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Already a classic in the genre, DoWhat You Are has helped hundreds of thousands of people find truly satisfying work. Do What You Are introduces Personality Type - how you process information, make decisions and interact with the world around you - and shows you which of the 16 types describes you best. It lists dozens of occupations that are popular with people of your type. Then, using workbook exercises and real-life examples to highlight the strengths and pitfalls of each personality type, it shows you step-by-step how touse your unique strengths to customise your job search,ensuring the best results in the shortest period of time.And if you plan to stay in your job, Do What You Are provides savvy advice for getting the most out of your current career.Every other career guide offers generic, one-size-fits-all advice. But because it is based on personality type, Do What You Are helps you determine what you need to be more successful and satisfied.
It's important to find the right job. Despite the universal fantasies of winning the lottery, buying expensive cars and homes, and doing fascinating work with interesting people in exotic places, the sober reality is that most of us have to work, hard, for a long time. If you spend forty to fifty years-not an unlikely scenario -working at jobs you'd rather not be doing, you are in truth throwing away a large part of your life. This is unnecessary and sad, especially since a career you can love is within your reach.
What Is the Ideal Job, Anyway?
The right job enhances your life. It is personally fulfilling because it nourishes the most important aspects of your personality. It suits the way you like to do things and reflects who you are. It lets you use your innate strengths in ways that come naturally to you, and it doesn't force you to do things you don't do well (at least, not often!).
How can you tell if you're in the right job? Here are some general guidelines. If you're not employed, keep them in mind as you search for your ideal job. If you are employed, see how your present job measures up. If you're in the right job, you should:
Look forward to going to work
Feel energized (most of the time) by what you do
Feel your contribution is respected and appreciated
Feel proud when describing your work to others
Enjoy and respect the people you work with
Feel optimistic about your future
We'd like to make something clear right away. It's important to recognize that there are as many different paths to career satisfaction as there are happily employed people. There is no one "ideal job" to which everyone should aspire. But there is an ideal job for you.
There are an infinite number of variables in the workplace. To achieve career satisfaction, you need to figure out what your preferences are and then find a job that accommodates them. Some jobs provide warmth and stability; some are risky and challenging. Some are structured, some aren't. One job may require a lot of socializing, while another may require quiet concentration. Do you know exactly what kind of job suits you best? Have you ever even stopped to think about it?
It's a good thing there are so many different kinds of jobs available, since people are so different in their abilities and priorities. Some people enjoy making high-level management decisions; others simply aren't suited to making these kinds of choices. For some people, money is a top priority. They want to make lots of it! Others, however, want most to make a contribution to society; the money is less important. Some people are perfectly comfortable with facts and details and statistics, while others get a headache just trying to read a profit-and-loss statement. And so on, and so on!
When we were hired to conduct a series of personal effectiveness training workshops for job placement professionals (also known as executive recruiters or headhunters), we came face-to-face with a dramatic example of how a job that is perfect for one person can be perfectly wrong for another.
We were training several headhunters who worked for the same recruiting firm. Their job was to find applicants to fill positions at a variety of companies by calling people who were already employed and convincing them to apply for these positions. If an applicant successfully switched jobs and stayed with the new company for at least three months, the placement counselor received a generous commission. It was a highly competitive, results-oriented job that required excellent communication skills and the ability to fill as many positions as possible as quickly as possible.
One of the placement counselors we trained, Arthur, couldn't have been happier. He loved the fast pace of the job. Arthur was a high-energy person, a great talker who enjoyed meeting lots of people over the phone. He used his excellent reasoning skills to persuade other people to make a move to a new opportunity, and he got a lot of satisfaction out of meeting his goal and then some. Arthur knew and understood the formula: for every fifty calls he made, he'd get ten people who were interested, and out of these ten, he might make two or three placements. Arthur's "thick skin" helped him in the job because he often heard "no" during the day, but he never took the rejection personally. What Arthur found really energizing was closing the sale and moving on to the next challenge. He worked hard all day long and made a lot of money.
For Julie, it was a totally different story. Like Arthur, Julie enjoyed talking to lots of people all day and establishing relationships with them. However, unlike Arthur, Julie wanted to help each person find the job that would be really right for him or her. She liked to look for opportunities that would enable her applicants to grow and experience personal success and satisfaction. Julie had been cautioned repeatedly by her supervisor about spending too much time on the phone with each individual rather than quickly determining whether or not someone was interested in a position and then moving on to the next prospect. Rather than filling jobs, Julie was counseling clients. The fact that she could make a great deal of money did not motivate her. She found little reward in simply filling a job opening with a person who probably wasn't right for the position but whom she had successfully pressured into giving it a try.
When we returned six weeks later for a follow-up training session, we weren't surprised to learn that Julie had quit.
