Guides

What the terms actually mean, what the instruments can and cannot tell you, and what the U.S. occupation data shows — with the numbers rather than around them.

• What is a Holland code?

  Three letters that summarise the kinds of work you are drawn to — and the model behind them, which is the one most careers services in the English-speaking world quietly run on.

• What is an interest inventory?

  A questionnaire that measures what kind of work appeals to you. Not what you are good at — and the difference between those two is where most career-test confusion lives.

• Career tests for students

  Free, no sign-up, and about eight minutes — plus the part nobody tells you, which is how to read the result when you are seventeen.

• What career is right for me now?

  A free interest test for adults considering a change — and what the occupation data says about the two questions that usually come with it: the degree, and the age.