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Identifying Your Personality Type and Interests
One of the best strategies for ensuring career success is being true to yourself by making career decisions that result in professional and personal satisfaction. While many professionals look to mentors, labor market trends, or family to determine their best-fit career path, others have uncovered the secret weapon to career success—increasing their self-awareness by discovering their own personality and interests. Possessing a healthy sense of self-awareness equips professionals with an internal compass that helps inform career decisions, define personal branding, and empower performance on the job. This chapter will get you started on the journey of understanding your personality and interests and how they relate to your career choices and job satisfaction.
Defining Personality and Interests
Assessing personality and interests for vocational purposes can be traced back to the late 1800s as the career development profession began to emerge (Hoyt 2005). Since then a variety of assessments have been developed to help with everything from coaching professionals for high performance and identifying academic majors, to matching individuals to occupations, assessing candidates for cultural fit with a company, and helping people clarify their personality preferences. Although each assessment has a different theoretical framework or approach, the basic premise of learning more about oneself to help support career decision making and management stands true. Getting to know yourself by assessing your personality and interests is priceless and will have a lasting impact on your career.
In this chapter, personality refers to how you go about doing things and how you act, while interests refer to what you like to do. Understanding why you act the way you do and what you enjoy doing can provide greater insights into the career fields, industries, and companies that will be the best fit for you. Moreover, understanding your personality and interests can help prevent you from making poor career decisions that place you in workplace cultures that do not allow you to thrive.
It is also important to note that personality and interest types do not operate in a vacuum and are affected by external forces and influences. Life experiences, personal goals, and environmental factors all influence who you are, how you behave, and what you want to be. You should reflect upon your personality and interests regularly throughout your career, because as you grow and develop personally and professionally, their influences on your career decisions will change. This is why a career that brought you great satisfaction in your 30s may become a burden and lack fulfillment in your 40s.
As life events occur—such as marriage, children, or the death of a loved one—you may feel the need to find a new job or change careers. Having a sound understanding of your personality and interests during these life-altering moments can help ensure that any career decisions you make will not only bring fulfillment and satisfaction, but also support your personal needs.
Most important, enhancing your self-awareness can help you avoid launching into a career field that will not bring you fulfillment. Or, accepting a job at a company whose culture clashes with your personality.
Step 1: Understanding Your Interests
Your interests dictate what keeps you engaged, the kinds of people you like to be with, and even the types of hobbies you choose to pursue. In some cases, interests can better predict job satisfaction than personality traits. And pursuing occupations in areas you are interested in can also be a strong indicator of your professional success and ability to persist through challenging times (Holland 1973). Like personality assessments, there are different frameworks available to assess your career interests. Oftentimes, these assessments ask you to rank different categories of interests against others. The categories vary by assessment, but can include your interest in working outdoors versus indoors, utilizing machinery, displaying artistic expression, helping others, using language skills to persuade others, or your interest in entrepreneurial endeavors.
The most commonly used interest inventories are based on Johns Hopkins University psychologist John Holland’s lifetime work—a theory of careers and vocational choice that he developed in the 1970s and has stood the test of time. His occupational theme codes, also known as Holland Codes, have been used extensively by career counselors who are assisting students and midcareer professionals choose career paths. In fact, you may have taken an interest inventory that used the Holland vocational themes. The Interest Profiler is a quick way for you to categorize your interests into Holland’s theme codes (Appendix A). While this is not the official assessment, take a few minutes to complete it now.
Holland Code Descriptions
Once you have completed the Interest Profiler and identified the top two or three letters that relate to your theme codes, review the following descriptions:
• Realistic (R): You are probably good at fixing or repairing things, are outdoorsy or athletic, and enjoy working on your own more than with a team. You are likely to ask, “What can I do to get the job done?”
• Investigative (I): You probably enjoyed school and love to learn new things. You appreciate the challenge of researching and solving complex problems, strategy games, puzzles, and hobbies that require technology or mastering complex skills such as sailing. You are likely to ask, “How can we get to the bottom of the problem?”
• Artistic (A): You probably have a creative flair and enjoy expressing yourself through art, music, theater, or writing. You are likely to say, “How can we do this in a different way?”
• Social (S): You probably enjoy being around people—in your spare time, you may choose to coach or teach, offer hospitality, or do volunteer work. You are likely to ask, “How can we work together to solve this problem?”
• Enterprising (E): You are probably competitive, enjoy taking risks, and are persuasive and good at motivating others. You prefer being a leader rather than a follower, and probably enjoy politics, volunteering on local boards or investing in the stock market. You are likely to say, “Let’s get started now!”
• Conventional (C): You are probably very organized and efficient. You are likely to be accurate with details, good with numbers, and more comfortable with structure than improvising on the fly. In your spare time, you might enjoy collecting things, going to a family cabin or vacation home, or playing cards and games. You are likely to ask, “Can I help get this organized?”
Take a few minutes to jot down your top two theme codes in your Personal Inventory Tool in Appendix B. Now that you know your theme codes, how can they help you?
