Choosing the Right Major Based on Your Personality

The major that you choose will be the very beginning of your career decisions. Your major will draw a circle within which your professional life will fall.

This decision should not be taken lightly, but there are ways to ensure that you choose a major that will make you happy in the long run.

How so?

If you choose a major based on your personality, not only will you increase your odds of success, but you’ll also increase your odds of being happy with the life you’ve created.

The key is to get to know the way your mind works and find a major that allows your mind to do what it loves.

This method of following a career based on your personality is based on the research of one man, John Holland.

He created the Holland Code , which you can use to find out what personality group you belong to and which major would be a good fit for you.

Here are his six personality groups and the majors that go along with them.

1. Realistic

This personality group is more introverted and likes to work with their hands. They enjoy learning with things, not people. Realistic people are good with machines, plants, and animals.

Science majors that involve practical and real-life applications are good choices for this personality group. Other career choices that would suit this group are electricians, machinists, and other hands-on mechanical jobs.

2. Investigative

This group of people enjoys researching complex scientific and mathematical issues. They love the challenge of solving problems and finding solutions.

This personality type is smart, very precise in their work, and can’t investigate a topic until they know it through and through.

Without a doubt, engineering of any kind would fit this group well.

3. Artistic

The artistic personality is obviously going to excel in any major in the arts. They enjoy being creative, expressing themselves through different mediums and don’t do well in restrictive environments.

This group would include artists, musicians, dancers, sculptors, and even digital artists.

4. Social

This personality type thrives when they interact with people. Their best majors involve helping people such as nursing, teaching, or counseling.

They do not do well with tools, machines, and more mathematical and scientific thinking.

These people are usually very friendly and understanding. They not only enjoy helping individuals, but want to benefit society as a whole.

5. Enterprising

Those with an enterprising personality are usually good business people. They are persuasive, energetic, and ambitious. They would do well in politics and would avoid anything that took a lot of research or analytical thinking,

This group of people are good leaders, entrepreneurs , and salesmen. They can not only sell products, but also ideas. Even though they are different than social personalities, they still enjoy people and do well in social scenes.

6. Conventional

Those that fit this personality strive for order. They enjoy math because of the logical order of rules that numbers follow. They also enjoy systems and record keeping.

Conventional personalities would make excellent accountants and financial analysts. They would also be great at statistics and can dabble in business as well.

Knowing these six personality types can help you understand the major groups but you also must spend some time in self reflection to find out where you fit in.

Very few people perfectly match one personality. Most are a mixture of a few with emphasis on one. It’s important that you research the different careers and majors that fall into each category.

You can then make a good decision about what majors would be a good match for your natural skills and the types of activities you would enjoy.

Conclusion

These personality groups aren’t set in stone but they are certainly a good starting point to help you decide on your major, especially if you have no clue what you want to pursue.

It’s always good to learn new things about yourself and try to set and achieve a happy and stable future. Learning about your personality and majors that match it is one way to ensure that.