How to Find the Job for You Based on Your Personality
Career decisions are tough, but one way to make them easier is to choose a career path that matches your personality. There are times when personalities and job choices don't match, and the individual may feel inadequate or miserable at work. It is important to learn more about yourself and your personality so that you can align your career choices in a way that suits your true self. Playing on your strengths will help you do a better job and be happier at work.
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Things You'll Need
- Computer with keyboard
- List of career and industry resources
- Personality tests
- Pen and paper
Instructions
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List the things you love doing--the types of activities that appeal to you the most. You may discover the things you love doing are the activities you are involved in right now, not because you have to do them, but because you find them to be fun or interesting.
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Learn more about different industries through credible sources such as Plunkett's or Hoovers. These publications showcase company profiles, which reveal pertinent information about a company--- who they are, what they do, and where they are in the industry. Business publications also offer insight about workplace culture, which can help you discover what industries would be a good fit for you.
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Do an informational interview with someone who works in the industry or job that interests you. Once you've identified industries in which you want to work, you need to get information about the day-to-day work life within these industries. Learning more about a job through the eyes of someone who is working in that job will confirm if a particular job is right for your personality.
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Identify your backup skills. Backup skills are skills you have that you do well, but may not be necessarily aligned with what you want to do as a career. For example, you may be a good writer, but want to be in a more analytical field such as computer programming. Just because you can write well doesn't mean you'll enjoy a writing career. When you've created a list of career choices, you can then develop the skills you want to use and downplay your backup skills by taking them out of your resume.
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Take a personality test. Personality tests, like the Myers-Briggs or workplace assessment exams, help you identify what types of work situations you work well in. They feature questions formed by psychologists to identify where you fit. The Myers-Briggs test helps you identify key personality traits such as introversion or extroversion, and this test also suggests types of work environments that may be aligned with your inherent traits.
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References
Resources
- Photo Credit office job image by Oleg Kulakov from Fotolia.com
