As an ENTP, career satisfaction means doing work that:
1. Gives you opportunities to engage in creative problem-solving and/or generate new and innovative approaches to problems.
2. Let you implement your innovative solutions in the creation of more efficiently functioning systems.
3. Acknowledges and encourages your creativity, competency, and ability to improvise.
4. Lets you experience a variety of situations filled with fun, action, and excitement.
5. Follows a logical order and is based upon objective and fair standards, rather than the likes or dislikes of one individual.
6. Lets you increase your professional and personal power and interact frequently with other powerful people.
7. Lets you meet and have constant interaction with many different people, especially those you respect.
8. Can be done in a rapidly changing, high-energy environment with significant interaction with others.
9. Is done in an environment that is casual and unstructured; where you can experience a high degree of personal freedom, time off, and the opportunity to operate spontaneously.
10. Allows you to design or start projects but does not require you to follow through with tedious details.
Work-Related Strengths and Weaknesses
Strengths:
1. Use ingenuity and ability to improvise to solve problems.
2. Work best with a succession of stimulating projects.
3. Can be entertaining and inspirational public speakers.
4. Good at innovation and impersonal analysis.
5. Confident and can be almost anything they want to be.
Weaknesses:
1. May lose interest in projects when creative problems are solved.
2. May have difficulty applying selves to details and follow-through.
3. Don’t like routine or repetition and may resist doing things in the established manner.
4. Often interrupt others; maybe overconfident and misrepresent their abilities.
5. Can be undependable and irresponsible.
Pathways To Success In The Job Search Process
As an ENTP, your most effective strategies will build on your abilities to:
· Generate enthusiasm for yourself and your ideas. Use your natural enthusiasm for your ideas and inspirations when describing your abilities, success with past projects, and potential contributions. Express your confidence in yourself and your ability to master any project or challenge.
· See new and exciting possibilities. Develop ideas for ways you might benefit an organization or company using your ingenuity and imaginative use of systems. Discuss how those changes will solve present and future problems.
· Create your job opportunities. Use your “vision” to anticipate trends, where people with your talents will be needed in the future, and so on. Use your energy and ability to meet people and introduce yourself to those who might best connect you with other influential people.
· Collect a great amount of information from talking to people. Network extensively, especially with those who know many people with whom you might talk to identify possible career opportunities. Ask others to brainstorm with you to develop a list of options you might research later.
· Understand what motivates others. Tune in to what others are saying and not saying about their needs as employers so you can discuss how your skills and abilities can assist them. Express your natural charm and sense of humor to create rapport and a positive working relationship.
· Improvise: show others how you can think on your feet. Demonstrate your ability to deal imaginatively with unexpected situations. Discuss your abilities and experience with crisis management and other emergencies, generating confidence in your capacity for responsibility.
· Analyze long-range implications. Demonstrate your ability to anticipate consequences, and to logically analyze products and processes. Demonstrate your ability to be objective by offering honest critiques of past work situations.
Possible Pitfalls
· Avoid the tendency to generate so many options that it is impossible to make a decision and follow through on necessary details. Try to pay close attention to the facts, details, and timelines of a project. Eliminate unrealistic options along the way and stick with your established list of priorities.
· Try not to dismiss as illogical and unimportant the feelings of other people, therefore appearing arrogant and/or rude. Try to focus on how a project or statement will affect others. Try to offer positive feedback before negative criticism, knowing that some people may take criticism very personally.
· Discipline yourself and try not to procrastinate; don’t put off decisions so long that options are eliminated for you. Establish and adhere to deadlines. Try to be conscious of the schedules and timetables of others and to notify people when you expect to be late.
· Don’t interrupt others before they have finished speaking because an idea has come to you. Engage your listening skills; wait until you are sure the person has finished speaking before offering your ideas and input. Try the trick of repeating back what the person has said so you are sure you understand what they said.
For you, the ENTP, having identified the career satisfaction characteristics that align with your inventive and strategic mind, the journey ahead is to pinpoint jobs and work environments that embrace your love for innovation and debate. Seek out roles that challenge you intellectually and allow for a high degree of autonomy. Your next endeavor involves finding careers where your natural tendency to question and innovate leads to success and fulfillment.
Ken Meyer
Myers Briggs Master Practitioner and Retired Senior Career Coach at Eastern Michigan University