Career decision making: Interest assessments and inventories can provide you with a list of careers or industries that may be a good fit for you. The results can often shed light on the variety of available options based on your interests. The U.S. Department of Labor manages an excellent occupational website, O*NET (www.onetonline.org), which uses Holland theme codes to assist with career choices.
Job satisfaction: Professionals engaged in work that they find interesting tend to be more productive and show initiative. Research indicates that employees who are interested in their work will remain motivated and resilient, even during challenging situations and circumstances.
Growth opportunities: Understanding your interests can also help you identify growth opportunities and career progressions that will be a good fit. For example, many educators gravitate toward teaching because they have a strong interest in helping children, but overlook the amount of administrative work that comes with teaching and managing a classroom. For teachers who dislike the administrative tasks, moving into a principal’s role is probably not the best career move.
Workplace Environment: Your career interests are strong indicators of the type of workplace culture or environment you prefer. This will be covered in detail in chapter 3, but the following workplace environments are best suited to each theme code:
• Realistic: May prefer an environment or career in which they can move around during the day. They may also prefer working on their own as opposed to frequent team work.
• Investigative: Tend to enjoy working in depth on one topic to get to the bottom of the problem. As a result, organizations that value depth over speed may be preferable.
• Artistic: May prefer to have some latitude about the way they complete their work. A company that doesn’t micromanage and extends freedom to employees in how they complete tasks may be important to you.
• Social: If you have a strong interest in helping others, you may prefer working for a nonprofit, or a for-profit firm with a strong commitment to customer service. You may also prefer a firm that has a collaborative team environment.
• Enterprising: Enterprising types are often entrepreneurial, so they may enjoy start-up companies. They also prefer leadership roles, so they may prefer companies in which leadership opportunities are plentiful.
• Conventional: Enjoy being organized and orderly, so they may prefer to work for a company that has clear protocols and procedures, such as larger companies or well-established firms.
If you would like to explore your interests in more detail and obtain a full report of potential careers that fit your interests, a few popular interest assessment tools are listed in Appendix C.
Step 2: Understanding Your Personality
Your personality explains why you act the way you do, both personally and professionally. Many frameworks for understanding personality and describing personal preferences do so by using contrasting behaviors on a scale or dichotomy. They touch on your preferences regarding introversion and extraversion, your preference for planning or spontaneity, and your need to lead or follow. Some also address your aversion to or like of taking risks, and your preference for creativity versus big-picture thinking. By comparing opposing preferences to one another, you are able to gain a better understanding of your own behaviors.
Personality Preferences
Most personality profiles measure these preferences:
Plan or go with the flow: If you like to plan your day and have a routine, you may prefer a job that is a bit more predictable (accounting) versus one that can change at a moment’s notice (emergency room nurse). Larger firms also tend to have more established procedures compared with start-ups, which require improvisation.
Details or big picture: If you are better with details than the “big picture,” companies and careers that value accuracy and attention to detail (computer programming) will be more to your liking than careers that require you to deal in abstract or creative ideas (marketing). If you are an “idea person,” working in a company that values innovation will allow you to utilize your creativity.
Variety or in-depth: If you like working on many different tasks rather than being able to concentrate on one thing in depth, you may enjoy a smaller company that allows you to wear many hats, or a position that has different challenges every day.
Teams or alone: If you prefer working with a team, you will be happier working in a field that requires people contact versus one that requires you to work on your own for long periods. Most people prefer a little bit of both, so think about where you fall on the spectrum when considering different types of positions.
Lead or follow: If you prefer to lead, a company with many leadership opportunities will be more to your liking. Smaller firms can sometimes offer leadership opportunities earlier in one’s career, but larger firms have more positions and often provide structured leadership development programs.
Head or heart: If you tend to rely more on logic than feelings when making a decision, jobs that require the ability to analyze data and solve problems with logic will be more comfortable for you than those that require you to read others’ emotions or be diplomatic.
Questions to Ask Yourself
Use this list of basic questions to home in on aspects of your personality that affect your career and work environment choices. While not a formal assessment, it can help you think through your preferences. Go to a quiet place and take a moment to work through the list. For each question, avoid answering with a simple yes or no. Try to think of examples and experiences that affirm your responses.
• Do you prefer to plan your day ahead of time or go with the flow?
• Do you like to follow the rules or make up your own?
• Do you enjoy being creative and seeing the big picture?
• Do you like variety or working on something in-depth?
• Do you prefer working alone or on a team?
• Are you better with details and facts or theories and ideas?
• Do you prefer to lead or follow? Or a little of both?
• What types of people do you like to hang around? What types would you rather avoid?
• Do you tend to make decisions with your head or your heart?
• When are you most productive? Least productive?
The answers to these questions can help you assess the types of tasks and work environments you prefer. Make note of these on the Personal Inventory Tool in Appendix B.
