Holland's RIASEC Model
My Career Path is built on Holland's theory of vocational choice, which identifies six personality types that correspond to work environments: Realistic (R), Investigative (I), Artistic (A), Social (S), Enterprising (E), and Conventional (C). People thrive in careers that match their dominant types.
John Holland first published his theory in 1959 and refined it over decades (Holland, 1997). The model underpins the O*NET career database used by the U.S. Department of Labor and career centers worldwide. Our assessment maps your interests to these six dimensions to recommend careers where you're most likely to succeed and find satisfaction.
Holland, J. L. (1959). A theory of vocational choice. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 6(1), 35–45. Holland, J. L. (1997). Making vocational choices (3rd ed.). Psychological Assessment Resources.
Big Five Personality Model (OCEAN)
The Big Five is a separate, widely used personality model. This career test does not score it; we cover it in our articles and on the My Path platform. The five dimensions are Openness (curiosity, creativity), Conscientiousness (organization, diligence), Extraversion (sociability, assertiveness), Agreeableness (cooperation, empathy), and Neuroticism (emotional stability).
Costa and McCrae's work (1992) established the NEO-PI-R, one of the best-known Big Five inventories. Research links the dimensions to career outcomes, but that research is about the framework, not about our test.
Costa, P. T., & McCrae, R. R. (1992). Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) and NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) professional manual. Psychological Assessment Resources.
How Our Scoring Works
My Career Path asks you 5 sections of questions — interests, work style, scenarios, skills and visual choices — using picture cards, either-or choices and ratings.
Your answers are scored on your device with fixed rules: each answer adds points to one or more of the six RIASEC types, so the same answers always give the same scores.
The totals form your RIASEC profile. We then match you to careers by comparing your top types with the RIASEC codes of each career.
The questions, the scoring formula, who your scores are compared with and the measured reliability of each interest scale are on the methodology page.
Our Career Database
Our database includes 500+ careers with detailed information: job descriptions, typical tasks, required skills, and education pathways. Salary data comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), and we include growth projections so you can see which fields are expanding.
Each career is tagged with RIASEC codes and personality-relevant attributes, allowing us to rank matches by how well they align with your unique profile.
Who Builds My Career Path
My Career Path is built and run by Peter Janicki (MSc Medical Psychology, Interregional Academy of Personnel Management (MAUP), 2021), who created the platform and its tests. The tests are based on published frameworks such as Holland's RIASEC model. We do not claim external validation.