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John Holland certainly merits a high rank for his research in career development. As the recipient of the American Psychological Association's 1994 Distinguished Contributions to Knowledge Award, at 76 he continues to study the implication of his work in the Brave New Work World.

Holland's major contribution was to develop the Self Directed Search (SDS). The SDS is a self-administered, self-scored, and self-interpreted vocational interest inventory which provides scores on Holland's six occupational themes: (R) Realistic, (I) Investigative, (A) Artistic, (S) Social, (E) Enterprising, and (C) Conventional. These scores are keyed to every occupational title imaginable. Because the themes apply to both the person and work characteristics, they provide a measure of fit between the person and the work environment. Holland's categories have held up well over time, as well as across cultures and genders. Indeed, the Holland categories have become a staple in the vocational counseling field, and most other vocational testing authors have incorporated the theme categories into their own products. This includes the Campbell Interest and Skill Survey, another of the NewWork 100 Best.

The purpose of the Holland system is to give counselees the tools for becoming active career explorers. One attractive aspect of the SDS is the readiness with which counselees understand and apply the categories. There is something direct and intuitive about them that makes it possible to use the concepts even without the availability of the full package of assessment materials. A great deal of research shows that a good fit between the worker's interests and his/her work environment is associated with job stability, stable career path, and achievement. On the other hand, a poor fit is associated with dissatisfaction on the job, erratic job history, and poor performance.

Many persons happen upon a good job fit by luck or good intuition. The SDS helps to increase the odds that a person will find the right fit. A result of persons using the SDS seems to be a clearer and more coherent career identity. Persons become more aware of how their interests and skills relate to their careers, are more likely to seek out jobs that fit their aspirations. The benefit of this is that a strong career identity is associated with fewer career worries, low interpersonal abuse, and high skill development. In contrast, persons with a more diffuse career identity have more job worries, poor skill development, and they are more likely to be involved with interpersonal abuse.

If you have been following the employment trends reported here and at other sites such as FUTUREWORK, you may be wondering how all these data about career development can apply in the chaotic labor market that seems to be dissolving jobs for workers falling into Holland's "Realistic" and "Conventional" categories and making stable careers even less likely in the future. In the past, Realistic and Conventional workers depended on the work environment to provide rules and traditional thinking. Increasingly, these workers are finding the work environment more ambiguous and confusing-especially so, because they have a life experience that has prepared them for a well-organized and predictable workplace.

Holland addressed this concern in his award acceptance speech at the 1995 American Psychological Association Convention. According to Dr. Holland, in a work climate where many people will be casualties of massive structural and social change, finding any job may become more important than finding a compatible job. Nonetheless, Holland believes people will still look for compatible work and compatible situations that are enjoyable because they offer opportunities to exercise their skills and interests, and allow them to express their values. Rather than depending on industry or professions to structure their lives, many will have to create their own structure by combining work they don't like with a more satisfying social and recreational life.

Holland's ideas square with research on developing strategies to deal with job burnout, which has emphasized the importance of distinguishing "career" from "job." Career development in this frame is a lifelong pursuit of opportunities to do what you love. A job "puts beans on the table." People may subsidize their career development with proceeds from their jobs, and over time, by successive approximation, get more of their time directed to satisfying activities. This strategy is not new to musicians and artists, but it may be for secretaries and accountants.

Will the arena for the restructuring Holland calls for be volunteer work in the private sector? Will taxpayers support the massive amount of currently non-paid work needed in the civil sector as Jeremy Rifkin, author of The End of Work, suggests? Will no-waste, complete recycle manufacturing open up production jobs for the "Realistics" and "Conventionals" once again? Will somebody come up with ideas we can't yet imagine?

However it turns out, you can bet that the Holland schema or some variation of it will be used to help people become clearer about who they are and how their particular patterns of interests and talents suit them to the challenges and opportunities their environment affords them.

You can get a sense of how the SDS works by taking a trip to the University of Missouri's counseling center and playing the Holland Game.

Should you take this side road, you will find yourself referred to the University of Missouri Career Center to complete the SDS. Most readers of BraveNewWorkWorld will find this inconvenient. However, in the United states, most community colleges have counseling resources that provide the SDS or some other vocational inventory using the Holland categories. Some version of the SDS is available in many other countries and translations have been made in 25 languages.

Best of luck on your career development path.

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