Introvert or extrovert – which job is the best?

Which jobs are best suited to introverts or extroverts?

“Introvert job” has been a recurrent search term at Potentialefabrikken.dk. Having worked professionally since 1999 with personality tests, recruitment, careers and job consultations, I can easily do my job-seeking readers the favour of providing a list of suitable jobs:

Jobs for introverts

• Analyst
• Researcher
• Accountant
• Planner
• Engineer
• Various jobs where you do not have to interact with other people

Jobs for extroverts

• Salesperson
• Consultant
• Teacher/Educator
• Journalist
• Hairdresser
• Any job that involves contact with people

 

Are you either an introvert or an extrovert?

At first glance, these two checklists do seem appealing. But the world is a lot less black and white, and people are a lot more nuanced than that. Introverts may be excellent salespeople when they are empathetic and know how to make the customers talk, just as some introverts may be excellent educators or perhaps even stand-up comedians, because they are not only well-prepared but deliver the goods without getting distracted by the need for attention and reactions from the audience. And in a similar way, skilled accountants and engineers may very well be extroverts.

Allow me here to quote business psychologist Nikolaj Lunøe from the epilogue of Daniel Nettle’s book “Personality: What makes you the way you are”:

“C. G. Jung’s theory of personality assumes that every personality trait is paired with another, which is its polar opposite. Jung believed that people who are very extroverted are, in turn, not very good at being introspective (and vice versa). However, as Nettle points out, modern personality research has not been able to confirm this: the capacity for introspection goes hand in hand with general curiosity, which is (presumably) the basis for the “Openness” in the five-factor model.”

The expanded version of the MBTI test presents you with more questions, which also means that a more nuanced picture emerges:

You can be introverted and very talkative, or extroverted and yet reserved in your behaviour.

In other words, being introverted does not preclude having personality traits that are typically prominent in very extroverted people and vice versa.

 

Types and boxes

The most likely reason why type-based tests such as MBTI, DISC etc. are so popular in the business world is that they are easily relatable. Types create a simplified picture. You answer a relatively small number of questions, the result is four letters, and then you can be categorised or “put in a box” as a specific type. For example, ENTP (Extrovert, iNtuitive, Thinking, Perceptive) is a typical profile for a consultant. Personality type and job category – voila, all done!

However, the longer I’ve worked with testing, recruitment and developing people, the more I’ve realised that the person is like a sculpture, and the test is like a camera:

type-based tests are like grainy cameras, while personality tests with more than 200 questions are like high-resolution digital cameras. But no matter how many photos you take of a sculpture in three dimensions, the photo turns out two-dimensional and covers only a single angle, and even several photos taken from all sides cannot describe how the sculpture is inside – what it’s like and how it feels to be this particular person.

That is why personal feedback is so important when interpreting any of these tests. Because no one apart from the individual person themself is able to explain what he/she actually does most often, or rather what he/she actually doesn’t do or isn’t– in spite of what the test results show.

 

Personality and job matching

Over the years, I’ve provided test feedback for a great deal of candidates for specific jobs, and the message remains the same:

there is no such thing as a right or a wrong personality profile for this job!

Yet there are clearly jobs which may be a better or worse fit for your personality. The job might involve certain types of tasks, which are not worthwhile when you have to spend a lot of time on them. For instance, if you score low on details and orderliness, I would advise you against applying for a job as a payroll accountant, as this particular role involves tonnes of details that are crucial to your success in that job. If you make even the tiniest of mistakes, an unhappy employee will be on the phone or at your desk as soon as they’ve received their payslip. If, on the other hand, you’ve happened to make a mistake in the employee’s favour, you won’t be told anything – until you spot it and fix it yourself.

 

The “right” answers in the test…

However, the problem is that jobseekers can sometimes become desperate in their search for a job. When they’ve been unemployed for a while, any job at all will seem like their long-awaited rescue from the vexations of the rigid benefits system. And so they try – in their well-intentioned eagerness – to make their personality match the job a little better by giving the kind of answers in the test that they believe the employer wants to see. Let me warn you against that right now, not just for the employer’s sake (as you’ll be wasting their time and money), but especially for your own sake:

You might end up getting the job!

Just imagine how unbearable that would be, having to try every day to live up to this image of yourself that you have created. How you’ll have to struggle with yourself to appear more focused on making contacts, become more detail-oriented, be better at planning or whatever else the job might require that doesn’t come easy to you. Consider that every day you’ll have to restrain yourself somewhat in order to fit into the box. Especially if you’re actually a real star, but no one has noticed.

Then again, it also works the other way around:

The better you know yourself, the more likely you are
to look for and hopefully find the right job for you.

The better the recruitment process and tests the company uses,
the more likely they are to pick the most suitable candidates for the jobs.

 

See also:

• Have you found the right job?
• 4 reasons why gifted people do not progress in their careers
• Can you conceal an ADHD diagnosis at work?