Your personality preferences should be a good fit with your career. If your career does not mesh well with your personality, you could experience additional stress and may do as well as you would like.

Your personality preferences probably work fine for you in day-to-day life but likely do not fit well with every life situation that arises. No person’s does! It is likely that your personality style works very well in some situations, fine in most situations and not so well in other situations. Do not make your career be one of those situations where your personality style does not work well!

Identifying and Using your Personality Preferences

• Think about how you and others would describe yourself. For example, if you’ve always been a very social person (i.e., you love being around other people), then the following descriptors may fit you well: social, extroverted, talkative, verbal, etc.
• For any clear personality preferences, consider how these fit or don’t fit any careers under consideration. Also, are any careers suggested by your personality preferences? It may be difficult to identify careers based solely on personality preferences unless you use an instrument like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).
• Consider completing the Myers-Briggs Type Indictor (MBTI). The MBTI has been used extensively to help with career planning and will provide you not only with greater insight and awareness of your personality preferences but also with specific career recommendations, including job titles. Interested in the MBTI? Come to Career Services to register to take this inventory. There is a $25.00 fee for the MBTI. For an introduction to the MBTI, check our brief introduction. (MBTI).
• You can use your MBTI type, once identified, to identify career options. We have books in the Career Centre on the MBTI that list occupations for each type and there are a multitude of internet resources available as well.