Career Ideas For Different Personality Types
Our career test is based on research involving over 17,000 people. It matches your personality with 112 jobs/careers and shows you which are the most enjoyable jobs for your personality type.
Personality, Careers and Stretch
How well your personality and career match can significantly influence whether you find that career fulfilling, stressful, boring or challenging. That's why many people seek a career that closely matches their personality preferences. However, in our research (with 17,000 people) we found that this was only partly true. That is, a big difference between one's personality and the job tended to result in low job enjoyment. But if there was too close a match between your personality and the job, then job enjoyment also started to drop. Being in a job where there is a modest degree of stretch can therefore have some benefits, such as:
- you can provide a different type of contribution to others in the same field
- you find the challenge of being 'stretched' rewarding
- doing a job that closely suits your preferences may not provide enough personal development for you
- working outside your preferences may encourage greater creativity from you
- teams often perform better with a mix of people/perspectives, and you may be able to fill a niche that others do not fill
| ISTJ | ISFJ | INFJ | INTJ |
| ISTP | ISFP | INFP | INTP |
| ESTP | ESFP | ENFP | ENTP |
| ESTJ | ESFJ | ENFJ | ENTJ |
Stretch within or across preferences
The table, right, leads to pages with some job ideas for the different personality types (i.e.: with different types of preferences). If you want to be stretched in your career, then there are two types of stretch. You can be stretched 'within your preferences', where there is a challenge to your natural strengths, or to be stretched 'across preferences', where there is a challenge your natural weaknesses. For example:
- someone with Sensing preferences likes to achieve clear goals
- therefore, if you prefer Sensing, to be stretched 'within your preferences' is to be given more difficult goals that require you to work harder to achieve them
- to be stretched 'across preferences', however, is to be given a responsibility that requires a more intuitive approach, e.g.: a task that has:
- unknown outcomes, pursuing possibilities yet to be discovered;
- a vague brief, eg: "the job is what you make of it"
- new, untried responsibilities using unknown or unproven techniques
Our careers questionnaire can produce a report that provides "stretch diagrams" to compare your unique personality profile with the demands of 112 different jobs.
Develop Your Potential
Our personality questionnaire can help you:
- become much more self-aware;
- develop your leadership, management or influencing skills;
- find a career that matches your personality;
- Improve teamwork and team relationships.
You can either do the personality test yourself, or administer multiple questionnaires for use in team building and leadership development.