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Career Advice for Job Seekers

Career Gauge: How to Know if Your Personality will Fit Your Next Job

William Frierson AvatarWilliam Frierson
March 2, 2015


Career choice concept. Woman split half and half in businesswoman and medical doctor / nurse. Young smiling woman isolated on white background

Career choice concept. Woman split half and half in businesswoman and medical doctor / nurse. Young smiling woman isolated on white background. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

Choosing a career that fits your personality is a difficult choice that sometimes can only be completed when you have tried a few on for size. Luckily, you can also take a personality test that should help determine what occupations best fit your style. The most common one is Myers-Briggs.

Interaction with the World

The first way the Myers-Briggs tests each individual’s personality is by determining if you are an introvert or extrovert. Introverts often enjoy to work alone, in an office, or in a cubicle without speaking to groups working with others during large spans of time, like computer coders. Extroverts enjoy working with others as much as possible, hashing out ideas with others. TV writers tend to be extroverts as they work in large groups to hash out script ideas.

Information Absorption

The second factor in the occupational personality test is how a person absorbs information. Sensors absorb facts and come up with practical solutions, while intuitives rely on instinct, patterns, and big-picture ideas to arrive at solutions. Intuitives often work in fields like public relations and advertising, while sensors work better when they can work directly with data, in fields like banking or investing.

Making Decisions

Every person has a different way they make decisions, and the two types of decision makers are thinkers or feelers. Thinkers analyze data, make pros and cons list, and look at data from every possible angle before making a decision. Feelers will consider how a decision makes them feel rather than looking at the cold-hard facts. Thinkers make great auditors and CEOs, while feelers are good social workers or actors. Feelers tend to be very empathetic, so they would also make good nurses or doctors.

Organization

The way we organize information in our minds—consciously or subconsciously—plays an important role in how we work in different occupations. Judgers are rule followers and plan makers, while perceivers tend to be more flexible with decisions and last-minute changes. Judgers are good school teachers and lawyers, while perceivers are good journalists, applied behavior analysis online certification students, and architects.

Combining Traits

Sometimes one trait will override another. Some people who test as extroverts claim they are introverts and vice-versa. Ultimately, whatever a person chooses to do when he or she goes home from work at night will be the baseline. If someone tests as an extrovert but goes home and hides away from others after work every day, that person is probably an introvert at heart.

Choosing a career is not something you should take lightly. If you discover your personality type, you might have a better chance at landing a job that makes you as happy as you are at home.

Brooke

Brooke Chaplan is a freelance writer and blogger. She lives and works out of her home in Los Lunas, New Mexico. She loves the outdoors and spends most her time hiking, biking and gardening. For more information contact Brooke via Twitter @BrookeChaplan.

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