Personality

How does personality predict a person’s career choice?

Personality can have an effect on the many different choices we make in life, one of these being our desired career choice. Many people try to choose a career that suits their personality, and it could be said that people who closely correlate the two have more enjoyment and success in the workplace, for example a creative person will enjoy a job in which they are provided with an opportunity to express themselves.

One of the fundamental researchers in career choice and personality is Holland (1959, 1966), who �views individuals as selecting vocational environments that are consistent with their major personality orientations’ (Leonard, Walsh, and Osipow, 1973). His key reasoning behind carrying out the research was to understand vocational choice; the underlying basis of his theory is that human behaviour plays a role in the function of a relationship between individuals and their environment (e.g. educational and work settings). Holland proposed the Vocational Preference Inventory (VIP) and his reasoning for this was that choosing an occupation is a way to express one’s self, which reflects an individuals motivation, knowledge and personality. One might say that an occupation represents a way of life however it has much more meaning behind it, certain occupations require certain skills; skills that are learnt through life experience. Therefore to work as a nurse you need not only have skills in nursing but also have a certain status, community role within society etc. So to choose an occupation for yourself represents information about the persons motivation, their knowledge of the occupation (nursing), and an insight to themselves and their abilities to carry out that occupation efficiently and effectively. Holland’s theory focuses on 6 main dimensions or General Occupational Themes (GOT) they are; realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising and conventional, each representing a personality trait and a work environment.

There has been much research into why there is so few women in certain occupations, on of these is the small number of women in Information Technology (IT). Research carried out on IT professionals and non-professionals found that a gender gap in IT occupations can be explained by differences in the distribution of vocational interests between men and women (Rosenbloom, Ash, Dupont, Coder, 2007). Most of the difference in entry into IT is that on average, men and women’s importance of different aspects of work vary; therefore each gender makes different career choices. However it is apparent that occupational personality characteristics are certainly strongly linked with career choice (Rosenbloom, Ash, Dupont, Coder, 2007).

In conclusion there are many different