Part I _________________________________________________________________________________
One of the advantages of using personality as a key to career choice is that it is economical—
it provides a tidy summary of many aspects of people and of careers. Consider how
knotty a career decision could get if you were to break down the components of the work
environment into highly specifi c aspects and refl ect on how well you fi t them. For example,
you could focus on the skills required and your ability to meet them. Next you could analyze
the kinds of knowledge that are used on the job and decide how much you enjoy working
with those topics.! en you could consider a broad array of satisfactions, such as variety,
creativity, and independence; for each one, you would evaluate its importance to you and
then determine the potential of various career options to satisfy this need. You can see that,
when looked at under a microscope like this, career choice gets extremely complex.
But the personality-based approach allows you to view the career alternatives from 40,000
feet. When you compare yourself or a job to certain basic personality types, you encounter
much less complexity. With fewer ideas and facts to sort through and consider, the task of
deciding becomes much easier.
Describing Personality Types
You probably have heard many labels that describe people’s personalities: “He’s a
perfectionist.” “She’s a control freak.” “He’s a go-getter.” “She’s very self-confi dent.” “He’s
pushy.” “She’s wishy-washy.” “He has a short fuse.” “She’s a drama queen.”! e list could go
on and on.
! ese everyday terms for personality types have some bearing on work, but they are not
very useful for several reasons:! ey don’t diff erentiate well between jobs (for example, self-
confi dence is useful in just about every job); some of them are too specifi c (for example,
“control freak” focuses on one small aspect of how a person functions at work); and, worst of
all, most of them are too negative for people to want to apply to themselves.
Now that it’s clear what kinds of personality labels we don’t want to use, let’s consider what
would characterize a useful set of personality types:
!! ey should diff erentiate well between kinds of work.
!! ey should diff erentiate well between people.
!! ey should be broad enough that a small number of these categories can cover the
whole universe of jobs and people.
!! ey should have neutral connotations, neither negative nor positive.
The RIASEC Personality Types
During the 1950s, the career guidance researcher John L. Holland tried to fi nd a meaningful
new way to arrange the output of an interest inventory and relate it to occupations. He
devised a set of six personality types that would meet the criteria listed in the previous
