Holland’s Theory of Career Choice and You

How Holland’s Theory helps you choose the right career path

Holland’s Theory helps you choose a career or education program that fits your personality and
interests. Research shows that when you do that, you take a vital step toward career well-being and
success. Success means you feel good and perform better in your job and in school. You want to
answer, "Yes!" to the question, "Do you like what you do each day?"

Dr. John Holland’s Theory, also known as Holland’s theory of vocational choice, is the best known and
most widely researched theory about where we thrive in our work. It’s widely used by career
development professionals, measured with a career interest inventory. Sometimes you hear it referred
to as Holland Codes, but there is so much more to it than labeling someone as a three-letter code.

Understanding the theory helps you identify careers and education programs that fit who you are and
put you on the right path to career well-being.

Summary of Holland's theory:

In our culture, most people are one of six personality types:

Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional. Some refer to these as Holland
Codes or RIASEC.

People of the same personality type working together create a work environment that fits their type.
For example, when Artistic persons are together on a job, they create a work environment that rewards
creative thinking and behavior -- an Artistic environment.

There are six basic types of work environments:

Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, Conventional. "Work" includes doing things to
achieve a purpose, like paid and unpaid jobs, volunteering, sports, or hobbies.
People search for environments where they can use their skills and abilities and express their values and
attitudes.

For example, Investigative types search for Investigative environments; Artistic types look for Artistic
environments, and so forth.

People who choose to work in an environment similar to their personality type are more likely to be
successful and satisfied.

For example, Artistic people are more likely to be successful and satisfied if they choose a job that has
an Artistic environment, like choosing to be a dance teacher in a dancing school -- an environment
"dominated" by Artistic type people where creative abilities and expression are highly valued.

Venn diagram showing the overlap or match between your personality type and a college major, leads
to greater success and satisfaction.

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Holland’s Theory of Career Choice and You

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How Holland’s Theory helps you choose the right career path
Holland’s Theory helps you choose a career or education program that fits your personality and
interests. Research shows that when you do that, you take a vital step toward career well-being and
success. Success means you feel good and perform better in your job and in school. You want to
answer, "Yes!" to the question, "Do you like what you do each day?"

Dr. John Holland’s Theory, also known as Holland’s theory of vocational choice, is the best known and
most widely researched theory about where we thrive in our work. It’s widely used by career
development professionals, measured with a career interest inventory. Sometimes you hear it referred
to as Holland Codes, but there is so much more to it than labeling someone as a three-letter code.

Understanding the theory helps you identify careers and education programs that fit who you are and
put you on the right path to career well-being.

SHOP FOR HOLLAND-BASED ACTIVITIES

Summary of Holland's theory:

In our culture, most people are one of six personality types:

Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional. Some refer to these as Holland
Codes or RIASEC.

People of the same personality type working together create a work environment that fits their type.
For example, when Artistic persons are together on a job, they create a work environment that rewards
creative thinking and behavior -- an Artistic environment.

There are six basic types of work environments:

Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, Conventional. "Work" includes doing things to
achieve a purpose, like paid and unpaid jobs, volunteering, sports, or hobbies.
People search for environments where they can use their skills and abilities and express their values and
attitudes.

For example, Investigative types search for Investigative environments; Artistic types look for Artistic
environments, and so forth.

People who choose to work in an environment similar to their personality type are more likely to be
successful and satisfied.

For example, Artistic people are more likely to be successful and satisfied if they choose a job that has
an Artistic environment, like choosing to be a dance teacher in a dancing school -- an environment
"dominated" by Artistic type people where creative abilities and expression are highly valued.

Venn diagram showing the overlap or match between your personality type and a college major, leads
to greater success and satisfaction.

6. How you act and feel at work depends to a large extent on your workplace (or education)
environment.

If you are working with people who have a personality type like yours, you will be able to do many of the
things they can do, and you will feel most comfortable with them.

Next step: Match your personality to compatible environments

Choosing work or an education program that matches, or is similar to your personality, will most likely
lead to success and satisfaction. This good match is called "congruent" (meaning compatible, in
agreement or harmony).

So for example, imagine you score highest for the Realistic type on the Career Key Discovery
assessment. On the table below, you see that your most compatible work environment is Realistic, a
congruent match. It's best if you choose a Realistic job, or you might also choose Investigative or
Conventional jobs.
Compatible Work Environments

Your Personality Type

Realistic

Investigative

Artistic

Social

Enterprising

Conventional

Most Compatible

Realistic

Investigative

Artistic

Social
Enterprising

Conventional

Other Compatible

Conventional & Investigative

Artistic & Realistic

Investigative & Social

Artistic & Enterprising

Conventional & Social

Enterprising & Realistic

Most people, in reality, are a combination of types–like Realistic-Investigative, or Artistic-Social.

