The prospect of choosing or changing your career path can be daunting, but using the right tools to measure your interests can help immensely.

The Strong Interest Inventory is one of the most widely used tools for career measurement. It was originally introduced by military psychologist E. K. Strong Jr. in 1927, but it has since been revised many times to ensure that it is always up to date.

The SII is very useful to help identify potential career options, and also gives insights into the individual's working style, which can be useful for assessing how they might fit within an established organisation. It is suitable for just about everyone, including new graduates, employees at a company, and anyone considering a new career.

The Strong Interest Inventory measures career and leisure interests in four main categories of scales:

General Occupational Themes (GOT):
These are six basic categories which describe the type of occupation in which a person might be interested in. The GOTs are: Realistic; Investigative; Artistic; Social; Enterprising; Conventional (RIASEC). These are based on John Holland’s theory of vocational choice (1959), which stated that "the choice of a vocation is an expression of personality", and which resulted in the Holland Codes, which describe 720 different personality patterns.

Basic Interest Scale (BIS):
There are 30 BISs, and these measure clusters of interest related to the GOT’s in particular areas, such as Mathematics, Adventure, Job Security and Office Work.

Personal Style Scales (PSS):
There are five PSSs: Work Style; Learning Environment; Leadership Style; Risk Taking; Team Orientation. The PSSs measure a person’s preferences and comfort levels regarding the way they live and work.

Occupational Scales (OS):
There are 244 OSSs, 122 for each gender. These scales compare a person’s interests to those of other people, taking gender into account and measuring those interests against those of people in 122 diverse occupations.

The Strong Interest Inventory can be employed for many reasons, such as:

• Choosing a career
• Changing careers
• Exploring your options
• Exploring future goals

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