Career Interest Profiler Results and Counseling Career Path

Career Instrument Results

On the Interest Profiler, my scores were 13 for Social, 8 for Investigative, and 6 for Conventional. Because Social and Investigative are not more than five points apart they can be considered tied, but I feel Social most closely matches me. My current job zone is 2, reflecting the position I hold now. My future job zone is 4, because I will be completing my Master's degree in Counseling. The jobs I matched under Social in zone 4 were Mental Health Counselor, Mental Health and Substance Abuse Social Worker, and Substance Abuse and Behavioral Disorder Counselor.

The six Interest Areas measured by the Interest Profiler are defined as follows:

Realistic: People with Realistic interests like work activities that include practical, hands-on problems and solutions. They enjoy dealing with plants, animals, and real-world materials such as wood, tools, and machinery. They enjoy outdoor work. Often, people with Realistic interests do not like occupations that mainly involve paperwork or working closely with others.

Investigative: People with Investigative interests like work activities that have to do with ideas and thinking more than with physical activity. They like to search for facts and figure out problems mentally rather than to persuade or lead people.

Artistic: People with Artistic interests like work activities that deal with the artistic side of things, such as forms, designs, and patterns. They like self-expression in their work and prefer settings where work can be done without following a rigid set of rules.

Social: People with Social interests like work activities that assist others and promote learning and personal development. They prefer to communicate more than to work with objects, machines, or data. They like to teach, give advice, help, or otherwise be of service to people.

Enterprising: People with Enterprising interests like work activities that involve starting up and carrying out projects, especially business ventures. They like persuading and leading people and making decisions. They prefer action rather than thought.

Conventional: People with Conventional interests like work activities that follow set procedures and routines. They prefer working with data and detail more than with ideas, and they prefer work in which there are precise standards rather than work in which judgment calls must be made independently.

Work Values and Vocational Personality

For the Work Importance Locator, my work values were Achievement (24) and Relationship (22). Under Achievement in job zone 4, I found Substance Abuse and Behavioral Disorder Counselor as a matching occupation. I did not find a career under Relationship that I would like to pursue. The instrument's guidance on Achievement states: "If Achievement is your highest work value, look for jobs that let you use your best abilities. Look for work where you can see the results of your efforts. Explore jobs where you can get the feeling of accomplishment."

The job zones are defined as follows: Job Zone 1 requires little or no preparation; Job Zone 2 requires some preparation; Job Zone 3 requires medium preparation; Job Zone 4 requires considerable preparation; and Job Zone 5 requires extensive preparation.

My Holland vocational personality type is Social. The Social personality type prefers activities that involve working with others to inform, train, develop, counsel, or enlighten them. Social types have an aversion to explicit, ordered, and systematic activities involving materials, tools, or machines. These tendencies lead to the development of human relations competencies — interpersonal and educational — and to a relative deficit in mechanical and scientific ability. Typical occupations for Social types include teacher, religious worker, counselor, clinical psychologist, psychiatric caseworker, and speech therapist. Social persons are often described as convincing, idealistic, cooperative, kind, sympathetic, friendly, patient, tactful, generous, responsible, understanding, helpful, and warm.

a. A sense of accomplishment. Knowing that I am doing work I love and that I am given the opportunity to be as effective as possible gives me a genuine feeling of satisfaction. Like most people, I have a clear set of goals, and accomplishing them one at a time means I build resources to address others and to set new, more complex goals.

b. Doing things for other people. I believe contemporary society faces significant challenges because people often fail to acknowledge the importance others play in their lives. Interacting with people at a meaningful level and helping them recognize that they are dealing with a cooperative partner is likely to inspire them to become more cooperative themselves.

c. Working with supervisors who train their staff well. Effective supervisors have helped me improve my abilities rapidly, and observing them has shown me the value of training subordinates thoughtfully. Doing so can prevent a range of potential problems and improve conditions within a community far more quickly than neglecting or leaving workers to figure out their roles on their own. Good supervisors see the bigger picture and do everything in their power to improve conditions, which in turn secures their position and ensures that subordinates understand what is expected of them.