How to Find an Environment That Fits Your Personality

Have you ever taken a personality test? It may sound cliché, but these are significant indicators for finding compatible career paths and life partners. You can take a Myers- Brigg test here and see what type of positions come up with your personality type. My personal favorite is the 16 personalities test based on the 16 personality types. When you get your results, they even show you celebrities with the same personality type as you are! After you complete the test, you’ll be assigned a four-letter personality type. The letters in your personality type will indicate if you lean more toward being introverted or extroverted, intuitive or observant, thinking or feeling, and judging or perceiving. There are also six distinct personality types, called your Holland Code. The Holland Code personalities are realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional. Let’s break these indicators down a little further to understand how you can use your personality type to find your ideal work environment.

Myers-Brigg Personality Types

Are you an introvert or an extrovert? This can correlate to your ideal work environment. If you are extroverted, you may enjoy training others, giving presentations in front of executives or large groups, and working on group projects. If you are an introvert, you may thrive in environments where you can work autonomously or with one or two team members. You may shy away from leading large projects, but you are a diligent team worker. Does your current position align with your personality type? Here is how you can use your personality type to find an ideal work environment.

If you’re an intuitive person, you’re likely the type to create new processes and may bend the rules to see if you can improve procedures. If you’re an observant person, you prefer to have clear expectations for your job and role and understand the importance of rules. If your personality leans more towards the thinking type, you rely on logic and history to make decisions. If you lean more towards the feeling type, you may be quick to hop on trends, and you’ll thrive in a work environment where you can establish friendships with your co-workers. A judging personality type prefers a structured environment with set schedules and clear performance goals. The perceiving type needs an adaptable work culture, which may mean flexible work locations and work hours.

Holland’s Six Personality Types

A realistic personality type likes working with animals, tools, and machines and will avoid social activities. The investigative type would thrive in a position that involves studying complex subjects like math and science. The investigative personality type wouldn’t thrive in a sales position. If you are an artistic personality, you don’t like repetitive activities and have extraordinary creative abilities. If you are a social personality type, you enjoy helping people and may succeed in nursing or teaching. You also don’t like using machines or tools.

The enterprising type makes a great leader and is good at selling things and ideas. They don’t like to be heavily observed. Lastly, the conventional type enjoys working with numbers and machines, and they don’t prefer unstructured work environments. If you need someone good at keeping records, the “conventional” personality type is the ideal candidate for this.

At times, your personal perception of self is different than how others see you. For additional insight, you can ask co-workers and friends how they perceive your personality and what career they feel you’d thrive in. People with the same personality type work better together. Still, people of opposite personality types can form a dynamic team because they can complement each other and contribute something different to the overall goal.

Suppose you are fortunate to find a job that suits your skillset as well as your personality. In that case, you should consider yourself lucky because you’ll be getting paid to do what you love. It is vital to ensure that you enjoy the work that comes with the job and not just the subject matter and that work aligns with your values. Then, you’ll know it’s a good move because a great job will energize you and keep you sustained, and you’ll enjoy waking up in the morning to go to work!

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