Classification of Occupations

The CK uniquely combines two major systems for classifying occupations: (a) the interest-based system of Holland and (b) the interest and worker trait-based system created by the U.S. Employment Security System (USEC) for the Guide for Occupational Exploration (U.S. Department of Labor, 1979). The Holland system is based on his six personality types; the USEC system is based on 12 interests and 66 work trait groups. Jones (1980) combined these two systems, integrating the best features of both. This combined system was first used with Occ-U-Sort (Jones, 1981), a card sort system, and later with the CK. Subsequent editions of the GOE have used this integration by Jones (1980) when describing how the GOE and Holland systems are related.

As a practical matter, the combined system of the CK allows users to relate their Holland personality type to groups of occupations where the traits of the workers are similar with respect to interests, aptitudes, temperament, skills, and abilities. For example, a person having a high score for the Artistic type is led to groups of occupations with titles like "Literary Arts" and "Visual Arts". Under "Visual Arts" he or she will find occupations like architect, art teacher, graphic designer, painter, and photographer. This makes more sense than other systems which, for example, use letters and rely solely on interests or personality types.