JJ Oden

Self-Directed Search

Objective

My Holland 3-letter code is SIR. According to the Occupational Code Index, I prefer

social, investigative, and realistic occupations and activities. For the social occupations, I strive

to find ways to work with others in helpful ways. This makes sense because nearly all of my

occupational daydreams have involved working with people in order to help them. The

investigative occupations look to use knowledge to solve problems that people are having

through analysis or logic. This also makes sense from my experience, as I generally enjoy

analyzing things, I think extremely logically, and many of my desired occupations have involved

investigative work such as this. Lastly, the realistic occupations involve the use of hands-on

activities and the use of machines or tools. While this does not really fit with many of my dream

professions, it makes sense that it has a high score because I have spent a decade working on a

farm and have acquired a substantial amount of realistic experience in that time.

There are many areas where I can see my Holland code applying to my personality. From

my social type, I am helpful, patient, understanding, and responsible. From my investigative

type, I am analytical, rational, critical, and precise. When it comes to my realistic type, I am

practical, genuine, honest, and thrifty. When we went over some of these personality traits in

class, it was not a shock to me that my code came back the way it did. However, I can see how

the conventional type, which was another one of my higher scores, fits well with who I am, even

though it was not technically part of my code, since this type of individual is practical, obedient,

and conscientious like me.

 From a consistency standpoint, the majority of the professions I have dreamed of being

have involved social skills, enterprising skills, and investigative skills. The last three dream

professions I have had have all had social skills as the number one skill, and that also happens to

be my first letter as well. This means that many of the professions I have been interested in are at

least moderately congruent. Differentiation here is fairly large, as my S score was a 49, while my

I score was a 33 and the rest were in the range of 22 to 25. This means there was high

differentiation between my top two and the rest, where there was little differentiation. As far as

consistency goes, my code is moderately consistent. The first two letters are somewhat consistent

with one another, and the last two are highly consistent with one another, but the last first and

last are not consistent. For this reason, I would say that this code is moderately consistent.

Professions that would be a good fit for me according to this workbook are an Education

Evaluator (SIR), a Respiratory Therapist (SIR), a Farmer/Rancher (RSI) and a paleontologist

(ISR).

Subjective

The first thing that I would like to point out regarding my results is that it is clear that I

care deeply for the social aspect of a career. I have always valued relationships above many other

things in life, and this test has shown that clearly, with a score of 49 in social occupations while

the next highest score was a 33 in investigative occupations. This knowledge is something that

makes me feel good about myself, since it reinforces with concrete backing what I have always

thought to be true but never explicitly tested.

Next, I think it is interesting to find out just how well-rounded I am as a person. When

removing my top score of 49 from the list, I score a 33 in investigative occupations, a 25 in

realistic occupations, 23s in enterprising and conventional occupations, and a 22 in artistic

occupations. With five of my scores within 11 points of each other, and four of those scores with

a margin of three points, it is clear to me from a factual standpoint that I am well-rounded. This

is something that I have always strived to be, and it is nice to see that my scores can demonstrate

that.

Lastly, it is worth mentioning that nearly the entirety of my realistic score of 25 comes

from my 10 years working on a farm, rather than from a desire to have a realistic occupation.

After 10 years doing manual labor, and having that manual labor require skills in many areas, I

have acquired a vast array of realistic skills. This means that I understand how to do a lot of the

work that would be required of a realistic profession, but I do not particularly enjoy that kind of

profession. With realistic occupations being such a major part of my 23 years of life, it is both

interesting and frustrating to see my R-score that high.

Personally, I do not feel that this code is as indicative of my personality or my interests as

it could be. This is due, in large part, to the fact that so many of my scores were so close to each

other and that I have a large amount of experience with realistic occupations. While I am certain

that I am both a social and investigative person when it comes to jobs, I feel that I am more

conventional or enterprising than realistic. I strongly dislike realistic jobs. They do not bring me

joy and would not be something that would be a good fit for me or my personality. Something in

an office setting though? That would be a much better fit. With my scores as close as they are, it

would even be reasonable to argue that I could be an SIE, SIC or even an SIA. Following the

logic of the Self-Directed Search, I would most likely be an SIEC, which would lend itself

greatly to school counseling’s SCE. It would also make more sense for the SAE of clinical

counseling, SEI of a state attorney, or ISE of a family practitioner; all of which are occupations I

have heavily considered pursuing at one point in my adult life. While this exercise has its flaws, I
feel it has its merits too, and would be useful to use with students one day to at least get them

thinking about what they would like to do with their lives.