"What do you want to be when you grow up?" The question follows students around, then comes back every time someone thinks about changing careers. To help answer it, career counselors around the world often use the same model, born in the United States more than sixty years ago: the RIASEC model. Its idea is simple, and fairly solid: people thrive better in a job that matches what interests them.
A psychologist and six families
American psychologist John Holland worked as a career counselor, including in the army, before devoting his career to this question. In 1959, he published a first version of his theory, which he then developed in a landmark book, Making Vocational Choices (1973).
In his view, most people resemble, to varying degrees, six personality types defined by their interests. Their initials give the model its name:
- Realistic: likes acting in concrete ways, handling tools, machines and materials, working outdoors or with their hands (craftsperson, mechanic, farmer…);
- Investigative: likes observing, analyzing, understanding, solving complex problems (researcher, doctor, developer…);
- Artistic: likes creating, imagining, expressing themselves, without too many rules (graphic designer, musician, writer…);
- Social: likes helping, caring, teaching, advising (teacher, nurse, youth worker…);
- Enterprising: likes persuading, leading, taking risks, launching projects (salesperson, business owner, lawyer…);
- Conventional: likes order, data, clear procedures and well-organized work (accountant, office manager, administrative assistant…).
Nobody belongs to just one type. A profile is often summed up by a three-letter code, the three dominant types in order: SAE for someone who is mainly social, then artistic, then enterprising.
The hexagon
Holland placed these six types at the corners of a hexagon, in the order R, I, A, S, E, C. Two neighboring types resemble each other: an investigative and artistic profile, curious and creative, is very consistent. Two opposite types, such as realistic and social, or artistic and conventional, are the furthest apart.
Later, other researchers, such as Dale Prediger in the early 1980s, showed that the hexagon rests on two broad dimensions: preferring to work with people or with things, and preferring to work with data or with ideas.
Jobs have a profile too
Holland's second idea is that work environments can be described using the same six types. A laboratory is mostly investigative, an advertising agency mostly artistic and enterprising, an accounting firm mostly conventional. This is called congruence when a person's profile matches that of their environment.
The model has become a standard. In the United States, the official occupational database, O*NET, assigns a RIASEC code to every occupation. And questionnaires inspired by Holland are used by career services in many countries.
What the research says
Over sixty years, the model has been studied extensively. Several findings are well established:
- the structure holds up: in many countries, answers to interest questionnaires group roughly according to the hexagon;
- interests are fairly stable: they take shape in adolescence and become markedly more stable in early adulthood;
- they predict something: a large review published in 2012 showed that a good fit between a person's interests and their job is linked to better performance and greater persistence;
- but the effect on satisfaction is modest: being in a "congruent" job helps without explaining everything. The atmosphere, the pay, colleagues and the meaning people find in their work matter at least as much.
Studies also reveal large average differences between men and women on the people-things axis, which weigh on career choices. They say something about groups and social influences, but nothing about what any one person can or should do.
Using a career test wisely
An interest questionnaire is a good starting point, as long as you keep a few limits in mind:
- interest is not ability: loving music does not make you a musician, and the reverse is true too;
- values matter: job security, social usefulness, freedom, income… two people with the same profile can make very different choices;
- nothing replaces real-world experience: an internship, a day shadowing someone or a conversation with a person who does the job often teaches more than a test;
- for an important decision, a career counselor will help you far more than a questionnaire alone.
Our quiz Which job would suit you if you started from scratch? is not a validated career test, but it shares Holland's spirit: its four worlds, creative, tech and engineering, care and teaching, leadership and entrepreneurship, partly overlap with the artistic, investigative and realistic, social and enterprising types.
In short
- John Holland's RIASEC model sorts interests into six types: realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising and conventional.
- The six types form a hexagon: neighbors resemble each other, opposites are far apart.
- Jobs can be described with the same types, and a good match helps people succeed and persist.
- An interest test opens up ideas. Values, abilities and real-world experience do the rest.