HOLLANDS THEORY OF VOCATIONAL

CHOICE
This theory of vocational choice was introduced by John L. Holland in 1959. This
theory is greatly influenced by the trait and factor theory. Due to simplicity of
trait and factor theory, Holland introduced the model of six personality types,
also known as Hollands Career Typology. These six personality types are
realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising and conventional (see Figure
2.2).

Figure 2.2: Hollands six personality types

According to Holland (1959), an individuals personality is the primary factor in

vocational choice and the interest profile reflects his or her personality. He also
asserts that individuals should develop stereotypical views on occupations (for
example, we see a bookkeeper as punctual, relatively introvert and not sociable).
These views shape our opinion on occupations and play a key role in
occupational choice. As a result, a person chooses an occupation that is
congruent with ones personality and that will let them exercise their attitudes
and values. A good fit leads to success and job satisfaction.

The four basic assumptions of Hollands (1997) theory are as follows:

(a) In our culture, most people can be categorised as one of the six types:
realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising and conventional;
(b) There are six kinds of environment: realistic, investigative, artistic, social,
enterprising and conventional;
(c) People will search for an environment which will allow them to exercise
their skills and abilities, express their attitudes and values and take on
agreeable problems and roles; and
(d) A persons behaviour is determined by an interaction between his
personality and the characteristics of his environment.
These four basic assumptions will be further elaborated in the following
subtopics.
2.3.1 Hollands Career Typology
According to Holland, by late adolescence, most individuals can be categorised
in six pure personality types: Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social,
Enterprising, and Conventional. These personality types are known by the
acronym RIASEC. Holland suggested that personality is the result of complex
interaction between a variety of cultural and personal forces including peers,
biological heredity, parents, social class, culture and the physical environment
(Holland, 1997). However, Holland did not focus on explaining the development
of personality but rather focus on the description of the personality types. Each
personality type carries with it a unique constellation of preferred activities, self beliefs, activities,
abilities and values.
In relation to the six subtypes, Holland asserts that a person may not only
represent a single type of personality but several subtypes. Therefore, Holland
recommended using the rank ordering of all six subtypes to describe an
individual. In practice, counsellors will use three point code, which is also
known as the Holland code to categorise clients. For example, if a client scores
the highest on Social types, followed by Artistic and Investigative types in
descending order, the client will have three point Holland code of SAI. This
Holland code will be the basis of reference for the counsellor to understand the
clients vocational traits.
Holland also proposes that there are six work environments that correspond to
the pure personality type as described above (RIASEC). Each type of
environment provides unique surroundings and opportunities for the
individuals to fully express their personality. In an attempt to fulfil their personal
needs and maximise job satisfaction, individuals select work environments that
are congruent with their personality type. Environment type can be determined
by looking at the personalities of people working in it. According to Holland
(1997), where people congregate, they create environment that reflects the type
they most resemble.

Characteristics of Hollands RIASEC Personality and Environment Types

Personality Descriptions of Characteristics, Environment and Sample Careers
Realistic
(R)
Characteristics: Realistic people deal with the environment in an
objective, concrete and physically manipulative manner. They
avoid tasks that need intellectual, artistic or social abilities (for
example, they are poor leaders). They are materialistic, masculine,
unsociable and emotionally stable.
Environment: Physical, technical, agricultural and skilled-trade
environment with activities involving motor skills, working with
machines, nature and physical activity.
Sample careers: Athlete, engineer, policeman, mechanic, diver and
forest ranger.
Investigative
(I)
Characteristics: Investigative individuals deal with the
environment by using intelligence, manipulating ideas, words, and
symbols. They avoid social situations, are unsociable, masculine,
persistent and introverted. They prefer scientific, theoretical tasks
(for example, reading, algebra, collecting) and creative activities
such as sculpting, painting and music.
 Environment: Academic and scientific environment.
Sample careers: Biologist, researcher, sculptor, astronomer,
mathematician or chemist.
Artistic
(A)
Characteristics: Artistic people cope with the environment by the
use of art forms and products. They rely on subjective impressions,
are unsociable, feminine, submissive, sensitive, impulsive and
introspective. They prefer musical, artistic, dramatic jobs and
dislike masculine activities and roles with physical manipulation.
Environment: Free, unstructured and creative environment.
Sample careers: Artist, musician, actor and photographer.
Social
(S)
Characteristics: Social people prefer handling and dealing with
others. They see themselves as sociable, nurturing, cheerful,
responsible, achiever and self-accepting. They prefer social
interaction and have high concern for human welfare.
Environment: Educational, therapeutic and religious environments.
Sample careers: Nurse, teacher, counsellor or social worker.

