Career VS Personality
Most people do not think that personality will affect one’s success in their career. More often than not, hiring decisions are made purely based on paper qualification and rarely will a potential candidate be screened on whether their personality fits the job. So, unless the potential employee knows his or her own personality well, this might cause misfit between the employee’s personality and the job, which in turn leads to job dissatisfaction, bad performance and of course, high turnover rate, which are bad for both the employee and the company.
A practical answer to this potential problem would be to educate hiring managers to be aware of and be able to apply personality test to the hiring process. However, on the part of the employee, it would also be wise to know your own personality in order to save time and effort needed to go through interviews for jobs which are not suitable for you.
Many would ask “out of the repertoire of personality tests available worldwide, which is a valid, reliable and commonly used test for us to make better career choice?” The answer is Myers Briggs Instrument (MBTI).
The Myers Briggs Instrument (MBTI) has been widely used since the 1940s and was developed based on one of the forefathers of Psychology, Carl G. Jung’s theory. In addition, the best part of MBTI is that it aims to sorts for preferences and does not measure trait, ability, or character. There is no one best personality type.
The identification of basic preferences of each of the four dichotomies specified below will determine an individual Personality type in MBTI
- Favorite world: Do you prefer to focus on the outer world (E) or on your own inner world (I)? This is called Extraversion (E) or Introversion (I).
- Information: Do you prefer to focus on the basic information you take in (S) or do you prefer to interpret and add meaning(N)? This is called Sensing (S) or Intuition (N).
- Decisions: When making decisions, do you prefer to first look at logic and consistency (T) or first look at the people and special circumstances(F)? This is called Thinking (T) or Feeling (F).
- Structure: In dealing with the outside world, do you prefer to get things decided (J) or do you prefer to stay open to new information and options (P)? This is called Judging (J) or Perceiving (P).
These 4 Dichotomies in turn leads to 16 distinctive personality types in MBTI that result from the interactions among the preferences. Each of these 16 distinctive personality suits different types of career options. The table below is a snippet of the different career options suitable for the different personality types.
Now that you know about Personality test, hope it helps in your career decision making process! And for the hiring managers out there, hope this will help decrease turnover rate and employee dissatisfaction rate in your company!