You may have taken a personality assessment, such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or DiSC, at work or school. If you still have the results, take a few minutes to review them and enter your results in your Personal Inventory Tool. If you haven’t taken a personality assessment in the past, take a look at the free and low-cost resources in Appendix C. However, if you’re not comfortable “going it alone” or have been struggling with career issues for a while, you may want to consider consulting a career coach.
Using Your Personality Assessment
One of the most common purposes of personality assessments is helping professionals discover careers that will make them happy, because your personality has a great bearing on the tasks that fulfill you. Possessing a clear understanding of the type of work you enjoy and ensuring that it is present in the career path or job you choose is imperative to your work satisfaction. Simply relying on what you are good at (your skills) does not always guarantee satisfaction in a certain occupation.
For example, your preference for introversion or extroversion can affect your ability to complete your job duties. Introverts may thrive when completing tasks that provide time alone for reflection and internal processing. However, if introverts take on job duties that require a lot of public speaking, group interaction, or networking, they may begin to feel overwhelmed. Likewise, extroverts gain their energy from being around others and may thrive when working on tasks that are group centered or require high interaction with others. When extroverts take on job duties that require a lot of time alone or in solitude, they may struggle to stay motivated.
One of the best ways to ensure high performance is to consider the types of careers and company cultures that are the best fit to your personality. Even if you are a high-achieving professional with the right job, your performance may be negatively influenced if you are working for the wrong company. For example, a person who prefers a high level of interaction with others may not fare well in a company that does not value relationships. Likewise, someone who prefers working alone but works at a company that requires a high level of teamwork, collaborative projects, and socializing, will find that her productivity and stress levels are negatively affected from trying to perform in an environment that is not a fit for her personality.
If you prefer spontaneity, fluid systems, and creativity, then working in a highly bureaucratic organization may stifle your ability to innovate and create. Likewise, if you prefer structure and processes, working in a highly structured industry or organization (such as healthcare or higher education) may help you to thrive, whereas a company with less structure may frustrate you.
When to Hire a Professional
Consult a professional when you:
• do not agree with your personality assessment results
• are unsure how to move forward or what your next steps should be
• feel an internal conflict between your results and personal or family obligations
• experience difficulty narrowing down your options based on your results.
Skills and Strengths
Understanding your personality type and interests often helps point you toward your natural strengths and skills. Chapter 2 explores skills assessment in more depth, but jot down in your Personal Inventory any skills or strengths that you’ve identified while doing the exercises in this chapter.
Many professionals are now encouraged to identify and assess their strengths and character traits for building personal and professional self-awareness. This strengths-based approach is rooted in the positive psychology movement that has emerged over the last few decades. In a nutshell, assessments that focus on strengths draw your attention to the innate traits and characteristics that direct your behaviors and help you perform well. Some popular strengths-based assessments are StrengthsFinder 2.0, the VIA Survey of Character Strengths, and Dependable Strengths created by Bernard Haldane.
Understand Yourself So That You Can Better Understand Others
Personality and interest assessments should not be considered in vacuum. You can also take the information you learn from your own self-awareness building and apply it to your business relationships. Your bosses, co-workers, business partners, and employees all have unique personalities and interests. Becoming aware of your personality and interests can help you build relationships by increasing your awareness and understanding of others’ preferences. Increasing self-awareness can positively affect your work relationships by helping you:
• Avoid conflict with others.
• Find points of connection and similarity.
• Identify strategies for dealing with difficult co-workers.
• Perceive how your personality affects others.
• Assign the right tasks and projects to employees you supervise.
• Hire the right employees to compliment your team.
A Word of Caution
Increasing self-awareness has many benefits and can lead to high levels of career performance and satisfaction. However, it is important to remember that personality and career interests are just one aspect of your research. You still should take skills (chapter 2), values (chapter 3), job market (chapter 4), entry points into an occupation (chapter 14), experiences, and financial needs into consideration.
Before taking any personality or interest assessments, you should make sure to:
• Research the tool’s reliability: Regardless of which assessment you decide to take, be sure to investigate the research behind the tool’s theoretical underpinnings. At the very least, reputable companies will provide information on the tool’s reliability and validity, showing that the assessment tool has been tested to ensure results are consistent and accurate.
• Understand your results: Many of the personality and interest assessments online provide comprehensive results that explain the theoretical framework and your results. Nevertheless, it is often helpful to seek the assistance of a career coach or counselor when interpreting your assessment results. Many career professionals receive specialized training in assessment interpretation and can help you apply the results to your personal career aspirations.
Summary
Remember that personality assessments and interest inventories are just one piece of the puzzle as you put together your career story. You should not place yourself in a box or negate a career dream just because it does not show up on your personality or interest assessment report. Use all the tools in this book to help you piece together your ideal career path. If you get lost along the way, always remember it starts with knowing yourself—why you act the way you do and what holds your interest.
As you continue reading and working through the exercises in this book, it’s wise to keep a job journal to track what you learn along the way. You can also use the Personal Inventory Tool in Appendix B to record key insights you learn about yourself.