Career Interests
Your Career Interest
A good way to explore one’s career orientations is to find own more about one’s interests. According to psychologist John Holland, there is an association between personal interests and personality types. You can also see that our interest orientation is an aspect of our personality. For example, certain people prefer certain activities over others. According to Holland, there are people who prefer to, and are also good at working with objects while others may prefer to sit back and solve puzzles and problems by thinking out a solution. This sort of distinction between people groups constitutes Holland personality types.
Instead of relying on hearsay, advice form your colleagues and parents, or radio commercials, finding out where your strengths and interests are and the job nature of different careers may provide you with an optional method to help pave your career path.
In general, it is believed that one is most productive when a personality type meets career demands and a mismatch would cost both the person as well as the company which provides the job as the person would be doing something he is not good at and dislikes. It makes perhaps nothing good will come out of a situation like this one.
Holland has identified six personality types which can roughly be mapped to different career attributes which you can used as a reference to help you in your career development.
Realistic
People who have athletic or mechanical ability, prefer to work with objects, machines, tools, plants or animals, or to be outdoors.
Possible Matching Careers
Chef
Computer science
Driver
Engineer
Firefighter
Gardener
Information technology
Instructional technology
Martial arts
Mechanic /Automobiles
Mechanical engineering
Musician
Investigative
People who like to observe,learn, investigate, analyse, evaluate or solve problems.
Possible Matching Careers
Computer science
Economist
Engineer
Mathematics
Pharmacy
Physician /Medical school
Professor
Psychologist
Psychiatrist
Science
Artistic
People who have artistic, innovating or intuitional abilities and like to work in unstructured situations using their imagination and creativity.
Possible Matching Careers
Artist
Author /Poet
Dance therapy
Expressive therapy
Graphic designer
Library and information science [1]
Music therapy
Social
People who like to work with people to enlighten, inform, help, train, or cure them, or are skilled with words.
Possible Matching Careers
Nurse
Physician
Professor
Psychologist
Psychiatrist
Social Work
Teacher
Trainer
Enterprising
People who like to work with people, influencing, persuading, performing, leading or managing for organisational goals or economic gain.
Possible Matching Careers
Public relations
Public policy
Real Estate
Retail
Stockbroker
Journalism
Law /Politics
Marketing /Advertising
Management
Conventional
People who like to work with data, have clerical or numerical ability, carry out tasks in detail or follow through on others' instructions
Possible Matching Careers
Accountant
Actuary
Administration
Academic administration
Banking /Investment bank
Business /MBA
Clerk
Computer science
Copy Editing
