Real People, Real Jobs: Reflecting Your Interests in the World of Work

Informational interviews with people from a broad range of jobs help readers evaluate career options.

Self-awareness is a critical element in choosing the right career. The authors, with extensive experience in career counseling at universities and in human resources at large corporations, have effectively developed a framework for self-evaluation and career planning based on a theory of career choice developed by Dr. John Holland. Holland's model identifies six types of people and links each to appropriate work environments. The authors interview carefully selected people in each of the six categories, providing the reader with valuable insight into why certain individuals find satisfaction in their work. This guide offers an important perspective for those seeking a midcareer change as well as those counseling students--career counselors, teachers, and parents. Although people could question Holland's underlying theory, this handbook for career choice is well structured and a useful planning tool. At the same time, it is recognized that many of the twists and turns in a career cannot be planned. Columnist George F. Will observed to the authors during his interview, "My career has been the result of accident and serendipity." Mary Whaley

Veteran career-development authors Montross et al. rely on a time-tested, tried-and-true theory of career choice to assist readers interested in evaluating their work-related interests. The authors base their study on the career theory of Dr. John Holland, whose work is well known in the field. Six chapters contain comprehensive descriptions of each of Holland's occupational "themes": realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional. Each description is supplemented with sources of additional information and a number of first-person accounts written by real-life working people in the manner popularized by Studs Terkel's Working (LJ 3/1/74). Real People is not the last word in career-choice literature; neither revolutionary nor groundbreaking, it provides instead a cogent and comprehensive explanation of an approach to career decision-making that has both empirical support and practical worth. It will be of considerable value to self-motivated career decision-makers and career professionals alike.?Alan J. Farber, Northern Illinois Univ., DeKalb
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.