Using Your Interests to Explore Occupations

You can use your interests to explore careers. Interests are good to use because you probably will find that occupations that meet your interests will be more satisfying and rewarding for you than occupations that don't meet your interests.

Remember, though, that interests are just some of the information that you can use to explore careers. Other useful information about yourself: your abilities, work values, experience, education, and motivation are also important in exploring careers. The more aspects of yourself that you use to explore careers, the better chance you have of finding satisfying work.

You can think of the occupational interests as your liking or preference for certain work activities. The Interest Profiler measures interests in each of six Interest Areas described below. Read over the definitions to get a better understanding of your occupational interests.

The links for each Interest Area will display a list of occupations that match that interest. You can then use the occupation links to learn more about the occupation.

Artistic Your Score : 21 People with artistic interests like work activities that deal with the artistic side of things, such as forms, designs, and patterns. They like self-expression in their work. They prefer settings where work can be done without following a clear set of rules.

Enterprising Your Score : 3 People with enterprising interests like work activities that have to do with starting up and carrying out projects, especially business ventures. They like persuading and leading people and making decisions. They like taking risks for profit. These people prefer action rather than thought.

Investigative Your Score : 1 People with investigative interests like work activities that have to do with ideas and thinking more than with physical activity. They like to search for facts and figure out problems mentally rather than to persuade or lead people.