Holland's SDS Career Assessment: Theory and Application

Introduction

Finding a career path that is both financially rewarding and personally satisfying can be a trying process. While many workers find positions that are either financially rewarding or personally satisfying, the two goals are ultimately and subtly linked. When a person settles for a career path that is financially rewarding but exists outside the scope of their personal values or talents, that career can produce feelings of unhappiness and lead to what is sometimes called the 40-40-40 syndrome — a person works forty hours per week, for roughly forty years, and tops out at a $40,000 per year salary.

On the other hand, a person who finds a career they love can spend a lifetime building personal accomplishments, which will quite often lead to expanded opportunity and expanded earning potential. Finding the ideal path for the career-minded individual is a function of matching a person's desires and innate talents with the responsibilities of a particular career. Making these matches possible is the purpose of Dr. John Holland's Self-Directed Search Assessment (SDS).

Purpose and Description of the SDS Inventory

The student profiled in this paper is a 25-year-old, single, career-minded woman who is moving toward a serious career path. She holds a bachelor's degree in psychology, and her early career positions have included social worker and school outreach counselor. She has set a goal of earning a master's degree in counseling. Like every individual, she possesses a set of basic personality traits that are, in a sense, "hard-wired" into her character. These traits are supplemented by the skills a person learns during childhood and through their educational path. Together, these traits and skills shape a person into someone who is a "good fit" for many positions — and in other positions, they may feel like a square peg forced into a round hole.

The SDS has been used by over 22 million people worldwide and has been translated into 25 different languages (Self-directed-search.com, 2003). The SDS is built upon a theory of careers that forms the basis for most career inventories used today. The theory holds that most people can be loosely categorized into six types: Realistic (R), Investigative (I), Artistic (A), Social (S), Enterprising (E), and Conventional (C). Occupations and work environments can also be classified by the same six categories. Once a person completes the SDS, a report is generated that takes the individual's summary code and searches lists of 1,309 occupations, over 750 fields of study, and over 700 leisure activities — all to increase awareness of potentially satisfying career options (Readyminds.com, 2003).

People who choose careers that match their own personality types are most likely to be both satisfied and successful. With more than 500 publications generated since his original theoretical explanation in the 1959 publication of A Theory of Vocational Choice, Holland's theory stands as the most influential of the extant theories (Isaacson & Brown, 1999, p. 26). Having successfully combined the science and practice of career development, Holland authored several books in support of his SDS evaluation, including Self-Directed Search for Career Planning (Holland, 1970), Manual for the Vocational Preference Inventory (Holland, 1967), the Vocational Exploration and Insight Kit (Holland et al., 1980), My Vocational Situation: An Experimental Diagnostic Form (Holland, 1980), and the Dictionary of Holland Occupational Codes (Gottfredson, Holland, & Ogawa, 1982).

Holland's Six Personality Types and the Hexagon Model

The six personality types identified by Holland are arranged in a hexagonal diagram that illustrates the relationships among them. Realistic and Investigative types tend to have similar interests, while Realistic and Social types tend to be most different from one another. Conventional types are most closely related to Enterprising and Realistic types, somewhat less similar to Social and Investigative types, and tend to be most different from Artistic types (Reardon, 2001). This hexagonal model, often called the RIASEC model, allows career counselors to quickly identify which career environments are likely to produce the greatest satisfaction for an individual based on the proximity of their personality type to a given occupation type.

The person searching for their "good fit" in a career will often engage the help of a counselor, whose role in facilitating career development remains dynamic. The counselor's role involves helping clients expand their lifestyle options while maximizing the person's strengths for the best career match. Since the workplace is constantly changing, both the job seeker and the career counselor are continually presented with new opportunities. In response, most practitioners follow common theoretical assumptions as their foundation, with Holland's model being among the most widely applied.

Conclusion and Client Evaluation

According to the client's SDS results, her summary code is SCE, with related scores of S=38, C=24, and E=21. By drawing a line through the corners of the hexagon and creating an axis that separates her strongest attributes, she will be happiest and most suited for a career that works with people and data. Because her highest score falls in the Social category, she is most comfortable in a career that places high value on accuracy, honesty, and persistence, and she demonstrates a high attention to detail. This profile often correlates with enjoyment of working with people, numbers, and structured tasks; however, the client's other high scores in the Social and Enterprising sectors indicate that she wants to work directly with people and places great importance on treating others with fairness, understanding, and empathy.