The framework
Holland codes, and the six interest areas.
Careers guidance matches people to work using six broad interest areas and the three-letter code they produce. Here is what each area means and why your second and third letters matter more than your first.
What it measures
The dimensions underneath.
Interests are organised into six broad areas, a structure first described by John Holland and now the basis of most careers guidance. The six sit in a circle rather than a list: adjacent areas overlap, opposite ones rarely go together. Your top three areas, read as a three-letter code, are what careers services actually match against occupations.
Realistic
Building, fixing, and working with tools, machines and the physical world.
Investigative
Analysing, researching and working out how something actually works.
Artistic
Creating, designing and working without a fixed procedure.
Social
Teaching, helping and developing other people.
Enterprising
Persuading, leading and taking commercial risk.
Conventional
Organising, ordering and working to a clear standard.
The types
6 results, two dimensions.
Realistic
You want the work to produce something real.
Investigative
You want to work out how something actually works.
Artistic
You want room to do it your own way.
Social
You want the work to leave a person better off.
Enterprising
You want the outcome to depend on you convincing someone.
Conventional
You want the system to be right.
Method
What it cannot tell you.
- This measures interest, not ability and not aptitude. Wanting to do something and being good at it are different questions, and this answers only the first.
- Interests predict satisfaction better than they predict performance. A poor interest match tends to show up as wanting to leave rather than as doing the job badly.
- Your top three areas matter more than your single top area, and two people with the same first letter can want very different work.
- Interests shift, particularly in your twenties and after a significant change of circumstance.
- The occupations this suggests are illustrations of a pattern, not recommendations about your life.
Interest Profiler (IP) by U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Crystal uses the 30-item Interest Profiler Mini and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the U.S. Department of Labor.
Which one are you?
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