Good Job Fit Profile
The Impact of Personality and Transferable Skills on Career Planning
Matching career decisions to personality indicators and transferable skills will increase job satisfaction and engagement.
Creating a comprehensive profile of what a good job fit looks like for you will help you to make the most out of your career development decisions. A good job fit profile defines job fit with your personality (Myers Brigg Type Indicator), transferable skills, values, work environment preferences and passions. Document the five elements of job fit and refer to this profile when making career decisions. First we'll explore the impact of your personality and transferable skill set on job fit.
Personality (Myers Briggs Type Indicator)
Taking a Myers Briggs assessment to determine your four letter type can help determine if a career path will fit with your personality. The Myers Briggs assessment was developed based on Jungian psychology and the interaction between preferences when using perception and judgement. The four letter code or MBTI that results from the assessment outlines preferences such as:
- Favourite World - Introversion (I) – a focus on inner world or Extroversion (E) a focus on outer world.
- Information Processing – Sensing (S) – relies on basic information gathered or Intuitive (N) – prefers to interpret and add meaning.
- Decision Making – Thinkers (T) – prefer to use logic and consistency or Feelers (F) – prefer to consider the people involved and the special circumstances.
- Structure – Judgers (J) – prefer to have things decided and planned or Perceivers – prefer to stay open to new information and opportunities.
Transferable Skills
Having a clear picture of the transferable skills you have or your competency strengths can also help when determining the correct career path.
Rate your abilities on each of the following skills on a scale from 1-3 (1 = poor, 2 = average, 3 = excel). Once you’ve rated the list of skills, then take the skills you rated a 3 and now rate them A-c (A = Really enjoy doing, B = okay, C = not my preference). After this rating of the sub group, now order the A’s in order of preference i.e. the top preference first. This will create your top 10 transferable skill list.
- Reading comprehension
- Writing
- Listening
- Speaking
- Thinking logically
- Distinguishing sound
- Seeing
- Tasting
- Touching
- Smelling
- Expressing and understanding verbal and written ideas
- Facilitating discussions
- Providing feedback
- Generating ideas
- Describing feelings
- Interviewing
- Editing
- Making predictions
- Remembering
- Problem solving
- Prioritizing tasks
- Managing time
- Analyzing information
- Goal setting
- Identifying resources
- Creating systems
- Using physical strength
- Enduring
- Balancing
- Reacting
- Teaching
- Creating trust
- Motivating, coaching
- Delegating
- Advocating for others
- Perceiving the feelings of others
- Respecting differences
- Team building
- Asserting
- Persuading
- Negotiating
- Reporting
- Researching
- Helping others
- Being aware of others
- Calculating
- Reasoning
- Using perception and spatial abilities
- Using equipment
- Programming
- Trouble-shooting
- Paying attention to detail
- Staying focused
- Selling
- Adapting to change
- Implementing ideas
This skill assessment was adapted from: Career Transfer Survey, ISEEK Skills Assessment and Skills Search
If you have comments or suggestions on this article, please start a discussion
If you liked this article, try:
Myers Briggs and Career Training
Judgers and Perceivers at Work (and links to the other three pairs of indicators)
Copyright © 2007 Joni Rose and Suite 101. All rights reserved. Any unauthorized use will constitute an infringement of copyright.