People are different in their needs, desires, interests, skills, values, and personalities. Unless you and I have similar personality types, work that you find intrinsically enjoyable is likely to have a different, even opposite, effect on me. Different jobs and even different aspects of jobs satisfy different types of people, a fundamental truth which has, in our view, not been fully appreciated by career advisers or career manuals -until now.
To Suit Yourself, You Must Know Yourself
As we said earlier, the secret of career satisfaction lies in doing what you enjoy most. A few lucky people discover this secret early in life, but most of us are caught in a kind of psychological wrestling match, torn between what we think we can do, what we (or others) feel we ought to do, and what we think we want to do. Our advice? Concentrate instead on who you are, and the rest will fall into place.
Not long ago, a friend called us. She calls all the time -there's a phone in practically every room of her home - but this was more than a social call. Ellen was mad. A co-worker of hers whom she regarded as "more boring than a turnip" had been given a prime assignment designing a complex computer system for a growing retail chain. Ellen, who had been hired just six months before to do exactly this kind of work, was stunned. Obviously something was wrong - but what?
Ellen had evaluated her new job with the utmost care before accepting it. She had both the analytical ability and the background experience the job required. She was well liked and found the technical aspects of the job challenging. She'd had a series of unsatisfying jobs before, but this one was going to be different. So why was her golden opportunity turning to brass? Worse ... why was the turnip doing better than she?
We thought we knew the answer. Ellen's co-worker, as she described him, was absolutely content to work long hours in relative isolation, quietly but steadily getting the job done. He wasn't a lot of fun around the office, but he was intelligent and dependable, and he never made waves. He was, in fact, the perfect person for the job -and he was happy doing it.
Ellen, on the other hand, loved the stimulation of rallying her staff for an urgent deadline and enjoyed talking to clients about their needs. She was terrific at explaining the intricacies of computer systems and could charm people into doing remarkable things. She liked going to industry conferences, and she didn't mind spending all day in meetings. Unfortunately, none of these activities were a significant part of her new position.
It was clear to us that even though Ellen could handle her responsibilities adequately, the job required more solitude, concentration, and what we call "task focus" than she liked. As she talked things through (and some people are like that -they like to think out loud), she began to recognize that in all her careful planning she had overlooked just one thing ... her own personality!
At this point in our conversation, Ellen panicked. She was afraid she had spent eight years in the wrong career. No wonder she'd found her previous jobs less than thrilling! However, she wasn't actually in the wrong field-she was just working in the wrong end of it. Ellen moved over into the sales division of the same company, and today she is thriving in her new position.
Perhaps a little experiment will clarify what we're talking about. On a piece of paper, or even in the margin, write your signature. Done? OK. Now do the same thing, using your opposite hand. (If you just groaned, you are not alone; most people have a similar reaction.) How did it feel when you used your preferred hand? Most people use words like "natural," "easy," "quick," "effortless." How did it feel when you used the opposite hand? Some typical responses: "slow," "awkward," "hard," "draining," "tiring," "it took much longer," "it required more energy and concentration."
We think that handedness is a good way to think about using your natural strengths in your work. The use of your preferred hand is comfortable and assured. If you were forced to use your other hand, you could no doubt develop your abilities- but using that hand would never be as effortless as using your preferred hand, and the finished product would never be as skillfully executed.
The Traditional Approach - and Why It Doesn't Work
Career professionals have long been aware that certain kinds of people are better at certain types of jobs, and that it's important to find as good a match as possible between the person you are and the kind of job you choose. The problem is that the traditional approach doesn't take enough considerations into account. The conventional analysis looks at only the "big three": your abilities, interests, and values.
As career counselors ourselves, we recognize the importance of these factors. Certainly you need the right skills to perform a job well. It also helps if you're interested in your work. And it's important to feel good about what you do. But this is far from the whole picture! Your personality has additional dimensions that also need to be recognized. As a general rule, the more aspects of your personality you match to your work, the more satisfied you'll be on the job.
As we saw with Ellen, a vital consideration - often overlooked - is how much stimulation from other people you need in your work. Are you more energized by being around lots of people most of the time, or are you more comfortable in small groups, talking one-on-one, or maybe working alone? You can see what a profound impact this preference can have upon your choice of a job. Other important factors include the kind of information you naturally notice, the way you make decisions, and whether you prefer to live in a more structured or a more spontaneous way. These preferences reflect mental processes that are basic to every human being but that clearly differ from one personality type to another. Trying to find the best job for you without taking these preferences into account is like trying to find a tiny island in the vast ocean without a chart. With luck, you might get there- but you might not!
Joanne was a client of ours who came to us in a career crisis. At the age of thirty, she was at the end of her rope. After seven years of teaching math at the elementary school level she was completely burned out and was wondering if she was in the right career.
Being a teacher had seemed the most natural thing in the world for Joanne. The eldest of four, she had grown up taking care of children. She had excelled in math throughout school and was interested in education. Joanne had received some career counseling early on, and all the signs had seemed to point in the same direction. In high school, and again in college, Joanne had taken the standard career aptitude tests and assessment instruments to determine her skills, her interests, and her values. Each time, career counselors had encouraged her to obtain a teaching degree and to teach math to young kids. Everything seemed perfect.
