Meet SIOP Member Kasey Guentert, APTMetrics
Name
Kasey Guentert
Position/Employer
APTMetrics
How long have you been a SIOP member?
25 years
What roles have you had within SIOP?
Committee Member, CAPE, and current chair
Interest area(s)
In my day job as an I-O psychologist, I work with APT Metrics clients on work analysis, work architecture, assessment, and leadership development work. In my personal time, I am passionate about writing in our field. We are looking forward to our first book, the Hiring Handbook (with Mollie Berke) in July. I plan to write additional books on topics related to personality assessment and work motivation.
What sparked your interest in I-O psychology?
Believe it or not, I’ve been working since age 11. I was lucky enough to have two young siblings born at that time, and this kick started a flourishing babysitting business in my community. When I was 14, I got my first W-2 job serving food at a retirement home. As a teen and throughout college, I had a number of food service and cooking roles, including managing staff, being the cook at a large dining hall, and delivering pizzas. Meanwhile, I was taking psychology courses at UC Santa Cruz and wondering how I could put my passion for personality psychology to work in a job. My professor, Avril Thorne, who is a “personologist” trained by Cal Hoffman, introduced me to the field of I-O psychology by saying it was perfect for people who wanted to help other people through psychology, but not on their problems and more on their strengths. It clicked for me in that moment that I felt a sense of the workplace already being broken, and perhaps I could do something to make it better. After working for a year in a corporate job in downtown San Francisco after college, I applied to graduate programs. I landed at the California School of Professional Psychology with inspiring faculty such as Bernardo Ferdman, Del Nebeker, Rodney Lowman, and Richard Sorenson, all with quite different areas of expertise but who similarly opened up my mind to practical ways to apply the research at work. I was honored to work with each of them.
What role do you see I-O psychology playing in the future of work?
Some of us (like me) are more “traditionally” steeped in the “I” side: analyzing jobs and people. Others are heavy on the social psychology side: researching inclusion and equity and creating programs to elevate those. Others focus on people development, and others focus on engagement and organizational development. In the future, I see the “I”s splitting into those more like data scientists and people analytics experts, versus those who build and analyze information practically for companies to leverage in their structures and processes. For the traditional “I”s, being urgently more proficient as a data analyst and data scientist is an immediate imperative. I heard about a graduate program while at the SIOP Annual Conference that doesn’t teach Python or R, and I felt concerned for the students. Just like SPSS and SAS were pivotal for me back then, these newer tools are an essential part of what we do as researchers, regardless of whether it’s in pursuit of a master’s or a PhD. The emergence of chatbots and the need to be an effective prompt engineer will impact everyone in our field, not just in how we produce our own work but also to deeply understand the world of work for those we serve. If I am to predict what I-Os are doing in 10 years, I would guess that they will increasingly bridge a gap between data scientists, labor economists, and educators by understanding the “why” behind the “what.”
What work trends are you seeing and hearing about and how can I-O psychology practitioners, educators, and students impact these trends?
I’d like to see people in our field directly inspiring more change and taking an active lead in pushing for the things that originally inspired me to join the field. Basic things like pay equity and belonging and inclusion are among them, but also more corporate policy changes based on the research we do; return to work, engagement, performance practices, and many more. I am not seeing enough of the research make it into corporate policies. We have an opinion about these things, and I’d like to see us influence the broader global workplace more intentionally.
What advice would you give to students or those early in their career?
I know the job market is really rough right now. Don’t feel discouraged. Just keep networking, building your unique brand, and find ways to express how YOU will transform the workplace with your unique knowledge and skills. Make it a “program” and sell it to people in each interview you do. I went to graduate school with many entrepreneurial people who found it difficult to fit into the corporate “machine.” They did not give up, even when finding those first few clients was really hard. A number of them created small businesses and are thriving. Find that thing you want to contribute, that you’re passionate about, and build it into an offering, make it a “program,” and put it out there with pride and structure, and you’ll find people who want to engage with you about it.
What is one of your favorite SIOP Annual Conference memories/highlights?
I absolutely love attending any SIOP Annual Conference. We are such a friendly group of people, and I think we’re also a lot of fun. I have two favorite conferences. The first one was when I had mostly finished graduate school, and my professors thought I was cool enough to hang out with them for dinner. This was in Toronto, and a big group of us found a great Italian restaurant, ate a wonderful meal, and took really funny pictures in front of the monuments downtown. Transitioning from being nervous about my dissertation and doing well in class to having this much fun was great validation that I had made it to the “next level.” My most recent favorite SIOP Annual Conference was in Chicago in 2024. I hadn’t gone as regularly in a while, but I felt like so many people that I knew showed up for that conference. I could not walk down any hallway without running into an old friend or colleague. I felt a sense of community, belonging and pride about who we are as a field—that was rare and special.
Please share one non-I-O-related bit of information about yourself.
I’m proud being a wife, mother, daughter, and sister who is very close to all my family members and especially my four sons. I have a secret wish (that should never be shared with my sons) that one of them gets really excited about I-O psychology and takes our career to the next level as a Gen Z. Something else you might find amusing to know is that I got fired from jobs frequently as a teenager. I mentioned that I was working since the age of 14, and some of these roles helped me to understand what I am not good at. I am not good at accurate data entry, running a cash register when people are in a hurry to get their pizza slice, making sure the cash register is balanced at the end of the shift, or doing accounts receivable/payable in a way that accurately balances the checkbook at the end of the week. I also am not good at calculating ANOVAs by hand, and this caused me to worry that I would be bad at statistics (luckily, I am not bad at statistics).
Is there anything you would like to add?
I was told by my partner that when people ask me what I do for a living, I get a little glow in my eyes. It clearly shows that I am passionate about jobs, about work, and people at work. I feel incredibly lucky to have found this great area of study where I can interact with all kinds of people in their day-to-day jobs and dive deep into the research of work. I feel eternally grateful for the opportunity.
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