Understanding your interests can be very valuable when deciding which jobs or careers may be most suitable for you. The Career Interests Inventory (CII) will provide a starting point for you to explore your career interests and your feedback will help you think more about:

• jobs and activities you are interested in;
• what skills and abilities you see yourself as having;
• what work styles are important to you when choosing a job.

The Career Interests Inventory looks at six general ‘themes’ called Holland’s career themes, which correspond to work environments and job characteristics.  The six themes are:

• Realistic
• Artistic
• Investigative
• Social
• Enterprising
• Conventional.

Many different occupations and jobs exist within each theme and the themes can be arranged in a hexagon model, as shown below. Themes adjacent to each other on the hexagon have more in common with each other than those opposite. For example, Realistic occupations have more in common with Conventional and Investigative occupations than they do with Social, Enterprising and Artistic occupations. Click on any of the labels for more information (a pop-up window will appear).  

Using your results

Knowing more about your career interests is a starting point for finding out more about jobs that you may be interested in. 

Use the ‘Career Interests’ section of your report to:

• identify families of jobs that appeal to you;
• find out more about the specific jobs you are interested in by using the internet or a careers library.

Use the ‘Skills and Abilities’ section of your report to:

• consider how your views of your skills and abilities relate to your interests – do they match your interests or are they different?;
• people are usually happier in jobs that match both their interests and skills and abilities, so you may need to think about how you find a balance between the two.  Alternatively, you may want to plan for developing the skills and abilities you need for a particular area of work.

Use the ‘Work Styles’ section of your report to:

• consider how your preferred work styles relate to your interests and skills and abilities;
• refine you job search by thinking about how your preferred way of working relates to the type of organisation you may be interested in working for and the specific requirements of any jobs you apply for.