Why Indian companies are hiring Psychology graduates beyond counselling, HR roles

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When Gaurika Gupta enrolled in a master’s program in applied psychology, she did not imagine a career that would take her inside a design agency, reading spreadsheets of consumer data and telling brands where the “white space” in the market lies. Yet that is exactly where she landed, and she says it is work she was always drawn to.

Gupta’s first job out of graduate school was as a research analyst at Maven Magnet AI. Her second, and current, role is as a strategy planner at Please See//, a design company where she said her work “extends into corporates like Nielsen, Kantar” and other market research giants. Her job, she said, is to help companies understand not just what consumers want, but why they want it, then translate that understanding into products and messaging.

She never trained for a design agency. But her path illustrates a shift now playing out across Indian higher education, where psychology, once seen mostly as a pipeline to clinical practice or academia, is being reshaped by demand from corporate India. Companies are hiring psychology graduates not just for counselling and HR desks, but for roles in people analytics, psychometric assessment, behavioural training, employee wellbeing and organisational development. And that demand, educators and students say, is feeding a surge of interest in the subject itself.

The numbers bear that out. According to CUET registration data, Psychology registrations climbed to 32,875 in 2025, while the number of students who actually appeared for the paper rose from 20,547 in 2024 to 26,055 the following year. The increase places psychology among the more sought-after elective subjects in India’s centralised university entrance exam, a marked change from a decade ago, when the discipline was often viewed as a fallback choice.

Part of that growth traces to the broader normalisation of mental health conversations in India, amplified by social media and a generation more willing to talk openly about therapy, anxiety and burnout. Reels and podcasts explaining cognitive biases, attachment styles and workplace burnout circulate widely among young people, feeding a general fascination with how the mind works even before students think about what a psychology degree might lead to professionally.

But educators say career prospects, not just personal interest, are increasingly steering students toward the subject. A decade ago, counseling and academia were among the few established career paths for psychology graduates, with limited options available to those looking beyond these traditional fields. That calculus has changed as new roles have emerged across industries, creating opportunities for psychology graduates that did not exist when many of today’s professors were students.

“There is certainly an upward swing in prospective applicants, both immediately after school as well as at the post graduate level,” said Prof. Pulkit Khanna, Dean of the Jindal Institute of Behavioural Sciences at O.P. Jindal Global University.