Sample Career Portrait

Independent Corporate Contributor

Style

Work Type:

My work type is INTP and my style is that of an "inquisitive analyzer." I am intensely analytical and objectively critical. I am mainly interested in ideas, very curious, and canít stand small talk. I learn very quickly, am insightful, intellectually curious, persevering, thorough, and have sharply defined interests. I like an unstructured environment and like to work independently in solving thorny technical problems. I love logic and enjoy long, detailed arguments.

Career Type:

My primary career type is "investigative." I am analytical, comfortable with abstractions and prefer to cope with life and its problems by analytical thinking. I am scholarly, self-confident, and have scientific and mathematical ability. I like to work in a quiet and scholarly environment where I can pursue my work without interference and where there are plenty of intellectual resources like computers, laboratories and libraries that I can use whenever I feel like ñ night or day. My friends are mostly people I work with. My secondary career type is "artistic." I play the piano and am a fairly competent amateur potter. I love music and feel a tremendous sense of self-expression when I am playing the piano or working with clay on my wheel. If I didnít have to make a living working in a company, I would stay at home and read, play music, and make pottery. That would make me very happy. None of the other career types seem to apply to me.

Work Environment Interests:

When I work, I want to be around people who are passive, slow-moving, and quiet, who are interested only in maintaining their own standards and leaving me to mine, who are well above average in intelligence and skill levels, who are focused in their conversations at work, and who are creatively disorganized! I want my workplace to be a place where I can hang my own pictures and other things. I wouldnít mind working in my own home, where I can have windows looking out on an interesting view. I like to work in the same place every day in a closed environment where I can concentrate on my work.

Career Drivers:

My primary career driver is "professional achievement." I am very dedicated to being an outstanding contributor in my field and being recognized as such. I wouldnít mind getting a Nobel prize if they gave one in my specialty. The only thing I am interested in at work is getting as good as I can at what I do and being the companyís leading expert in it. I would like to produce a body of work that is useful and outstanding. My secondary career driver is "intellectual/physical challenge." I love to solve the toughest problems, be the first to invent or discover something, and really test my wits and skills against other people or just against my own abilities. Iím a very good chess and I-go player.

Values and Needs:

The values and needs that are most important in my life, that are currently at a level that I find acceptable, and without which I would not be willing to work are creative expression, achievement, challenging problems, independence, and intellectual status. I definitely want more fame, prestige/recognition, variety, time freedom, and work on the frontiers of knowledge.

Work Activitiy Interests:

I like designing systems, inventing new ways of doing things, mathematics, engineering design, and inventing gadgets.

(People, Data, Physical, Adaptive):

The areas where I really excel at work are analyzing facts and ideas, conceiving, creating, and developing ideas, gathering information and data, perceiving and defining cause and effect relationships, and synthesizing facts and ideas. The skills that I need to develop more are tuning in to needs and feelings of others, working effectively on a team, working within a structure, maintaining schedules, and following through. I think I need these because my growth as a contributor will require that I work more with others to develop and implement major projects.

The adaptive skills that work best for me are concentration, being demanding of self, being intelligent, being methodical, and being a quick learner. In order to become more successful at creating and developing more important contributions, I will need to develop myself to be more supportive of others, resilient, diplomatic, able to use time effectively, and empathetic.

I need to handle the following barriers: difficulty managing time, becoming easily bored, impatience, being insensitive to the needs and feelings of others, and being stubborn.