Career Satisfiers — What YOU Need in a Job to be Happy
This lesson helps you identify the components you need in a job for it be satisfying. It will help you generate a list of viable career options, as well.
Distinguishing Other Types
Knowing your Type enhances your own self-awareness. But wouldn’t it be great if you could quickly identify key personality characteristics in others? You can. Read The Art of SpeedReading People. This companion Personality Type book teaches you to recognize other people’s Type by observing their appearance, demeanor, body language, occupation, vocabulary, and interests. This knowledge enables you to better communicate with all Types of people — based on the ways you each take in information.
What Makes a Career Satisfying to Different Types
So far, we’ve discussed the formula for career satisfaction and have gained a general sense of the kinds of things that are most important for each Type. But, as we’ve said before, everyone is a unique individual so your specific needs may vary greatly from another person of your Type.
How can Type needs vary? While most Extroverts need frequent interaction with people, for instance, some Extroverts need much more than others. The same is true for Introverts. Most need lots of time alone to think their thoughts, and many prefer to work by themselves for long periods of time. Still, other Introverts need more people interaction, and really enjoy working with others, especially in small groups. The same principle holds true for the other preferences: Sensing or Intuition, Thinking or Feeling, and Judging or Perceiving.
Although this course doesn’t extensively delve into how you use your functions in either the outer or inner world, you can read Chapter 6, “The Way You Do the Things You Do,” in Do What You Are to learn more about which strengths you share and those which you reserve for private use. This lesson explains how your dominant and auxiliary functions are used — be it extroverting or introverting them. You’ll find this information helpful and readily applicable to your search for rewarding work, as well as furthering your own sense of self-awareness.
This lesson concentrates on taking the Type process to the next level, really zeroing in on your specific career needs and what will bring you satisfaction. This lesson should help you find several potentially satisfying career options, too. We’ll begin the next section with “career satisfiers.”
Common Threads
In Part Three of your textbook, “Getting to Work,” you’ll find passages called “Common Threads” included in every Type chapter. Here you’ll find specific and important criteria directly related to career satisfaction based upon the individuals profiled in each Type chapter. I encourage you to read these passages — they can further your understanding of how certain Types prioritize the key elements of their personalities and translate these into ideal and rewarding jobs.
Your Blueprint for Success: Prioritizing Your Career Satisfiers
Common Type Preferences for Various Occupations
Police officers: ST (Sensing and Thinking) Fine artists: NF (Intuition and Feeling) Engineers: TJ: (Thinking and Judging) Nurses: SF (Sensing and Feeling) Accountants: IS (Introvert and Sensing) Computer specialists: IT (Introvert and Thinking) Accountants: SJ (Sensing and Judging) Carpenters: IS (Introvert and Sensing) Childcare workers: SF (Sensing and Feeling) Business executives: TJ (Thinking and Judging)
Identifying Your Career Satisfiers
You’ll find a list of “career satisfiers”* in each individual Type chapter in Do What You Are. What are career satisfiers? They are activities, key values, or ways of doing things that people need in a job in order to feel satisfied.
For example, for an INFJ, career satisfaction means (among other things) doing work that: “lets me consider and create new ideas and/or approaches to a variety of problems, mostly those that help others grow and develop.” While it’s true that this may not be the most important aspect of work for every INFJ, it will be for many because it makes use of the most important part of their Personality Type — their dominant and auxiliary functions.
For the opposite Type, ESTP career satisfaction means doing work that: “is active and full of adventure and fun, where things happen quickly, and where I am allowed to take risks and be alert to new opportunities.” So, it’s easy to see that people who are opposite Types would probably not find many of the same activities rewarding or satisfying — especially if they had to do them every day!
*Your list of career satisfiers can be found in your Type’s chapter following the section profiling people who’ve discovered satisfying work. The heading for the list is: “As an (your Type), career satisfaction means doing work that:”
Ten career satisfiers are listed for each type. They’re numbered to provide a structure, not to rank their importance. When people of the same Type review their list, they invariably recognize most — if not all — of the items on the list as important to them. They seldom agree on which are most important to them. This is as it should be for reasons already stated. Reviewing your list is an important exercise — an opportunity to understand what is most important to you, and a yardstick against which to evaluate potential career choices.
Also included in your Type chapter are profiles of people who’ve found jobs that they enjoy — through the right combination of Personality Type and career. Use these profiles as references. It’s certainly easier to learn from the mistakes of others, and comforting to know that many of us seek deeper rewards from our work. Some of the people profiled managed to find their perfect career through careful planning, while others worked their way through several jobs before discovering the job that was right for them.
Following these profiles, you’ll find an analysis of why each individual’s position works for their Type. All of this information should contribute to your understanding of yourself, emphasizing the qualities that are integral to your way of being. Armed with this information, it’s now time to prioritize your values.
Let’s start off with a simple exercise:
- Refer to your Type’s chapter in Do What You Are, and find your list of career satisfiers
- Review the list and pick out the five you consider most important
- Next rank these five from most to least important
If you’re considering a job that includes all five of your top satisfiers, you can almost be assured that you’ll find the work fulfilling. If, on the other hand, it contains few of your top five satisfiers, then it will most likely be frustrating and stressful.
Should you need convincing that different Types have different satisfiers, take a look at the list for your opposite Type; try imagining doing a job involving this Type’s activities and values. Would you find your opposite Type’s work rewarding?
Now that you know what you need in a career to find it satisfying, it’s time to identify the possibilities that are worth your personal consideration. Refer to your Type chapter in Do What You Are. You’ll find between 75 and 100 potentially satisfying careers for your Type. To help you narrow down the possibilities, the list is divided into broad categories such as business, sales, social services, health care, education, technology, etc. If you’re interested in a particular area, you should start there and review the careers listed. If you’re not sure, you may want to review the entire list.
It is very likely that you will find at least a few, and possibly several, good careers to consider. But how do you know if these choices are a good match for your Personality Type? Remember the list you put together at the beginning of this section? Here’s where your prioritized career satisfiers come in handy. Use this list as you evaluate potential career possibilities.
Moving Forward
This lesson should have helped you identify one, two, or several potentially satisfying careers. In the next and final lesson, you’ll learn how to maximize your chances for a successful job search by capitalizing on your own natural strengths.
ASSIGNMENT: Your Career Satisfiers
Assignments are designed to give you the chance to do further reading in the course text and to practice applying the knowledge learned in activities and class discussions. We encourage you to discuss the assignments with your instructor and classmates.
- From your prioritized list of career satisfiers, take the top three. (This list is located in your Type chapter).
- Make a list of potential career choices. (You may want to start with no more than five.)
- As you consider each choice, review the top three satisfiers and ask yourself if the job you’ve selected includes these.
- If you don’t know enough about a particular job to answer question 3, then find out! You can do this through informational interviews, reading, or Internet research.
To specifically help users of Do What You Are with their job search, a special Web site has been set up, http://www.DWYA.com. Visit this site for all kinds of job search resources.
Next, try this exercise. It’s designed to help you see the common threads or constant likes and dislikes that may run throughout your past positions:
- Down the left-hand margin of a piece of paper, write down a few (as many as five) jobs that you have had. They can be full-time, part-time, paid, or volunteer. Leave several spaces on the paper between each job.
- Now spend a few minutes thinking about the most and least satisfying aspects associated with each job listed.
- See if you can figure out what common threads ran through the jobs you liked best and the ones you liked least.