After her first challenging year, Joanne became increasingly frustrated with the rigid structure of the public elementary school setting. She disliked the endless rules both she and the students had to live by as well as many of the rules she had to enforce. She hated having to prepare lesson plans six weeks in advance that left her unable to respond to the interests of the children and to her own creative inspirations. She found the standard workbooks inane, and the busywork that both she and her students were required to do left her drained and irritated. Joanne felt very isolated because her colleagues all seemed to have interests and values that were not like hers, and she began to discover that she missed the intellectual stimulation of working on challenging projects with her intellectual equals. She had tried switching grades and even changing schools, but nothing seemed to help.
After talking with us, Joanne was relieved to discover that she wasn't crazy; she was just in the wrong career. As her early counselors had determined, Joanne had many of the right qualifications for teaching. However, the things she found most stimulating- intellectual challenge, opportunities to raise her level of competence, and creative innovation-were totally lacking in her job. Moreover, the public school setting forced her to work in a highly structured and detailed way, which was not at all the way she liked to operate.
Luckily, the solution quickly became clear. We suggested that Joanne return to school and obtain a master's degree in order to teach math- still a thriving interest of hers - in higher education. In a college setting, she would be able to enjoy much more flexibility in her work schedule and obligations, teach more complicated courses, and be part of an intellectual environment.
Joanne did get a master's degree, and shortly thereafter she accepted a position in the math department of a small college. Today she teaches graduate-level math courses while continuing her studies toward obtaining a Ph.D.
There's also another reason why the traditional approach to career counseling is inadequate. The "big three"- your abilities, interests, and values- all change with age. As you gain work experience, you gain new skills. As you live longer, you may pick up new interests and discard old ones. And often your goals are different later in life than they were earlier. You can keep changing your career according to where you find yourself at a particular point in time, or you can base your choice from the beginning on a deeper understanding of who you are(and who you'll always be!).
Alex is a thirty-nine-year-old internist with a successful practice in a Chicago suburb. While he was growing up it was always assumed that he would follow in the family tradition and become a doctor. Through twelve years of college, medical school, internship, and residency, he never allowed himself to question his decision. After practicing medicine for five years, he has come to a painful conclusion with far-reaching implications for himself and his family: he doesn't want to be a doctor any more. What's more, he realizes he probably never did. Alex's predicament is not unusual. If you doubt this, pick any ten people you know and ask them, "If you could have any job you wanted, what would it be?" Our experience as career counselors suggests that at least half would rather be doing something else.
Most of us make our most important career decisions when we are least prepared to do so. The decisions we make early in life set into motion a chain of events that will influence our entire lives. Yet when we're young we have little or no experience making job choices, and we tend to have an overabundance of idealistic enthusiasm, plus a reckless lack of concern for future consequences. We haven't lived long enough to see ourselves tested in a variety of situations, and we're highly susceptible to bad advice from well-intentioned parents, teachers, counselors, or friends. No wonder so many people get off to a poor start. The solution? To achieve as great a degree of self-awareness as you can before making any decision with long-lasting career consequences. Happily, "finding yourself" does not require a guru, a lot of money, or any period of experimentation.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Do What You Are, Fourth Edition by Paul D. Tieger Barbara Barron-Tieger Copyright © 2007 by Paul D. Tieger and Barbara Barron-Tieger. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
The Secret of Career Satisfaction
It's important to find the right job. Despite the universal fantasies of winning the lottery, buying expensive cars and homes, and doing fascinating work with interesting people in exotic places, the sober reality is that most of us have to work, hard, for a long time. If you spend forty to fifty years - not an unlikely scenario - working at jobs you'd rather not be doing, you are in truth throwing away a large part of your life. This is unnecessary and sad, especially since a career you can love is within your reach.
What Is the Ideal Job, Anyway?
The right job enhances your life. It is personally fulfilling because it nourishes the most important aspects of your personality. It suits the way you like to do things and reflects who you are. It lets you use your innate strengths in ways that come naturally to you, and it doesn't force you to do things you don't do well (at least, not often!).
How can you tell if you're in the right job? Here are some general guidelines. If you're not employed, keep them in mind as you search for your ideal job. If you are employed, see how your present job measures up.
If you're in the right job, you should:
We'd like to make something clear right away. It's important to recognize that there are as many different paths to career satisfaction as there are happily employed people. There is no one "ideal job" to which everyone should aspire. But there is an ideal job for you.
There are an infinite number of variables in the workplace. To achieve career satisfaction, you need to figure out what your preferences are and then find a job that accommodates them. Some jobs provide warmth and stability; some are risky and challenging. Some are structured, some aren't. One job may require a lot of socializing, while another may require quiet concentration. Do you know exactly what kind of job suits you best? Have you ever even stopped to think about it?
