Abstract

CASTRO SOLANO, Alejandro. Las competencias profesionales del psicólogo y las necesidades de perfiles profesionales en los diferentes ámbitos laborales. Interdisciplinaria [online]. 2004, vol.21, n.2, pp.117-152. ISSN 1668-7027.

   Decrease of employment at national and international level results in an oversupply of young professionals with difficulties to find new jobs. This results in an increase of standards to hire new professionals who are demanded highly specialized competencies to enter the job market. This tendency is particularly important in psychology. High market pressure causes an increase of new and highly specific interventions in the field of psychology; thus newer education and training of psychologists are required in an array of areas. Knowledge of community needs in order to channel thorough health and other psychology related services are rare in Argentina. In other countries, this topic is quite essential to the effective design of job or position offers to professionals entering the job market. In Argentina, psychologists' image as a professional with generic competencies prevails, predominantly academic training in the field of clinical psychology with a lack of interest and knowledge in other psychology areas. University curricula in general terms lack integration between theory and real professional practice. The main goal of this investigation is to analyze the adjustment between psychologist's competencies and the need for professional profiles in four different psychology fields (health, education, forensic and industrial/ organizational) from the psychologist's employer point of view. Another goal of this research is to examine strengths and weaknesses of sophomore students and young graduate psychologists. Our approach consisted in considering self-perception of competence of the actors involved (subjective competencies). We present data of 109 employers of psychologists in different professional areas. Effective psychologists task were required to those employers. Data also were gathered on 499 psychologists to whom a similar survey was administered to identify self-perceived competence in 57 basic psychological skills surveyed in the employer's sample. Strengths and weaknesses were analyzed in each of the groups considered (young graduates, sophomore students and experienced professionals). Experienced professionals perceive themselves as highly competent in the clinical field and perceive themselves with low competence in psychology areas of more modern content. The fields that concentrate younger professionals are educational psychology, psychological assessment and psychodiagnostics. In a smaller proportion, young professionals perceive competence in tasks related to research. These findings are highly consistent with observed data of young psychologist graduates. Also, results obtained matched previous evaluations of national agencies (AUAPSI) regarding psychologist's professional training. Such reports point out the emphasis of universities' curricula only exclusive in clinical psychology with a lack of consideration for other important aspects of psychology. Studied fields in this research (health, education, forensic and industrial/organizational) denote poor adjustment between required competencies and psychological skills, and the practice of psychology, considering community needs. From the point of view of those professionals who hire psychologists, weaknesses are observed in tasks related to writing of psychological reports, the work with populations of low economic resources or minorities, the advice to professional non psychologists, the administration of psychological batteries and the knowledge of new areas of psychology.

Keywords : Professional competencies; Graduates psychologist; Social needs.

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