Poll - Does your personality fit your occupation

A-Mart

What is your Jung Type?

I am an ISTJ, Introvert Sensing Thinking Judging, and heres what similarminds.com have to say about the type of occupations that fit my profile: http://similarminds.com/jung/istj.html

Its cool to see that 'network administrator' is in the list of favored careers. Take the test and see if it defines your personality.

http://similarminds.com/jung.html

Im going to make an educated guess and say that most members in this forum are either ISTJs like myself or ISTP, INTJ, INTP. I believe most techies fall within this range of temperments, introverted and thinking.

Schluep

After doing a lot of studies on personality over the years in order to better understand and relate to people I found those tests to be a very poor reflection of true personality. The questions do not contain enough depth to be answered accurately and the results list nearly everything under the sun. Most of these test analyze certain aspects of brain function or particular mental health issues as opposed to personality.

The career oriented test was not at all accurate for me and there wasn't one thing listed that I could see myself being involved with. This primarily had to do with the basis of the exam however.

The best conceptual study of personalities that I have seen are typically the ones based on the original Greek concepts of personality (though does not neccessarily have the same names) with the four primary personalities to which one is born. The best book I have read regarding personality, masking of personality, assessing personality, and how best to interact with people based upon their personalities is "The Personality Tree" by Florence Littauer.

dynamik

I'm wrapping up a psychology degree, and I've taken an entire course on personality. We learned a new major theory every week or two (which often contradicted previous theories), and it become pretty obvious that no one really understands personality. There are all sorts of personality tests that will provide rough indications of your personality; just don't let them define you.

JDMurray

Realize that Jung's Psychological Types, Meyers-Briggs' Character Types, and Keirsey's Temperaments are not the same thing as personality types. Personality is a much broader picture of a person's behavior than the aspect of his/her character or temperament (so says this INTJ).

A-Mart wrote:

Im going to make an educated guess and say that most members in this forum are either ISTJs like myself or ISTP, INTJ, INTP. I believe most techies fall within this range of temperments, introverted and thinking.

Nearly half of the "nerd types" fall into the extraverted function of the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator. For example, Bill Gates himself is an ENTJ. The human population is 50/50 extraverted/intraverted, so (human) nerds and techies follow the same statistical pattern.

Joshua Feinberg

I work with many who are in the process of starting their own computer consulting businesses.

There are DEFINITELY personality traits that can make/break someone's success in owning/managing a computer consulting business.

Here's a quick alphabetical run-down of some of the more important personality and attitude traits of successful owners of computer consulting businesses, computer resellers, network integrators, IT solution providers, and managed services providers.

Assertive
Business-focused
Candor
Confident
Coping with uncertainty
Decisiveness
Diplomacy
Ego balanced
Empathy
Extraverted
Humility
Passion
Patience
Positive outlook
Reliable
Self-driven
Self-motivated
Self-starter
Visionary

(This is actually excerpted from the Computer Consulting Kit Home Study Course)

The thing I can't overemphasize... having a successful career as a self-employed computer consultant, or building a business around this, comes to down to having STRONG people skills, even more than strong IT skills.

If you're good at finding/working with the right people, you can always find a good subcontractor to fill in your skills shortfalls.

However if you're intraverted, or a big jerk, those issues are much harder to remedy/overcome.

How many of those 19 traits above do you meet?

JDMurray

Joshua Feinberg wrote:

If you're good at finding/working with the right people, you can always find a good subcontractor to fill in your skills shortfalls.

Ah, clearly this is Steve Jobs' secret for success.

TechJunky

ENTJ

"Field Marshall". The basic driving force and need is to lead. Tend to seek a position of responsibility and enjoys being an executive. 1.8% of total population.

Wow, pretty spot on with my personality too...

http://similarminds.com/jung/entj.html


Sometimes I compromise if the other person have valid input. Other than that. WoW.

garv221

LOL. It says I'm ENFP. It says I hate my profession. hahaha

http://similarminds.com/jung/enfp.html

Schluep

Joshua Feinberg wrote:

I work with many who are in the process of starting their own computer consulting businesses.

There are DEFINITELY personality traits that can make/break someone's success in owning/managing a computer consulting business.

Here's a quick alphabetical run-down of some of the more important personality and attitude traits of successful owners of computer consulting businesses, computer resellers, network integrators, IT solution providers, and managed services providers.

Assertive
Business-focused
Candor
Confident
Coping with uncertainty
Decisiveness
Diplomacy
Ego balanced
Empathy
Extraverted
Humility
Passion
Patience
Positive outlook
Reliable
Self-driven
Self-motivated
Self-starter
Visionary

(This is actually excerpted from the Computer Consulting Kit Home Study Course)

The thing I can't overemphasize... having a successful career as a self-employed computer consultant, or building a business around this, comes to down to having STRONG people skills, even more than strong IT skills.

If you're good at finding/working with the right people, you can always find a good subcontractor to fill in your skills shortfalls.

However if you're intraverted, or a big jerk, those issues are much harder to remedy/overcome.

How many of those 19 traits above do you meet?

Most of those skills can be developed and are not really personalities. Many of them are skills and/or positive traits, but these are very different than a personality in my opinion. Some people define personality as simply a connection of traits/skills that someone has developed or the character that they have developed as opposed to the blend of tendancies one is born with an inclination towards. The difference with personality is that it is something you are born with that never truly changes outside of some potential masking of it due to harmful life experiences that one does not properly deal with.

For example, nobody is born reliable. Reliability requires making a decision to consistantly follow through with what you say you will do. People aren't born with humility (find any 2 year old), they develop it by realizing they are not the most important person in the world and they can't be the best at everything. One could go on and on with that list, but there is a large difference between personality and people skills.

I have rarely seen any objective study of true naturally born personality types (not people skills or positive traits) that list more than 4 core personalities. There are many different names used for these personalities, but I prefer to use the Greek terms since they largely established this basis of thought prior to any other society. Using their terminology, the personality types would be Sanguine, Melancholy, Choleric, and Phlegmatic. Any given person is born with 1 or a mixture of 2 non-opposing personalities out of this list that are clearly identifiable in every person. Each personality inherantly has positive and negative traits that are typically identifiable in that personality, but there are exception and there is a lot of growth that people can do.

The benefit of understanding true personality as opposed to positive traits are two-fold. First you can work on developing the strengths of your personality and minimizing the weakness much better when you are aware of what they are. In terms of developing the positive traits neccessary for success it would be far more logical to base it these areas than to say "I should be this." The second benefit is when it comes to dealing with other people. This is critical in every nearly every profression or walk of life since you will always encounter other people. Understanding what different personality types respond well to or dislike can go a long way toward the relationships that you build. For example, Cholerics tend to enjoy debating/arguing more than the other personalities, while Phlegmatics shy away and try to avoid such confrontation by nature. If you are trying to sell a phlegmatic on a product by debating and contrasting numbers with him you will hurt your chances for success. Likewise this is a great choice when selling to a choleric but trying to get the choleric that you would not try with the other personality types. Another example would be that Melancholies inherently need more time to discuss their emotions than other personality types. If your spouse is a Melancholy and you did not recognize the need for this time it could be put undue strain on your marriage.

The book I recommended in my previous post in this thread put the concept of personality and working with people of differing personalities in the simplest and easiest to read approach I have seen. It is a book I re-read at least once every year or two.