It's a good thing there are so many different kinds of jobs available, since people are so different in their abilities and priorities. Some people enjoy making high-level management decisions; others simply aren't suited to making these kinds of choices. For some people, money is a top priority. They want to make lots of it! Others, however, want most to make a contribution to society; the money is less important. Some people are perfectly comfortable with facts and details and statistics, while others get a headache just trying to read a profit-and-loss statement. And so on, and so on!
When we were hired to conduct a series of personal effectiveness training workshops for job placement professionals (also known as executive recruiters or headhunters), we came face-to-face with a dramatic example of how a job that is perfect for one person can be perfectly wrong for another.
We were training several headhunters who worked for the same recruiting firm. Their job was to find applicants to fill positions at a variety of companies by calling people who were already employed and convincing them to apply for these positions. If an applicant successfully switched jobs and stayed with the new company for at least three months, the placement counselor received a generous commission. It was a highly competitive, results-oriented job that required excellent communication skills and the ability to fill as many positions as possible as quickly as possible.
One of the placement counselors we trained, Arthur, couldn't have been happier. He loved the fast pace of the job. Arthur was a high-energy person, a great talker who enjoyed meeting lots of people over the phone. He used his excellent reasoning skills to persuade other people to make a move to a new opportunity, and he got a lot of satisfaction out of meeting his goal and then some. Arthur knew and understood the formula: for every fifty calls he made, he'd get ten people who were interested, and out of these ten, he might make two or three placements. Arthur's "thick skin" helped him in the job because he often heard "no" during the day, but he never took the rejection personally. What Arthur found really energizing was closing the sale and moving on to the next challenge. He worked hard all day long and made a lot of money.
For Julie, it was a totally different story. Like Arthur, Julie enjoyed talking to lots of people all day and establishing relationships with them. However, unlike Arthur, Julie wanted to help each person find the job that would be really right for him or her. She liked to look for opportunities that would enable her applicants to grow and experience personal success and satisfaction. Julie had been cautioned repeatedly by her supervisor about spending too much time on the phone with each individual rather than quickly determining whether or not someone was interested in a position and then moving on to the next prospect. Rather than filling jobs, Julie was counseling clients. The fact that she could make a great deal of money did not motivate her. She found little reward in simply filling a job opening with a person who probably wasn't right for the position but whom she had successfully pressured into giving it a try.
When we returned six weeks later for a follow-up training session, we weren't surprised to learn that Julie had quit.
People are different in their needs, desires, interests, skills, values, and personalities. Unless you and I have similar personality types, work that you find intrinsically enjoyable is likely to have a different, even opposite, effect on me. Different jobs and even different aspects of jobs satisfy different types of people, a fundamental truth which has, in our view, not been fully appreciated by career advisers or career manuals - until now.
To Suit Yourself, You Must Know Yourself
As we said earlier, the secret of career satisfaction lies in doing what you enjoy most. A few lucky people discover this secret early in life, but most of us are caught in a kind of psychological wrestling match, torn between what we think we can do, what we (or others) feel we ought to do, and what we think we want to do. Our advice? Concentrate instead on who you are, and the rest will fall into place.
Not long ago, a friend called us. She calls all the time - there's a phone in practically every room of her home - but this was more than a social call. Ellen was mad. A co-worker of hers whom she regarded as "more boring than a turnip" had been given a prime assignment designing a complex computer system for a growing retail chain. Ellen, who had been hired just six months before to do exactly this kind of work, was stunned. Obviously something was wrong - but what?
Ellen had evaluated her new job with the utmost care before accepting it. She had both the analytical ability and the background experience the job required. She was well liked and found the technical aspects of the job challenging. She'd had a series of unsatisfying jobs before, but this one was going to be different. So why was her golden opportunity turning to brass? Worse... why was the turnip doing better than she?
We thought we knew the answer. Ellen's co-worker, as she described him, was absolutely content to work long hours in relative isolation, quietly but steadily getting the job done. He wasn't a lot of fun around the office, but he was intelligent and dependable, and he never made waves. He was, in fact, the perfect person for the job - and he was happy doing it.
Ellen, on the other hand, loved the stimulation of rallying her staff for an urgent deadline and enjoyed talking to clients about their needs. She was terrific at explaining the intricacies of computer systems and could charm people into doing remarkable things. She liked going to industry conferences, and she didn't mind spending all day in meetings. Unfortunately, none of these activities were a significant part of her new position.
It was clear to us that even though Ellen could handle her responsibilities adequately, the job required more solitude, concentration, and what we call "task focus" than she liked. As she talked things through (and some people are like that -they like to think out loud), she began to recognize that in all her careful planning she had overlooked just one thing... her own personality!
