behavioral Economics Job BOard
This is the only behavioral jobs board that I’ve seen regularly updated. But it’s certainly not all that’s out there. A great place to start, though!
Good (Old Fashioned?) Linkedin
Although I wish there was a perfect jobs site out there matching behavioral scientists with organizations, so far the most fruitful searches I’ve seen have been on LinkedIn. One useful thing to remember here are the “Non-Behavioral Science” jobs described above. Feel free to expand your search beyond the typical behavioral science terms to include other research, design, and measurement roles.
Informal Networking
There are many different affinity groups that you can connect with to meet other behavioral scientists. Of course I’d recommend Bescy, but there are others that may be more prominent depending on your geography. These, and other avenues, can be a great way to start building a professional network in the field.
Academic Job Connection
As you explore the various bootcamps and training programs available to you, one good question to consider is how well those connect you to potential employers. Some are designed to increase your abilities within an existing role, but others might be more helpful in making a more substantive career pivot to behavioral science.
Volunteer
I know this may not always be an option for you, but one of the things I’ve done over the years has been to volunteer with an organization. This serves a few purposes. First, it allows you to try out a new field, role, or skillset to see if it’s actually of interest to you. Secondly, it gives you experience and a network you can use in finding your next gig.
To be clear, if you can get paid for your work you should probably do that! But getting some experience, skills, and a project you can put in your portfolio may help translate into a more desirable role as well.