Enterprising
(E)
Characteristics: Enterprising people are persuasive, verbally
expressive, adventurous, dominant, impulsive, extroverted,
confident, aggressive and exhibitionists. They prefer sales and
managerial jobs where they can lead and dominate others. They
need recognition and power.
Environment: Business, leadership and profit making environment.
Sample careers: Lawyer, businessman or politician.
Conventional
(C)
Characteristics: Conventional people strive for social approval.
They create a good impression by being neat, sociable, correct and
unoriginal. They put high value on economic matters and see
themselves as masculine, dominant, rigid and stable. They have
more mathematical than verbal skills.
Environment: Clerical, well defined and stable business or
organisational environment.
Sample careers: Clerks, banker, editor, librarian or accountant.

In career counselling, counsellors need to help the individual to select the work
environment that fits best according to his or her personality type. Again the
rank ordering method on the environment into three point Holland code is
necessary to assist with the final step of matching the personality and the
environment. The three point Holland code is widely used to categorise
hundreds of occupations in the Dictionary of Holland Occupational Codes by
Gottfredson and Holland (1996) and other sources of occupational information
such as the O*NET database by the US Department of Labour.

2.3.2 Key Constructs of Hollands Theory

Holland proposed a hexagonal model to provide a visual representation of the
inner relationship of personality styles and occupational environment coefficients
of correlation (Zunker, 2006) as presented in Figure 2.3. The adjacent
personalities on the hexagon (for example, artistic and social) are most alike,
whereas the opposites (for example, enterprising and investigative) are most
unalike.

Hollands hexagonal model introduces four main constructs to assist with the
predictions of career choices, satisfaction and performance of individuals. The
four constructs are congruence, differentiation, consistency and identity. Let us
look into the following descriptions of the four main constructs:
(a) Congruence
According to Holland (1997), an individual personality is better suited to
some environments than others. People tend to seek an environment which
fits their personality. Similarly, the environment should also seek good
fitting workers through recruitment. Congruence refers to the degree of fit
between an individual and his or her current projected environment with
respect to the RIASEC types (Brown & Lent, 2013).
For example, a client with SEC personality working in a SEC environment
has very high level of congruence. On the other hand, if the same person
works in SER environment, he will have a slightly lower degree of
congruence, and even lower congruence if he works in RIE environment.
Figure 2.4 illustrates the examples of high and low congruencies.
Holland (1997) predicted that:
(i) People will aspire to choose educational and a work environment that
are congruent with their personalities.
(ii) When people are in an environment that is highly congruent with
their personalities, they will be more satisfied and successful, and they
will remain in these environments for a longer time, resulting in
greater stability (which means fewer job changes) over their life span
(Brown & Lent, 2013).
(b) Differentiation
According to Holland (1997), differentiation means the degree to which a
person or environment is clearly defined with respect to the RIASEC types.
Individuals with high differentiation show strong resemblance to one
particular RIASEC types and low resemblance to other types. Meanwhile,
individuals with low degree of differentiation show similar degree of
resemblance to many RIASEC types.
Some people show resemblance to one, two or three dominant types while
others may be undifferentiated and have competencies and interests across
all six types. Holland (1997) determines differentiation by subtracting the
lowest score of any type from the highest score of any type on the SDS and
VPI. A high result indicates a differentiated profile, and low results indicate
an undifferentiated profile (Sharf, 2006). Figure 2.5 illustrates the examples
of high and low differentiated profile.

Holland (1997) predicted that:

(i) Personality differentiation is positively associated with ease of career
decision-making. Therefore individuals with highly undifferentiated
personalities may struggle to a greater degree with making the right
career choices.
(ii) The positive relationship between congruence and work satisfaction,
success and stability will be stronger when differentiating (either
personality, environment or both) is greater (Nauta as cited in Brown
& Lent, 2013).
(c) Consistency
Consistency refers to the similarity or dissimilarity of types, whereby
certain types have more in common with some other types than others
(Sharf, 2006). To determine the consistency of personality types, reference
should be made to the hexagon. The closer the personality types on the
hexagon, the more consistent the individual will be. For example, high
consistency is reflected when a person expresses a preference for adjoining
codes such as ESA (enterprising, social and artistic personality type) or RIE
(realistic, investigative and enterprising personality type).

