New Study: Matching Your Holland Personality with Your Career Boosts Earnings

Matching your Holland interests or personality to your career choice or "job congruence" leads to higher earnings, according to a new research study involving alumni from 300 U.S. colleges and universities. The study appears in the journal Labour Economics and authors are from the University of Iowa, University of Massachusetts - Dartmouth, and ACT, Inc., respectively. (Citation below)

In short:

• choosing a career that is consistent with or matches your Holland interests (RIASEC types) results in higher earnings;
• Job congruence affects earnings almost to the same order of magnitude as additional years of schooling.

To take advantage of these findings and all the research supporting Holland's Theory of Career Choice in career and education decision-making, it is very important that you use a scientifically valid measure of Holland's personality types. You need to be confident that the test has been proven to accurately measure what it says it measures.

On the Career Key website, we have tips on how to tell whether or not a test is "scientifically valid", including a download of a recent National Career Development Association Career Developments magazine article about evaluating and choosing a career test written by Career Key author Dr. Lawrence K. Jones.

Study Citation:
Neumann, G., Olitsky, N., Robbins, S. (2009) Job congruence, academic achievement, and earnings. Labour Economics, 16, 503-509.