At this point in our conversation, Ellen panicked. She was afraid she had spent eight years in the wrong career. No wonder she'd found her previous jobs less than thrilling! However, she wasn't actually in the wrong field - she was just working in the wrong end of it. Ellen moved over into the sales division of the same company, and today she is thriving in her new position.
Perhaps a little experiment will clarify what we're talking about. On a piece of paper, or even in the margin, write your signature. Done? OK. Now do the same thing, using your opposite hand. (If you just groaned, you are not alone; most people have a similar reaction.) How did it feel when you used your preferred hand? Most people use words like "natural," "easy," "quick," "effortless." How did it feel when you used the opposite hand? Some typical responses: "slow," "awkward," "hard," "draining," "tiring," "it took much longer," "it required more energy and concentration."
We think that handedness is a good way to think about using your natural strengths in your work. The use of your preferred hand is comfortable and assured. If you were forced to use your other hand, you could no doubt develop your abilities - but using that hand would never be as effortless as using your preferred hand, and the finished product would never be as skillfully executed.
The Traditional Approach - and Why It Doesn't Work
Career professionals have long been aware that certain kinds of people are better at certain types of jobs, and that it's important to find as good a match as possible between the person you are and the kind of job you choose. The problem is that the traditional approach doesn't take enough considerations into account. The conventional analysis looks at only the "big three": your abilities, interests, and values.
As career counselors ourselves, we recognize the importance of these factors. Certainly you need the right skills to perform a job well. It also helps if you're interested in your work. And it's important to feel good about what you do. But this is far from the whole picture! Your personality has additional dimensions that also need to be recognized. As a general rule, the more aspects of your personality you match to your work, the more satisfied you'll be on the job.
As we saw with Ellen, a vital consideration - often overlooked - is how much stimulation from other people you need in your work. Are you more energized by being around lots of people most of the time, or are you more comfortable in small groups, talking one-on-one, or maybe working alone? You can see what a profound impact this preference can have upon your choice of a job. Other important factors include the kind of information you naturally notice, the way you make decisions, and whether you prefer to live in a more structured or a more spontaneous way. These preferences reflect mental processes that are basic to every human being but that clearly differ from one personality type to another. Trying to find the best job for you without taking these preferences into account is like trying to find a tiny island in the vast ocean without a chart. With luck, you might get there - but you might not!
Joanne was a client of ours who came to us in a career crisis. At the age of thirty, she was at the end of her rope. After seven years of teaching math at the elementary school level she was completely burned out and was wondering if she was in the right career.
Being a teacher had seemed the most natural thing in the world for Joanne. The eldest of four, she had grown up taking care of children. She had excelled in math throughout school and was interested in education. Joanne had received some career counseling early on, and all the signs had seemed to point in the same direction. In high school, and again in college, Joanne had taken the standard career aptitude tests and assessment instruments to determine her skills, her interests, and her values. Each time, career counselors had encouraged her to obtain a teaching degree and to teach math to young kids. Everything seemed perfect.
After her first challenging year, Joanne became increasingly frustrated with the rigid structure of the public elementary school setting. She disliked the endless rules both she and the students had to live by as well as many of the rules she had to enforce. She hated having to prepare lesson plans six weeks in advance that left her unable to respond to the interests of the children and to her own creative inspirations. She found the standard workbooks inane, and the busywork that both she and her students were required to do left her drained and irritated. Joanne felt very isolated because her colleagues all seemed to have interests and values that were not like hers, and she began to discover that she missed the intellectual stimulation of working on challenging projects with her intellectual equals. She had tried switching grades and even changing schools, but nothing seemed to help.
After talking with us, Joanne was relieved to discover that she wasn't crazy; she was just in the wrong career. As her early counselors had determined, Joanne had many of the right qualifications for teaching. However, the things she found most stimulating - intellectual challenge, opportunities to raise her level of competence, and creative innovation - were totally lacking in her job. Moreover, the public school setting forced her to work in a highly structured and detailed way, which was not at all the way she liked to operate.
Luckily, the solution quickly became clear. We suggested that Joanne return to school and obtain a master's degree in order to teach math - still a thriving interest of hers - in higher education. In a college setting, she would be able to enjoy much more flexibility in her work schedule and obligations, teach more complicated courses, and be part of an intellectual environment.
Joanne did get a master's degree, and shortly thereafter she accepted a position in the math department of a small college. Today she teaches graduate-level math courses while continuing her studies toward obtaining a Ph.D.
There's also another reason why the traditional approach to career counseling is inadequate. The "big three"- your abilities, interests, and values - all change with age. As you gain work experience, you gain new skills. As you live longer, you may pick up new interests and discard old ones. And often your goals are different later in life than they were earlier. You can keep changing your career according to where you find yourself at a particular point in time, or you can base your choice from the beginning on a deeper understanding of who you are (and who you'll always be!).
