Krystyn Ramdial

Sunrise, Florida

College:

College of Sciences

Degree Programs:

Industrial and Organization Psychology PhD
Industrial and Organizational Psychology MS

Research Focus:

Cross-cultural differences (global selection, international use of emerging technology in the workplace) and Emerging technology use (synchronous and asynchronous video interviewing, virtual reality, big data, ethics).

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As Krystyn Ramdial states, “very few people can make research methods fun to learn.”  Ramdial, a graduate of the PhD program in industrial/organizations psychology, says she feels lucky to have professors at UCF who were been able to do just that.  For example, Dr. Florian Jentsch once taught students how to calculate degrees of freedom by drawing a leprechaun with a pot of gold – a leprechaun, Ramdial says, she will never forget.

This supportive attitude from faculty is the reason Ramdial chose to pursue her degree at UCF.  Previously, Ramdial earned bachelor’s degrees in psychology and business management from the University of South Florida, and a master’s degree in industrial/organizational psychology from UCF. Ramdial’s application experience was a positive one in part to a large amount of support she received from her first faculty advisor, Dr. Kimbery Smith-Jentsch.  Ramdial also has praise for Dr. Dana Joseph and her effective ways of sharing her knowledge with students.

Her professors weren’t the only people who made Ramdial’s experience a positive one.  She also enjoyed the collaborative environment in her program, which encouraged students to work with and learn from each other.  Ramdial’s collaboration with two of her colleagues led to them winning the 2016 CIOP Consulting Challenge in Chicago, which required them to develop a solution to an organizational challenge provided by United Airlines.  She also worked with her fellow students in other roles – Ramdial was involved with the Graduate Student Association.  Since 2015, she has served as the Graduate Involvement Coordinator, the Executive Director, and the Vice President.

To her fellow students, Ramdial recommends finding balance in their lives.  She says that it is important to find time to do the things that keep one healthy – cooking, exercising, sleeping –, and that it is helpful to have interests that reach beyond your program of study, whether that be yoga, reading, volunteering, or anything else that provides a meaningful escape.

Ramdial's dissertation investigated potential cross-cultural differences in how job applicants react to one-way video interviewing, and how those reactions influence how the applicants perceive the hiring organization.  After graduation, Ramdial plans to become either an internal or external consultant, working in the area of international selection or travel.