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Writer's pictureSAMUEL CHIBUNNA

Knowing Your Personality Can Help In Your Career Choice

More than often, you come across personality tests on social media and that is so tempting to give it a go. I did my own personality test with the famous Myers-Briggs Type. But before I reveal my own type, here is the explanation of what exactly is Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.

The MBTI is an instrument for career assessment. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator often is indicated using its initials, MBTI. This is among the tools that career development professionals may use to know more about their customer’s personality types. It is part of a complete assessment of an individual. It can be used together with other tools that evaluate work-related values, aptitude, and interests. This way it will help customers select the right occupation.

The MBTI is based on personality types by psychiatrist Carl Jung. This tool was formed by a Katherine Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers in the 1960s. Every year, over 1.5 million personality tests are done using the MBTI tool. These tests are aimed at helping different individuals explore different goals.

One of the companies that use MBTI tool is Ernst & Young. They employ for assessing the work-related values of their potential candidates. It also helps them in improving the communications between colleagues. This tool also helps the organization’s team unity. They achieve this through increasing an individual’s self-awareness of their weakness and strengths. Thus the individuals are able to identify their personality type. This tool has a possibility of 16 MBTI types.

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Below are some basics of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator assessment. To start off, let us begin by looking at the brief introduction of the broad personality tool. This will help you in the choice of your career.

Personality Types According To Jung

Carl Jung believed that an individual’s personality is made up of their preferences. This means how a person decides to do some things. He explained that there are four sets of opposite preferences. These show how a person:

Live their life (Judging vs. Perceiving).

Energizes (Extroversion vs. Introversion),

Makes their decisions (Thinking vs. Feeling) and

Perceives information (Sensing vs. INtuition),

Jung then allocated a code to this personality types. This is made up of four letters which relate to each of The Preferences ( this are the initials of the words in brackets above). In all the different personality types total to 16. The way the four preferences interact is the one thing that makes the types unique. This is also what makes you the person you are.

Using The MBTI Tool

Since this is a psychological assessment, only qualified personnel can use it. These include psychologists, career development professional, or other mental health professionals may administer the instrument. Therefore, ensure that the person you choose to work with is “MBTI Certified.” The assessment can also be accessed online at a fee. This can be found at the Psychological Type Center for Applications (CAPT) which Isabel Briggs Myers co-founded.

What the MBTI assess

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is founded on the view that a person’s personality has four attributes. These attributes each holds two dichotomies ( opposites ).

These are:

Introverted (I) or Extroverted (E)

Feeling (F) or thinking (T)

Intuitive (N) or sensitive (S)

Perceptive (P) or judgmental (J)

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test requires that you answer 93 questions with forced-choice questions. This is then used to find out which of these two sides you lean more towards. This is often rated from these four attributes. Ultimately, every individual gets a unique assessment type from the 16 MBTI possible combinations. This can be like “Introvert-Sensing-Feeling -Judging” or “Extravert-Intuition- Thinking- Perceiving”.

Your “ personality type” will help you understand your strengths, preferences, and weaknesses. It also indicates your compatibility with other people. This could also influence the choice of the career you undertake.

Although the MBTI might bring out clearly an individual tendency, it is worth noting that people do get influenced by the media, their peers, and other social and cultural factors. It is much easier when a person pursues a career that best suits their temperaments. However, you will actually need to love the job you do. Luckily, we are able to consciously choose. Thus you can do things differently as opposed to what your personality will dictate.

A person’s personality can be a lot harder to change. However, you could work harder in aligning yourself with the demands and expectations of your aspired career. You will also need to remember to develop the ideal habits.

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Just because you are one type, other than the other, will not give it an exceptional status. This means that an ESTJ is not better than the ISTJ. An ISTJ will function best in some environments than what the ESTJ would. At the same time, the opposite is true for others.

Numerous career planning professionals trust that once you are aware of your personality type. You are then able decides the best career choice for you. This way you are able to discover by using MBTI or other personality inventory systems. For example, what you find out might help you in choosing a career. It can also help you figure out if a certain employment is a right fit for you.

Conclusion

As much as I enjoyed doing the test, some facts might be revealing of who I am and some not really. There is also a tendency for me to deviate slightly from the truth based on a lot of things like today’s mood, what I seen or heard recently might cause a shift in picking the best answer that represents me as a whole. I’d say give the personality test a try to see if you had been in the wrong job all the while but don’t just act on it merely based on the test results, there are a lot of factors leading to job switching that shouldn’t be taken lightly.

My Results

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What do you think? Have you done the same test before? Please share your results with us.

To help you to choose a career wisely, you may wish to explore these articles: Passionate People Work Harder, Stay Loyal How to find your passion?

 

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