I just can’t brain this week, so I’m going to liveblog some career assessment results! First up, the Holland Code. I took the assessment at Truity. This is a measure of your interests, and they’ve broken it down by the more active words used alongside Holland’s original codes, rather than the codes themselves. So according to them, here’s the order of my interests: Creating-Persuading-Thinking-Building-Helping-Organizing. Sounds about right. Again, I’m vaguely drawing on some other sources for this, such as Wikipedia (linked above) and Career Key, but as I understand it, it’s common for career counselors to assign an individual a code according to their top 3 interests rather than the order of all six, for the purposes of career exploration. So let’s do that.
Let’s say I’m a Creating-Persuading-Thinking person. (I would say that’s pretty accurate.) Truity has a Career Search that tells you about different careers and their Holland Codes. Here are some (NOT ALL!) of the options they suggest for me:
- Actor - Yes. I have done this in an amateur capacity A LOT, and in a professional capacity once. I don’t see it being my career, as I desire either stability or control (I feel like acting gives you neither) and want to be home most nights. But definitely looking to take this up as a hobby again, once live performances are a thing.
- Computer or Information Research Scientist - Yes please. If someone wants to hire me to do LIS research without a tenure clock, let me know. I’m deeply uninterested in the tenure-track and VERY interested in research.
- Craft Artist - Endlessly giving myself permission not to monetize this; I do craft and I do love it but I think I wouldn’t like doing it for money.
- Editor - I’m available for this one and going to launch it as an actual service I provide before too long.
- High School Teacher - Been there, done that. Teens are awesome people but K-12 public schools are not institutions where I can thrive.
- Musician or Singer - Another hobby I hope to pick up again when I can. Doing it a little at home, mostly the Animaniacs theme for my kid at bedtime, but thisclose to starting impromptu concerts on my deck where I sing Disney songs and musical theater standards and hope that my neighbors don’t attack me. (I paid a lot of money to sing well, so they shouldn’t want to.)
- Producer - I actually think at this time, being some kind of producer would be pretty ideal for me. Probably a web producer or a research coordinator.
- Writer - Another thing I plan to start doing for money soon.
Overall, what I would call my professional interests - research, writing, editing - line up well with my Holland Code. As do my personal interests - performing and crafting. Okay, Holland Code. You strike me as an accurate test, though I think I know myself pretty well enough that none of this stuff is a surprise.