Alex is a thirty-nine-year-old internist with a successful practice in a Chicago suburb. While he was growing up it was always assumed that he would follow in the family tradition and become a doctor. Through twelve years of college, medical school, internship, and residency, he never allowed himself to question his decision. After practicing medicine for five years, he has come to a painful conclusion with far-reaching implications for himself and his family: he doesn't want to be a doctor any more. What's more, he realizes he probably never did.
Alex's predicament is not unusual. If you doubt this, pick any ten people you know and ask them, "If you could have any job you wanted, what would it be?" Our experience as career counselors suggests that at least half would rather be doing something else.
Most of us make our most important career decisions when we are least prepared to do so. The decisions we make early in life set into motion a chain of events that will influence our entire lives. Yet when we're young we have little or no experience making job choices, and we tend to have an overabundance of idealistic enthusiasm, plus a reckless lack of concern for future consequences. We haven't lived long enough to see ourselves tested in a variety of situations, and we're highly susceptible to bad advice from well-intentioned parents, teachers, counselors, or friends. No wonder so many people get off to a poor start.
The solution? To achieve as great a degree of self-awareness as you can before making any decision with long-lasting career consequences. Happily, "finding yourself" does not require a guru, a lot of money, or any period of experimentation.
You Can't Help It - You Were Born That Way!
Since the right job flows directly out of all the elements of your personality type, you need to spend some time figuring out what makes you tick. By making a conscious effort to discover the "real you," you can learn how to focus your natural strengths and inclinations into a career you can love for as long as you choose to work. This is where Type is so helpful. It provides a systematic, effective way to evaluate both your strong points and your probable weaknesses or blind spots. Once you have these figured out, you'll know how to make sure you are always operating from a position of strength.
Each one of us has a distinct personality, like an innate blueprint that stays with us for life. We are born with a personality type, we go through life with that type, and when we are laid to rest (hopefully at the end of a long and fruitful life), it is with the same type.
Now you are probably wondering, "Wait a minute. I might be one way sometimes, but at other times I'm a very different person. Doesn't the situation influence my personality type?"
The answer is no, it doesn't. Do we change our behavior in certain situations? Certainly! Most human beings have a tremendous repertoire of behaviors available to them. We couldn't function very successfully if we didn't. Sure, we act differently at work than we do at home, and it makes a difference whether we're with strangers, close friends, at a ball park, or at a funeral. But people don't change their basic personalities with every new door they walk through.
All this is not to say that environmental factors are not extremely important; they are. Parents, siblings, teachers, and economic, social, and political circumstances all can play a role in determining what directions our lives take. Some people are forced by circumstances to act in a certain way until they are literally "not themselves" (more about this later. But we all start off with a particular personality type that predisposes us to behave in certain ways for our entire lives.
If you are skeptical about the idea that personality type is inborn, take a look at different children from the same family. These could be your own children, your siblings, or even children from a family you know. Do they have different personalities? You bet they do, and often the differences are apparent from birth (or even in utero).
The concept of "personality type" is not new. People have always been aware of the similarities and differences between individuals, and over the centuries many systems and models for understanding or categorizing these differences have been developed. Today, our understanding of human behavior has been expanded to such a degree that we are now able to accurately identify sixteen distinctly different personality types.
Finding the right job for each of these distinct personalities may seem like an awesome task. However, all sixteen personality types do function in the world. As we will see, it is possible to identify your own personality type and the types of others, to understand why certain types flourish in certain kinds of jobs, and to clarify why people find career satisfaction in different ways.
Copyright (c) 1992, 1995, 2000 by Paul D. Tieger and Barbara Barron-Tieger
Choosing a career based on personality type is not a new concept; in fact, the first edition of DO WHAT YOU ARE was released in 1992 (and I can actually remember reading it when I was a junior in high school). In this, the fourth edition, hopefully even more teens will be exposed to this great resource. <BR/><BR/>The authors, both experts in personality type and career development, put forth the idea that choosing a career path based on your individual personality will be beneficial to your success. For those worried that discovering your personality type is a difficult process, don't despair, because the authors make it quite easy. <BR/><BR/>There are four dimensions to personality type: <BR/><BR/>Whether you are extroverted or introverted. <BR/>Whether you notice things by sensing or intuition. <BR/>Whether you make decisions by thinking or feeling. <BR/>Whether you prefer to live by judging or perceiving. <BR/><BR/>Once you've discovered the answer to each of these four questions, you'll be able to discover which of the sixteen possible personality types you fall into. Once you do, you can quickly skip to the relevant section in the book. <BR/><BR/>In my case, my personality is ESTJ - or extroverted, sensing, thinking, judging. According to the authors of DO WHAT YOU ARE, my strengths lie in organization, being objective, working alone, and being a good decision maker. My weaknesses are also outlined, and include impatience with those who don't follow procedures, a tendency to overrun people, and difficulty listening to opposing viewpoints. Some suggestions for careers, based on my personality type, are as a teacher, government employee, sales, supervisor, or a manager. <BR/><BR/>Of course the above is not a full list of the strengths, weaknesses, or recommended career choices for those whose personality type is ESTJ - the above is merely a sampling. But I can say with truth that DO WHAT YOU ARE can be a great resource for those beginning their search for a career choice. I can agree that ESTJ is definitely my personality type (faults and all!) and have no doubt that this book has the power to help everyone looking to correctly match their strengths to the perfect career.
