If You Know Your Personality Type

• Both US News and World Report and The Career Key websites provide a quick breakdown of career areas related to the six personality types defined by career psychologist Dr. John Holland. These types are realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising and conventional. For example, the realistic personality type includes jobs like animal breeder, electrician, civil engineer and appliance repair.
  
  

The Strong Interest Inventory

• Many colleges and employers use the Strong Interest Inventory, also based on Holland's personality categories. This test is best administered by a professional, although there are free versions online. Cazenovia College's website has a clear example.
  
  

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

• The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is another method of in-depth analysis. MBTI is an extensive series of questionnaires which attempts to discover the predominant aspects of personality by breaking them into pairs, such as introversion-extroversion, sensing-intuition, thinking-feeling and judging-perceiving. The results are then combined into one of sixteen character types, and these types are then matched with sets of job and career fields.
  
  

Conclusions

• While the do-it-yourself sites offer a quick way to see an overview of career fields, they do assume some self-knowledge on the user's part. If you are not sure of your personality type, it may be more useful to seek a professional analysis. While personality testing can be expensive, achieving long-term job satisfaction may be well worth the investment.