6 Job Personality and Work Environment Types

“What you are comes to you.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

What is your job personality?

If you’re looking for a job or thinking about your career, you can use Holland’s theory of career choice to help you find a better fit.

I’m a fan of lenses to help me get a better perspective or vantage point on my job personality.

John L. Holland identified 6 job personality and work environment types.

According to Holland, if you can match your job personality type and your work environment, you can improve your success and satisfaction.

Birds of a Feather, Flock Together

From a job personality standpoint, the idea is that “birds of a feather, flock together,” and that people with the same personality type tend to enjoy working with each other. For example, Artistic people enjoy working with other Artistic people.

Additionally, people with the same personality type tend to create a work environment that rewards thinking and behaving like that type. For example, an Artistic environment rewards creative expression.

The result? …

When you’re in an environment that supports your job personality, you act and feel more effective. The thing to remember is that job personality types are really just lenses on behavior. Rather than assume you’re just one job personality type, Holland suggests that you have interests with each of the 6 job personality types, in descending order, effectively creating 720 different job personality patterns.

In the book The Truth About Managing People…And Nothing But the Truth, Stephen R. Robbins writes about the six job personality and work environment types.

6 Job Personality and Work Environment Types

Here are the six job personality and work environment types based on Holland:

Realistic
Investigative
Artistic
Social
Enterprising
Conventional

Here is a summary of the six job personality and work environment types based on Holland:

Realistic (Do’er) – Prefers physical activities that require skill, strength, and coordination. Traits include genuine, stable, conforming, and practical. Example professions include architect, farmer, and engineer.
Investigative (Thinker) – Prefers working with theory and information, thinking, organizing, and understanding. Traits include: analytical, curious, and independent. Example professions include lawyer, mathematician, and professor.
Artistic (Creator) – Prefers creative, original, and unsystematic activities that allow creative expression. Traits include: imaginative, disorderly, idealistic, emotional, and impractical. Example professions include: artist, musician, and writer.
Social (Helper) – Prefers activities that involve helping, healing, or developing others. Traits include cooperative, friendly, sociable, and understanding. Example professions include counselor, doctor, and teacher.
Enterprising (Persuader) – Prefers competitive environments, leadership, influence, selling, and status. Traits include ambitious, domineering, energetic, and self-confident. Example professions include Management, Marketing, and Sales Person.
Conventional (Organizer) – Prefers precise, rule-regulated, orderly, and unambiguous activities. Traits include conforming, efficient, practical, unimaginative, and inflexible. Example professions include accountant, clerk and editor.

Match Job Personality and Jobs

People are happiest when they are put in jobs that match their job personality. Robbins writes:

“The evidence indicates that employee satisfaction is highest and turnover lowest when personality and occupation are in agreement. social individuals, for instance, should be in social jobs, conventional people in conventional jobs, and so forth.”

Holland’s Hexagon of Job Personalities

Holland created a hexagon view to show the relationships of job personality types. Job personality types closer to each other are more alike. Job personality types further away are least alike.

For example, artistic is least like conventional, but closer to investigative and social.

Compatible Work Environments for You Job Personality

The following table summarizes the compatibility of job personality type with work environments:

Personality Type	Most Compatible Work Environments	Compatible Work Environments	Least Compatible Work Environments
Realistic	Realistic	Investigative Conventional	Social
Investigative	Investigative	Realistic Artistic	Enterprising
Artistic	Artistic	Investigative Social	Conventional
Social	Social	Artistic Enterprising	Realistic
Enterprising	Enterprising	Social Conventional	Investigative
Conventional	Conventional	Enterprising Realistic	Artistic