While there are some youngsters who have a clear idea about what they want to do during their professional lives, for many, the future can appear a daunting one, with little real understanding of the choices before them.   Indeed, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, The Occupational Information Network’s (O*NET) My Next Move website, which hosts the Interest Profiler, averages over 1 million site visits per month.

Of course the very notion that we will have just a single career, much less that we should know what that career will be at such a young age, is largely nonsense.  New research from the University of Houston underlines the futility by revealing that our job satisfaction has precious little to do with our interest in an occupation.

“Our main finding was that interest fit significantly predicts satisfaction, but it’s not as strong of a relation as people expect,” the researchers explain. “Other things that lead to satisfaction include the organization you work for, your supervisor, colleagues and pay.”

Being satisfied

The study finds that job satisfaction is not a case of finding a job that is a perfect fit for our interests because numerous other things matter too.  Instead, if the job we’re doing is not one we hate, then we can derive satisfaction from various sources, from the relationships we have with colleagues to the mission of our organization.

The findings emerged from an analysis of research conducted over the past 65 years on the link between interest fit and job satisfaction.  In total, this included 105 studies with nearly 40,000 participants.

What’s more, as Harvard’s Teresa Amabile argues, the ability to make progress and achieve things in our job is often a greater indicator of our likely satisfaction with the job.

“Being interested in your work seems more important for job performance and the downstream consequences of performing well, like raises or promotions,” the researchers explain.

Of course, the use of vocational interests to guide our career choices is one with a long history, with the paper highlighting that it dates back to the 1940s.  Overcoming it and moving to a more realistic method may not be that easy, therefore, but the researchers are adamant that better methods should be used.

“In popular career guidance literature, it is widely assumed that interest fit is important for job satisfaction. Our results show that people who are more interested in their jobs tend to be slightly more satisfied, but interest assessments are more useful for guiding people towards jobs in which they will perform better and make more money” they conclude.