Meanwhile, less consistency is reflected by the code such as CAS

(conventional, artistic and social personality type) or RAE (realistic, artistic
and enterprising personality type). Inconsistent types are those that are
located opposite to each other (for example, realistic and social) because
they do not share the same interest or personality characteristics. The more
consistent a person is, the clearer his goals and self-perception are.
Meanwhile, inconsistent individuals find it harder to make career decisions.
(d) Identity
Identity refers to the clarity and stability of a persons current and future
goal (Sharf, 2006). The more a person is aware about his potential, the better
his career identity. This can measured using the Identity Scale of My
Vocational Situation (Holland, Daiger & Power, 1980). In terms of
environment, identity refers to the degree to which a workplace has clarity,
stability and integration of goals, tasks and rewards (Zunker, 2006).
Holland (1997) thought that an identity provides more direct measure of
how well a person defines himself or herself. A person with clear identity is
characterised by possessing stability in terms of goals, articulate career
plans, job search strategies, adequate knowledge about self and world of
work. On the other hand, a person with low identity may be unstable in
terms of career goals, vague career plans, few or no job strategies and the
lack the knowledge of self and world of work. Reaching a clear identity is
an important goal in Hollands career counselling process. Achievement of
identity may occur when the goal of congruence has been achieved (Sharf,
2006).
IMPLICATIONS OF HOLLANDS THEORY
TOWARDS CAREER GUIDANCE AND
COUNSELLING
Hollands theory has initiated hundreds of research, more than any other career
development theory. Holland developed several well-known inventories to be
used as assessment methods in the career counselling process.
Among the inventories are as follows:
(a) Self-Directed Search (SDS) (Form R) (Holland, Fritzsche & Powell, 1994);
(b) The Vocational Preference Inventory (VPI) (Holland, 1985);
(c) My Vocational Situation (MYS) (Holland, Daiger & Power, 1980); (d) Vocational Identity Scale
(VIS) (Holland, Johnston & Asama, 1993); and
(e) Career Attitudes and Strategies Inventory (CAS) (Gottfredson & Holland,
1994).
The SDS and VPI have been widely used in research to verify and validate
Hollands theory. In addition to that, these instruments have helped clients all
over the world to identify their career personalities. SDS has been translated in
many languages including Spanish, Canadian and Chinese. Counsellors are
being trained to administer and interpret the inventories to assist clients in career
counselling process.
Hollands theory made a major contribution to the practice of career counselling.
It provides a clearer framework of personalities, environment types and
additionally enhances the trait and factor model of career decision-making. The
introduction of RIASEC personality and environment types makes it easier for
counsellors to explore personalities of their clients and identify the matching
work environment accordingly. The ease of understanding the theoretical
constructs have encouraged counsellors to use the framework to help clients in
making or remaking educational and career choices, promoting career or work
satisfaction and performance, preparing to implement career choices and
promoting optimum career development among the youngsters (Nauta as cited
in Brown & Lent, 2013).
Hollands theory has provided the basis for development of environmental
classification resources such as Dictionary of Holland Occupational Codes
(DHOC), the Educational Opportunities Finder and the O*NET database.
Counsellors can use these resources to assist clients in making effective career
selection after administering the Holland based assessments. Clients feel more
comfortable and open in the counselling session since it is conducted with ease,
objectivity and clarity. Due to this reason, Hollands theory of vocational choice
has become one of the most established and commonly used approaches in
career counselling.
The classification of personality types has some implication on the understanding
of gender based personalities and working environment. Holland (1997) has
shown that:
(a) Men are more likely to score high on the Realistic, Investigative and
Enterprising scales.
(b) Whereas women may score higher on the Social, Artistic and Conventional
scales.
According to Holland (1997), the abovementioned types of personality are the
reflection of society and cultural expectations, thus being subjected to gender
stereotyping. However, the notion of gender based careers may no longer seem
significant in the present situation whereby men and women are involved in all
kinds of careers regardless of the types.