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!)

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.