Introduction

Interests can guide career choices as people tend to choose academic majors, occupations, and jobs that they are interested in. As such, understanding interest in work, or vocational interest, can help to explain and predict how individuals will behave in the workplace. There is a long history of research on vocational interests in the applied psychological literature. In addition to the increased empirical attention, there has also been a corresponding increase in the awareness of vocational interests in practice. Consequently, some organizations are now starting to consider using vocational interests for personnel selection. Holland’s widely researched model of vocational interests is the dominant theoretical framework for understanding the structure and predictive validity of vocational interests. The history of research on vocational interests has been closely linked with the assessment of the individual differences. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.