John Holland’s Theory of Career Choice (RIASEC) states that when choosing a career, individuals prefer careers where they are around like-minded people. People choose environments that enable them to use their abilities and skills and express their attitudes and values while solving problems through their roles (Nauta, 2010). Individual behaviours are determined by the interaction between one's personality and the environment.
Holland argues that people fall into six personality types. They include realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising and conventional. Realistic people seek practical jobs where they work with tools and equipment ( Ayriza et al., 2020). They are innovative and prefer working alone since they have perfect manual and mechanical skills. Investigative individuals prefer working with abstract ideas and concepts. They perform well in math and science and like working alone.
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Artistic people are imaginative and spontaneous and have talents in art. They like entertaining people hence cannot work alone. Social individuals promote other people’s development. They guide, counsel and teach other people. They are helpers and usually work in health professions. Enterprising people prefer selling, managing, manipulate and influencing other people (Yilmaz, 2017) . They have a high affinity for authority and power hence are usually involved in administering tasks. Conventional people prefer keeping order and organization since they are keen on details. These individuals like to work with facts, dates and figures.
Holland claims that at any one time, an individual has three dominant personality types. He developed the "self- directed search", enabling people to understand their dominant personalities (Nauta, 2010). When seeking a career, individuals should select one that fits their predominant type. For example, social individuals should choose careers in the educational and health sectors. Enterprising people should choose leadership roles, while artistic individuals should choose entertainment careers.
References
Ayriza, Y., Triyanto, A., Setiawati, F. A. & Gunawan, N. E. (2020). Exploring children’s career interests and knowledge based on Holland’s theory. International Journal of Instruction. 13(4): 643- 662.
Nauta, M. M. (2010). The development, evolution and status of Holland's theory of vocational personalities: Reflections and future directions for counselling psychology. Journal of Counseling Psychology. 57(1): 11-22.
Yilmaz, O. (2017). An evidence for validity of Holland’s theory of personality types in Turkish culture. Psychology Research. 7(5): 264- 273.