As an ESTP, career satisfaction means doing work that:
1. Let you meet and interact spontaneously with many people; offers something different every day, and is fun.
2. Let you use your keen powers of observation and your capacity for absorbing and remembering facts.
3. Lets you use your ability to search for solutions to problems, using first-hand experience and then critically analyzing these solutions to find the best ones.
4. Is active and full of adventure and fun, where things happen quickly, and where you are allowed to take risks and be alert to new opportunities.
5. Lets you respond to unplanned situations, using unconventional approaches, where you can skillfully negotiate satisfactory solutions.
6. Is done in an environment without a lot of rules or restrictions, where you work with other practical and lively people and can enjoy free time after completing your assignments.
7. Let you organize yourself as you go along and as you deem necessary, rather than according to someone else’s standards.
8. Is practical and logical, where you can use your reasoning abilities to find discrepancies or flaws in the logic of a system and fix them on the spot.
9. Leaves you free to respond to a crisis and work in an expedient manner dealing with pressing issues.
10. Involves real people and things, not theories or ideas; where your efforts are directed to producing a tangible product or service.
Work-related strengths and weaknesses of ESTPs include:
Strengths
1. Observant, with excellent memory for factual information.
2. Able to see what needs to be done and be realistic about what is necessary to complete it.
3. Usually enjoy sales and negotiations.
4. Adaptable to many different kinds of people.
5. Good at initiating enterprises; natural promoters.
Weaknesses
1. May not see the long-term consequences of actions.
2. May be blunt and insensitive to the feelings of others.
3. Easily feel restricted by rules and regulations.
4. Often intolerant of administrative details and procedures.
5. Can act irresponsibly about deadlines and timetables.
Pathways to Success During the Job Search Process
As an ESTP, your most effective strategies will build on your abilities to :
· Conduct an active, high-energy job search campaign. Use your large network of friends and associates to spread the word that you are looking for a job and to explore career options. Put all your focus on your job search campaign. Harness your tremendous energy; look at the process of finding the right career as an adventure.
· Sell Yourself. Establish rapport with interviewers quickly, demonstrating your ease and facility of meeting new people and making them feel comfortable with you. Generate excitement about your abilities, talents, and energy that employers will find attractive and a valuable addition to their workforce.
· Use your powers of observation to discover important environmental factors. Tune in and pick up on subtle cues from other people to learn whether they like working where they do the amount of interaction, privacy, personal time, and flexibility they have on the job. Compare what you learn with what you realistically know about yourself and the things that are important to you. Find the flaws in the situation before committing to invest a lot of your time there.
· Negotiate effectively and diplomatically. Decide ahead of time what is of critical importance to you and what you are willing to give in on. Then negotiate flexibly and reasonably.
· Assess and then capitalize on available resources. Begin to view your friends and associates (past and present) as resources to help you meet influential people within the organization you are pursuing. Use unconventional approaches if necessary to meet someone who may be difficult to reach through traditional methods. Use your natural spontaneity to take advantage of opportunities as soon as they present themselves by moving quickly, expressing your interest immediately, and responding to sudden deadlines.
Possible Pitfalls
· Don’t be limited to considering only career opportunities that are evident at present. Look beyond what you have already done to what you might like to do. Generate a list of ideas even including those you think are impractical. Find out more about all of them before eliminating any. Focus on the future and try to imagine the possible implications of your actions down the road. Once you look past the material pleasures you may be aiming for, you may see how a job that looks good on the surface (or at the moment) may ultimately be unsatisfying in the long run.
· Invest the time in developing a long-range career plan. Curb your impulse to dive right into what may turn out to be the wrong direction for you. Spending time carefully thinking about what is important to you and what your real motivations and wishes are will help you focus your energy and avoid dead-end jobs. Develop a list of criteria for career satisfaction (or use the one we have provided) and then set some long short-term goals. This will provide you with a yardstick against which to measure career options realistically.
· Work on developing stick to itiveness and follow through. Resist the urge to deal only with immediate problems instead of with the less exciting but still important follow-through necessary to conduct a thorough campaign. Prepare yourself for interviews by learning as much as you can about the job, its requirements, and the company so you can address yourself and your experience well to the questions asked. This step will also give you the added advantage of knowing what you need to ask to get a clear picture of what the job will be like.
· Avoid being perceived as unreliable or unpredictable. Go the extra mile in all cases, even if you don’t think you’ll pursue a particular option. Demonstrate your dependability by keeping all appointments, arriving on time or early, and calling back when you say you will. Remember that many people respect the standard way of doing things within organizations. Don’t run the risk of offending someone because of your natural distaste for following rules.
· Concentrate on communicating serious interest. Your easygoing and relaxed attitude can be charming and infectious. It can, however, also communicate a lack of seriousness to potential employers. Be careful not to be blunt or insensitive to the feelings of others. Tune in to the reactions of others and perhaps tone down your assertiveness so you won’t offend others.
Ken Meyer
Myers Briggs Master Practitioner and Retired Senior Career Coach at Eastern Michigan University
