INTJ Careers
This page looks at careers for an average INTJ. However, every INTJ is different, and you are a unique individual. Our career questionnaire helps you confirm whether your type is INTJ, and provides an optional report that matches your unique personality with over 100 potential careers.
INTJ Types
If your closest personality type is INTJ then you have a strong, private sense of strategic vision, both for the future and how that future will can be achieved. Your vision, or sense of knowing, may be difficult to articulate, but even if wasn't others might find it difficult to accept (e.g.: as impractical or unrealistic). Pursuing your vision might be a lonely task, therefore, as you develop and pursue plans without anyone else really understanding the nature of what you are trying to achieve.INTJ Career Enjoyment
The table, below right, shows which careers INTJs say they enjoy doing most - based on research involving over 10,000 people. We asked people to tell us their job and how much they were enjoying it. We also asked them to complete our questionnaire and/or declare their personality type. We found three important lessons from this research:
- Unsurprisingly, INTJs tend to enjoy certain jobs more than others. This happens when the demands of a job match the preferences of an INTJ
- Some jobs are inherently more enjoyable than others, irrespective of personality type. This is because there are many factors other than personality type that make a job enjoyable, such as the opportunity for achievement or the degree of freedom/autonomy you have in the job.
- Not all INTJs are the same. There are variations in individual preferences that affect how much each INTJ enjoys each job.
| Career | Average 'Enjoyment' Score (max=6) | n |
|---|---|---|
| Training | 5.2 | (4) |
| Writing | 4.6 | (8) |
| Entrepreneurship | 4.4 | (12) |
| Librarian | 4.4 | (5) |
| Analysis | 4.1 | (20) |
| The Arts | 4.1 | (13) |
| Teaching | 4.0 | (43) |
| (Our Careers Report contains many more) | ||
The scores in the table (right) show how much INTJs scored each type of career for enjoyment (the maximum score was six). The number in brackets is how many INTJs were in that career in the survey. This aspect of our research involved 10,631 people, of whom 774 had preferences for INTJ.
The tables sometimes contain some surprising results. This can happen if a job is inherently enjoyable, or if there are low numbers of people doing the job (which means that individual, unique preferences have a greater bearing on the results).
Example Stretch Diagram (Auditor)
| Profile Match |  |
| Job Rating |  |
What people in this job liked about it: teamwork, developing relationships, interacting with clients, being respected as an advisor, learning (e.g.: about different businesses), challenges, travel (to client), investigative work, improving things, non-routine, good money.
What they disliked: stress of work overload, lack of meaning or intellectual challenge, being disliked by some people, being in an office all day, accountancy work, working alone, lack of clear goals, politics.
One way to identify a suitable career is to match your personality preferences with the behavioural demands of potential careers. You are likely to find a career enjoyable if there is a good match, but stressful if there is a poor match.
The diagram (right) compares the average preferences of a INTJ with the demands of working as an auditor. In this diagram, each segment represents a particular style of thinking or behaving that corresponds with each of the sixteen personality types.
This diagram shows not only how much opportunity an INTJ has to use INTJ behaviours in the job, but also how much you are expected to use the behaviours associated with the other types, and whether the overall balance suits your individual preferences:
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A red segment suggests that the career demands more of this type of behaviour than is your preference. |
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A blue segment suggests that you would like to use these types of behaviours more than is needed in this career. |
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A white (or very light green) segment suggests that there is a good match between the demands of the job and your individual preferences. |
This diagram matches an average ISTJ with one job (auditor). Our career test matches your individual, unique preferences with over 100 potential jobs: