By: Donald G. Zytowski, Ed.D.
Kuder, Inc. Director of Research

John L. Holland, Ph.D. whose name is well-known to virtually anyone with an interest in career development and counseling, died recently at the age of 88.

Holland was a graduate of the University of Omaha, and in WWII served in the U.S. Army personnel classification division, administering aptitude tests. He earned his doctorate in vocational psychology from the University of Minnesota.

As a psychologist with the Veterans Administration, he developed a personality assessment consisting entirely of occupational titles. Many revisions, generated over a space of 30 or more years while Holland was employed by ACT and Johns Hopkins University, yielded the Self-Directed Search, an inventory of vocational personality types, consisting of preferences for activities and occupations, plus competencies and ability estimates.

Perhaps more important was Holland’s contribution to vocational theory – finding that vocational interests could be characterized as six types arranged in a hexagon, with a corresponding arrangement of occupations. Subsequent research has revealed the universality of this hexagon. Holland received the top award for this scientific achievement from the American Psychological Association in 2007. Kuder utilized Holland’s six types as a basis for converting the original 10 interest scales to the six Kuder Career Clusters: Sales/Management, Outdoor/Mechanical, Business Operations, Arts/Communication, Social/Personal Services, and Science/Technical.

Holland generously made his interest assessments available to other researchers and graduate students, and authored many journal articles on his own research. Few people know that by the 1980’s Holland was legally blind, but had his vision restored by a then little-known surgery. He resumed piano lessons after finishing the third edition of Making Vocational Choices.

Online Tutorials Now Available at www.kuder.com

Looking for additional assistance or a refresher on using the Kuder^® Career Planning System? Kuder has released three online tutorials that provide step-by-step instructions for parts of the system. Access the brief tutorials in the Help area online at www.kuder.com.

First Time Using the System
Need help creating an account for yourself or your students/clients? Watch this tutorial to walk through the step-by-step registration process of creating a user name, password, and more.

Taking an Assessment
Want to take an assessment, but need more guidance on getting started? Check out this quick clip about selecting an assessment, entering a batch code, and completing the assessment.

Finding Batch Codes
Are you an administer trying to find your batch codes? Watch a short demo on logging into your database and locating your batch codes.

Winter Conferences & Trainings Schedule

This winter, we will be busy attending many industry conferences and conducting face-to-face training sessions across the county. We will also host various online training sessions to help you use the Kuder system more effectively. For more information, check out our national and state-specific Events & Training calendar online at www.kuder.com.