How often do you include your Holland Types in career conversations?

John Holland came up with his theory of Person-Environment fit over many years. During World War II, Holland was involved with classifying military recruits and was able to observe that classifying recruits was in line with his developing theory. When interviewing them he could get a sense of their Holland type.

Holland’s theory not only looks at an individual’s type, but also the type of organizations, and the importance of finding organizations to work in line with the individuals type. Hence, person-environment fit.

If you have not found your Holland type, or if you want a refresher, there are a couple of ways to come up with your top three types. 

The free O*Net Interest Profiler

https://www.mynextmove.org/explore/ip

When you complete the Interest Profiler, which takes about ten minutes, you will generate a report with your Holland types. You can then dig deeper into each of the 6 RIASEC themes.  The RAISIC themes are:

• R: Realistic
• I: Investigative
• A: Artistic
• S: Social
• E: Enterprising
• C: Conventional

Here’s Richard Nelson Bolles description of each Holland type:

• R  Realistic:  People who have athletic or mechanical ability, prefer to work with objects, machines, tools, plants or animals, or to be outdoors. 
• I  Investigative: People who like to observe, learn, investigate, analyze, evaluate, or solve problems.
• A  Artistic: People who have artistic, innovative, or intuitional abilities, and like to work in unstructured situations, using their imagination or creativity.
• S  Social: People who like to work with people to inform, enlighten, help, train, develop, or cure them, or are skilled with words.
• E  Enterprising: People who like to work with people, influencing, persuading or performing or leading or managing for organizational goals or for economic gain. 
• C  Conventional: People who like to work with data, have clerical or numerical abilities, accruing things out in detail, or following through on others’ instructions. 

Above are the descriptions of the RIASEC themes that Richard Nelson Bolles created from his What Color is your Parachute yearly editions. This is from my copy of the 2014 edition. His first addition to Parachute was 1970. Richard passed in 2017, leaving an incredible legacy. I was able to see him present and meet him at a National Career Development Conference. 

Here’s how Bolles framed the Party Exercise to find your Holland types. 

Imagine you have been invited to a party with each of the Holland Types represented in their individual group. Your job is to observe the groups and then go to and interact with the group that you would most enjoy being with for the longest time.  After you have gained perspective on this group, do the same with two more groups that resonate with you. These three groups become your Holland type.

The U.S. Department Of Labor’s O*Net utilizes the Holland type in their incredibly thorough and detailed occupational descriptions. www.onetonline.org Look under their Interest category.

Holland Types are one part of the career development process, and an important one, along with aptitudes, skills, strengths, personality and values and other distrint personal elements.

So, what’s your Holland Type and how do you like to use it in your work?

Let me know.