6 out of 6 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted November 16, 2009
This book is by far the best of its kind that I have come across. Other career-guide books manage to only connect careers with people on a superficial level, based on criteria such as your ability, aptitude, what specific skills you possess, etc. 'Do What You Are' forces you to find out more about yourself (traits I never realized I have) before selecting a career. Your personality, in conjunction with your interests, makes the self-discovery process an integral part of your final decision in the end. After reading this, it would be a disservice to anyone looking for what I ultimately found to recommend another book. I found career options that I never knew existed, had never even considered, and ones that I previously thought I wasn't capable of doing. 'Do What Your Are' knows no equal, and neither does its reasonable price. Get it and I can assure you that you won't regret it.
4 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.over_par
Posted May 22, 2009
I was laid off earlier in the year and since have found another job. But, in that time I read this book to try and see what fits my personality the best. The good thing is I learned that my current career already catered to my strengths. So I guess you can say I lucked out on my career path. But I was completely open to other possiblities (if the shoe were to fit).
While you are reading this book and learning career paths for each personality you may not have the "light bulb" go off in your head. But, this book will get your brain thinking and deciding what is important to you and your career. And that may be just as helpful.
In this down economy, if you have the means, there is no better time than the present to start doing or pursuing what fits you best.
3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.kola2005
Posted February 9, 2009
I enjoyed reading this book. It provides useful career advice for each of the personality types and lists specific careers that are popular with each. I recommend this book for anyone interested in learning more about personality type or for anyone looking for a new career.
3 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Minnesota_knitter
Posted March 16, 2009
As someone who is looking for a change, this book tells where your strengths are in relation to who you are and gives ideas of jobs I'd never even heard of, much less considered for myself.
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted October 21, 2002
I felt the book was very powerful in my quest to find the career I was meant to be in. I would recommend it to anyone who is lost in their current job and needs some guidance on finding the right one. I just happened to walk by the book when I was feeling lost in my career, which I'm no longer in. It helped me to see where I belong. Definitely thumbs up!
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Frank_opinion
Posted December 14, 2010
I saw all the positive reviews for this book and thought "why not give it a shot?". But, the analysis-paralysis around personality types and job fits was way too much that is not even practical beyond a point. Come on, you just cannot leave a job in this economy to pursue what you are!!!!!! Instead, I prefer a book that teaches me how to excel instead in my current workplace. I chanced upon another book titled "The Career Journey" by author Ram Iyer. For some reason, that book is not listed here but I ordered from Amazon. It was really one cool book with a lot of practical suggestions and tips on how to excel at your current work environment and rise up the corporate ladder.
1 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Milkboy33
Posted July 28, 2010
Provides a wonderful insight into oneself and people in general. Good guide in helping someone who is looking to start or change careers. Highly recommend!
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted May 30, 2010
The good people at Hound understand how difficult it can be to find a job in this day and age and they have done the most helpful thing possible organizing those job listings in a central location. With the advanced network that Hound utilizes, users can narrow or widen their searches to include or exclude certain listings by entering keywords, locations, and company names in accordance with what they are looking for
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.HRexpert
Posted August 15, 2009
I was disappointed in this book. The author should have included a quick Test to determine your profile since I do not think the average person can identify their personality by just reading the traits. We often do not see ourselves accurately. I have taken a myers briggs in the past but the chapter on the profile did not tell me anything new that I had not learned from previous test results. I think the book would be more effective if it gave the test and then the additional profile data of how to relate those results to your personality. I would not recommend this book.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted October 21, 2007
Choosing a career based on personality type is not a new concept in fact, the first edition of DO WHAT YOU ARE was released in 1992 (and I can actually remember reading it when I was a junior in high school). In this, the fourth edition, hopefully even more teens will be exposed to this great resource. The authors, both experts in personality type and career development, put forth the idea that choosing a career path based on your individual personality will be beneficial to your success. For those worried that discovering your personality type is a difficult process, don¿t despair, because the authors make it quite easy. There are four dimensions to personality type: Whether you are extroverted or introverted. Whether you notice things by sensing or intuition. Whether you make decisions by thinking or feeling. Whether you prefer to live by judging or perceiving. Once you¿ve discovered the answer to each of these four questions, you¿ll be able to discover which of the sixteen possible personality types you fall into. Once you do, you can quickly skip to the relevant section in the book. In my case, my personality is ESTJ ¿ or extroverted, sensing, thinking, judging. According to the authors of DO WHAT YOU ARE, my strengths lie in organization, being objective, working alone, and being a good decision maker. My weaknesses are also outlined, and include impatience with those who don¿t follow procedures, a tendency to overrun people, and difficulty listening to opposing viewpoints. Some suggestions for careers, based on my personality type, are as a teacher, government employee, sales, supervisor, or a manager. Of course the above is not a full list of the strengths, weaknesses, or recommended career choices for those whose personality type is ESTJ ¿ the above is merely a sampling. But I can say with truth that DO WHAT YOU ARE can be a great resource for those beginning their search for a career choice. I can agree that ESTJ is definitely my personality type (faults and all!) and have no doubt that this book has the power to help everyone looking to correctly match their strengths to the perfect career. **Reviewed by: Jennifer Wardrip, aka 'The Genius'
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted April 29, 2003
This is a good book for people who do not trust themselves to find their way. However, by categorizing yourself by a personality type, you may limit yourself. I believe in being the best I can be and trusting myself to choose what is right for me. I read Optimal Thinking six months ago and defined my ultimate purpose and most important goals and then took the most constructive actions. I am now in my dream job and am glad I did it by relying on myself to choose what is best for me. You can do it too. Use the good information in this book to choose what is best for you without boxing yourself into a category!