Therefore, you will probably want to consider occupations in more than one category.

In summary, you are most likely to choose a satisfying work if you choose to do something that fits your
personality type.

If your two strongest personality types are "inconsistent"–Realistic and Social, Investigative and
Enterprising, or Artistic and Conventional–be sure to read the next section, below, and this article on
inconsistent combinations.
Holland's Hexagon

John Holland created a hexagonal model that shows the relationship between the personality types and
environments.

Notice that the personality types closest to each other are more alike than those farther away. You can
see this most clearly when you compare the personalities opposite each other, on the hexagon. For
example, read the description of the types for Realistic and Social. You will see that they are virtually the
opposite of each other. On the other hand, Social and Artistic are not that far apart.

The same holds true for the work environments. Read their descriptions and you will see.

See how the hexagon reflects introversion and extroversion; personality-environment match applies to
those dimensions also.

Inconsistent Personality Patterns

If your two strongest personality types are Realistic and Social, Investigative and Enterprising, or Artistic
and Conventional, read about inconsistent personality patterns and how they can work to your
advantage.

Two requirements for using Holland's theory

To benefit from Holland's theory, you must use a:

Valid (accurate) measure of Holland's personality types, supported by published research, and

List of careers and education programs that are accurately assigned to the correct personality types.

The assessment in Career Key Discovery is one of the few that meets these two requirements. See below
how it helps you apply Holland’s Theory to best-fit work and education environments.
Career Key Discovery screenshot showing Holland personality type matches to education programs,
environments

Identify thriving, promising and challenging careers and programs using Holland’s Theory in Career Key
Discovery

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Thinking About Career Direction

Holland's Codes

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Article • 10 min read

Holland's Codes

Shaping a Career That Suits Your Personality

By the Mind Tools Content Team

You know when you are in a job you like. You also know when the task you're doing just isn't right for
you.

What lies behind our feelings of work satisfaction or dissatisfaction are our fundamental work interests:
these are the things that we enjoy doing, whatever the industry or the job title. The trick to finding
career satisfaction can be to identify those core interests and match your job to them.

For example, if you're a science person, you may not be happy working in a job that needs quick
decisions, or where you need to use your "gut" to guide you. Likewise, artistic people would be driven
mad in a profession that has lots of rules and procedures, or which demands a lot of number crunching.

In a perfect world, we would all choose careers that suit our core interests. However this is not a perfect
world: for all sorts of reasons, we can find ourselves in positions where what we're doing just doesn't
suit our natural interests and abilities. This is where understanding how job and personality fit together
can help you change the situation for the better.
Ability and personality are the two main things contribute towards job satisfaction. You're likely to find
that jobs that suit your ability and personality are much more rewarding than those that don't. Here we
look at your work interests – an important part of your work personality.

Understanding the Theory: Holland's Codes

In the 1970s John Holland developed a popular theory of interest development based around these six
personality types:

1. Realistic (R)

These are people who like well-ordered activities, or enjoy working with objects, tools, and machines.

Realistic people:

See themselves as mechanically or athletically talented, but may not be good with people.

Value concrete and tangible things like money, power and status.

Avoid "social" activities, those that need interaction with other people.

Common traits:

Hard-headed, inflexible, persistent, materialistic, practical, and genuine.

2. Investigative (I)

Investigative people like activities that involve creative investigation of the world or nature.

Investigative people:

See themselves as highly intelligent, but often lack leadership skills.

Value scientific endeavors.

Avoid activities that seem mundane, commercial or "enterprising".

Common traits:

Analytical, curious, pessimistic, intellectual, precise, and reserved.

3. Artistic (A)

Artistic people like unstructured activities, and enjoy using materials to create art.

Artistic people:

See themselves as talented artists.

Value esthetics.

Avoid "conventional" occupations, or situations.

Common traits:

Idealistic, complicated , introspective, sensitive, impractical and nonconformist.

4. Social (S)

Social people enjoy informing, training, developing, curing and enlightening others.

Social people:

Perceive themselves as helpful, understanding and able to teach others.

Value social activities.

Avoid activities demanded by "realistic" occupations and situations.

Common traits:

Generous, patient, empathic, tactful, persuasive, and cooperative.

5. Enterprising (E)

These people enjoy reaching organizational goals or achieving economic gain.

Enterprising people:

See themselves as aggressive, popular, great leaders and speakers, but may lack scientific ability.

Value political and economic achievement.

Avoid activities demanded by "investigative" occupations and situations.

Common traits:

Extroverted, adventurous, optimistic, ambitious, sociable, and exhibitionistic.

6. Conventional (C)

Conventional people enjoy manipulating data, record keeping, filing, reproducing materials, and
organizing written or numerical data.

Conventional people:

See themselves as having a clerical and numerical ability.

Value business and economic achievement.

Avoid unstructured or "artistic" activities.

Common traits:

Efficient, practical, conscientious, inflexible, defensive, and methodical.

Reproduced by special permission of the Publisher, Psychological Assessment Resources, Inc., 16204
North Florida Avenue, Lutz, FL 33549, from Making Vocational Choices, Third Edition, Copyright 1973,
1985, 1992, 1997 by Psychological Resources, Inc. All rights reserved.
The Model

Holland then arranged these six personality types into a hexagon (see figure 1, below) organized
according to people's preference for working with different stimuli at work: people, data, things, and
ideas. Holland's theory is that people with different personality types prefer working with different work
stimuli, and that the distance between work personalities indicates the degree of difference in interests
between them. For example, Artistic people are least like Conventional people and most like Social and
Investigative people.

Holland's conclusion was that for any personality type, the career most aligned with that type is most
likely to be enjoyable and satisfying. For example, a Realistic person would be best suited for a Technical
job and least suited for a Social job. Jobs with Conventional or Operational characteristics would be the
next best choices.

The way that this works in practice is that people use a personality test to identify their three top
personality types. This gives their Holland's code (for example, ESA). This is then matched against the
Holland's codes of people typically found within particular careers.

How to Use Holland's Codes Career Model

There are two good ways of using this model – either in helping you choose a career that suits you, or in
helping you shape your existing job so that you maximize your fulfillment. To find your ideal career
according to this approach, just complete steps i and ii below. To shape your job, use our complete
process.

Using Holland's Codes is a straightforward process, which is made all the easier by some useful online
interest evaluation sites.

Part One: Identify Your Work Personality

Step i: read through the brief descriptions given above and find the one you most identify with. You may
want to take an official Holland Code Assessment – you can do this by taking the Self-Directed-Search.

Try it: does the assessment say what you thought it would? If it doesn't, ask yourself why: Often we
choose a personality type that reflects who we want to be, not who we really are. (If so, learn from this!)
Tip 1:

Do try the online test – it will show you the careers and professions that most suit your code once
you've completed it. This can save you a huge amount of painstaking research!

Step ii: to further explore your "true" work personality, ask yourself, "How would my spouse, family, and
friends categorize me?" Show some of your friends and co-workers descriptions of the types and ask
them to categorize you. Here again, explore any differences between your assessment of yourself and
theirs.

Part Two: Analyze Your Job in Terms of Your Interests

Step iii: look at your main tasks and responsibilities. Are they aligned with your work personality?

Step iv: list those responsibilities that are aligned in one column and those that are not in another. Use
this to decide whether your job is a good fit for your interests or not.

Step v: for each of the job roles where your interests are not well matched, work out at least one way of
bringing the two sides together. For instance, if you are a "Conventional" person working in an
administrative position, many of your roles will be in-line with your interests. However, if you were
asked to organize the Christmas party, you might be very uncomfortable about deciding about
decorations, entertainment, and so on. These are more Artistic responsibilities, which are directly
opposite to your Conventional ways. One strategy to deal with this is to delegate the Artistic tasks and
assume responsibility for making sure the tasks get done. You maintain the Administrative duties and
get rid of the Artistic ones.

Part Three: Set Goals to Bring Your Interests and Responsibilities in Line

Step vi: the best way of making sure that something gets done is to set a specific, time limited goal.
Identify two or three of the most important problem areas, and set realistic goals to change things.

Tip 2:
Remember that this is a model – it's a useful way of looking at things, but it can't possibly capture all of
the complexities of the ways that people behave at work. Make sure that you interpret any conclusions
with common sense.

Tip 3:

Also, bear in mind that as you develop in your career you'll need to extend your skills into new areas. In
particular, as you take responsibility for people and then move upwards within an organization, you
need to develop the "Social" ability to work with other people, as well as other skills that normally go
with other personality types (if you're going to be a CEO, there's a lot of "Conventional" work that you
just have to do, and do well.)

Key Points

Holland's Career Codes provides a useful framework for exploring your personal interests and the
careers most likely to suit you.

Every occupation requires a particular set of characteristics. By identifying your particular interests you
can quickly uncover the parts of your job that give your satisfaction. Likewise, you can identify areas of
dissatisfaction and help you plan how to address these. This helps you develop your career in the right
direction – one that will be a source of long-term fulfillment.

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