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted February 14, 2003
This is an amazing book! It has helped me so much! I am a college student and was lost trying to find a major, but I found this book and am on my way to graduating in the correct field!
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted October 16, 2001
I bought this book on recommendation from a friend. This book hit right on with jobs that I really enjoy. It allowed me to explore and think about things that would contribute to 'the ideal' job for me. I recently was considering a job change and I pulled this book back out to see where I should begin. It has helped me focus on what job would help me to be excited to get up in the morning to go to work. On another note- I have bought this book for several friends that wanted to find job satisfaction- it was a great resource for them. I have also bought this book for friends that are graduating from high school or college. graduate.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted February 3, 2000
I recently changed careers from graphic artist to fiction writer and found myself wondering if I had lost my MIND! 'Do What You Are' not only established for me that I had made the right choice, it also helped me to better understand those I work with. I would definitely reccomend this book to anyone whether they are making career decisions or simply want to understand themselves and others better.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.I've recently been going through some work issues. A friend recommended I read this. Although I've been through my personality type before, I found this book very helpful in identifying more of "who I am" and what my preferences are. It helped me single out what was frustrating me with my current employers, and the type of work environment I prefer. Although nothing has changed at work, I have. I understand where my "struggle" is coming from. Some of the career suggestions were not for me, even though most of those with my type like them. But, gaining a better understanding of myself, and the different types I work with, has been helpful. I've also taken StrengthFinders in the past, and found all 5 of my strengths correlated to my type. I'm still chewing on all of this. But, it's another tool to help bring some clarity to your worklife. If anything, it will help you understand why you react the way you do at work.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.BookDilettante
Posted August 9, 2011
I enjoyed this book a great deal because it gave ideas of what careers match well with particular personalities. For me, the description hit the nail on the head.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted June 11, 2003
This book explains well the different personality types and provides us with real life examples. I had some challenge when it came to assessing which type of personality I was. There is no formal questionnaire to guide us and I thought it lacked structure. Even though the authors provided many examples and description for each dimension that make up our type, it felt more like guess work to me than psychological/scientific findings. However, once I managed to figure out my type, the results were VERY consistent with reality. It provides extensive descriptions of each of the 16 personality types and, highlights in detail what job satisfaction means for each of these types, accompanied with a list of best suited careers and professions. This book helped me learn more about my type and understand more about myself, but I am still no closer to selecting a second career more suited to my personality, as they all seem to imply getting a totally different education. I wish I had found that book 10 years ago, right after high school!
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted June 6, 2002
After reading the first chapter, I am very anxious to get to the next. I felt the chapter was very 'introductory' and not quite up to my expectations. I wonder if the next chapters won't dive into more of a analytical approach to identifying personality types and further determining which kind of job is suited for the reader. I think the book has potential to be a good read.
0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted March 24, 2000
This book is EXCELLENT! It gave me the courage to leave a Computer Comapany and go work in the horse industry. I would never have left without the idea that this really was what I was meant to do.. the book helped me come to that conclusion.. and the decision was RIGHT ON! I highly recommend it.. even if you are not planning a change in careers... maybe just looking for something else to do with in your current employment! or if you just want to get to know yourself better. Easy reading and interesting conclusions! Highly recommend!
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Overview
Already a classic in the genre, DoWhat You Are has helped hundreds of thousands of people find truly satisfying work. Do What You Are introduces Personality Type - how you process information, make decisions and interact with the world around you - and shows you which of the 16 types describes you best. It lists dozens of occupations that are popular with people of your type. Then, using workbook exercises and real-life examples to highlight the strengths and pitfalls of each personality type, it shows you ...