Who am i Now? Exploring Personality, Values, and Career Identity

Unraveling My Inner Artist and Social Butterfly:

According to John Holland, my strongest personality type, artistic, is indicative of a distaste for rigid order and systematic activities. Instead, this type is drawn toward creative endeavors, such as art, writing, language, acting, dance, and design. Adjectives that are often used to describe this type are: impulsive, expressive, imaginative, intuitive, introspective, independent, complicated, disorderly, emotional, idealistic, nonconforming, and impractical.

My second strongest type, social, is in keeping with the artistic category in the sense that this type also prefers not to engage in activities that involve strict and explicit order, such as the operation of machinery.

The social type tends to exhibit competencies in education and other activities involving human interaction, such as teachers, pastors, and counselors. Some words often used to describe this type are: patient, kind, generous, understanding, friendly, sympathetic, cooperative, convincing, social, tactful, and responsible (Niles & Harris-Bowlsbey, 2017).

Beyond the Art and Social Realms – Enterprising Ventures:

Holland describes my third strongest personality type, enterprising, as typically expressing an aversion to activities that entail symbolism, observation, or possess systematic qualities. Careers that may appeal to this personality type would include salespersons, management, business entrepreneurs or executives, and television producer. Adjectives that strongly apply to this type are: optimistic, energetic, confident, extroverted, impulsive, adventurous, ambitious, sociable, and popular.

In terms of the Value Sort exercise, I listed competence as my top value. I feel that this quality is the main motivator in the selection of a career. It is this quality that satisfaction and self-esteem derive from. If one does not possess the competence to perform a task competently, then success and growth in that career are not likely to happen. I also selected this as my primary value because I feel that it encompasses many of the other values in this one construct. For example, being competent usually involves another of my declared values, self-respect, because one is often sought after and held in high regard for another of my chosen values, which is knowledge in a given area. It seems as though being competent in anything would require a certain higher level of knowledge in that discipline. It could be argued that competence could not exist without knowledge. A person may also be compelled to practice their competence with yet another value that I selected, and that is integrity. Spending several years training and becoming proficient in a discipline and especially in a helping profession, one realizes the importance and responsibility underlying that purpose and will, hopefully, cause them to behave in ways that will promote that profession and do the best for the most people and to avoid actions that will hinder their hard-earned endeavors.

My second top value is having a family. Ideally, a family is a support system and, at least in my case, is what drives much of the desire to obtain the competence mentioned previously. Generally, the more competent one is the more chance of advancement and better pay that individual has. Subsequently, that person’s family, as a major inspiration, benefits as well with better housing in better neighborhoods, food, access to medical care, college educations for the children, and so on. Much of the reason we have a career is to be able to maintain a life outside of a profession. The two concepts are symbiotic in nature. A family gives a great deal of meaning and purpose to the work, knowing that what I am doing benefits not only those I help in the profession but provides for the needs and wants outside of work. A family also provides balance and perspective. Although work is important, one must balance it with a life outside of a vocation for the purpose of helping to maintain optimum wellness.

Personal Reactions and External Influences:

In reaction to the O*NET Interest Profiler, I feel that the results were very much in line with my own attributes. For example, it makes sense that I would score highest in the artistic category because I enjoy the creative process. Some of my most consistent hobbies have been drawing, painting, graphic design, and writing. Throughout life, I’ve also had an aversion to anything that is monotonous. I see structure and order as necessary but only to an extent. I will often try to avoid situations like business and church meetings because I find them to be dull and mostly unproductive where the final results are typical, in my opinion, a false sense of accomplishment where little progress has actually taken place. This would also apply to my second strongest type, which is social. I do enjoy assisting people and derive great satisfaction from helping someone learn, solve a problem, or from making them laugh. One of the greatest joys for me in daily life is making a connection with other people. Building rapport with others is important, in my opinion, whether that is in business, a mental health setting, or elsewhere.

In reference to the second assessment, the Value Sort, the results fit my self-perception completely due to the idea that my answers were contingent on my self-concept and my awareness of it. In other words, it was unlikely that I would declare values that were inconsistent with my actual values and, subsequently, end up with results that were inconsistent with how I see myself. It was extremely challenging, however, to select ten, and much less, one value. It certainly required some deep introspection.

Some of the code descriptors that I feel best described me in relationship to the artistic category were imaginative, impulsive, intuitive, introspective, and independent. Descriptors I disagreed with in this category that were not reflective of my self-concept were emotional, disorderly, impractical, and complicated. Regarding the social category, I agreed with adjectives like, friendly, sympathetic, cooperative, social, and responsible. Traits that were not as descriptive of me in this category were convincing and patient.

External Influences

Of all possible intrinsic factors that went into my assessment results, I would pinpoint age and disabling condition as the two most influential factors. In terms of age, I have recently felt as though I have not been engaging in work that best utilizes my strengths and interests, and I have also desired to pursue career avenues that are altruistic in nature. My advancing age has had a great deal to do with this. I see that, chronologically, I’m near the age category where many are preparing for their retirement. Although I have enjoyed working in radio for nearly the last twenty years, I have not felt the sense of accomplishment and service to the public that I believe I am equipped for. In short, I fear regret. I do not wish to be at a future point in my life and look back at missed opportunities that were presented to me.

My “disabling condition” has not exactly amounted to incapacitating or detrimental by any means; however, diabetes, nonetheless, still remains a life motivator for me. I have had the disease for over twenty years now and have experienced a few close calls with low blood sugar where, if I had been alone, it could have resulted in death. This disorder and these events did cause me to reassess my situation in life and have helped to encourage me to make bold decisions, like, applying to graduate school. A decision that I may not have made otherwise.

Where external factors are concerned with influencing my assessment results, I feel that they are non-applicable. I, in no way, felt rushed, stressed, tired, or experienced any other hindrance that may have skewed the findings. On the contrary, I enjoyed participating in the assessment and was able to focus on it with my full attention.

Conclusions

In conclusion, I found my two top scores on the O*NET profile in the artistic and social categories to be very much in line with each other, and the results made perfect sense to me. I found the two categories to have many similarities, such as the idea that individuals in those two groups have an aversion to strict order and prefer less structure, as I do. Also, both categories reflect more expressive personality types and a desire to connect with others. The artistic side does this through the arts and language, and the social type through human interaction. With this said, it appears that the best vocational fit for me would be what I am currently pursuing, mental health counselor. Other career options that fit my profile also sounded appealing to me, such as art therapy and clinical psychology.

The best work environment conducive to all three of my strongest personality types, artistic, social, and enterprising, would be a setting that has flexibility in terms of how each day is structured and, although rules would be necessary, as in the case of mental health counseling, there would be freedom for personal decisions and input, particularly creative input. There would also be some flexibility in how a day is scheduled, especially if the counseling took place in a private practice setting. Other ideal conditions would promote variety and social interaction and, perhaps, where assistance or advice is provided in some way as part of the job description. Other than a counseling clinic atmosphere, other ideal environments for my personality types, according to Holland, would be theaters, film and television studios, design firms, churches, schools, business offices, and sports environments. The environment that all three of these personality types should avoid would entail anything mechanically or scientifically oriented.

In terms of how comparable the assessment results are to my current and former jobs regarding fulfillment and satisfaction, there are many similarities. Although radio broadcasting did not appear in the job sort for my strengths, there is a great deal of creativity and freedom involved in it. I’m able to use my imagination to write advertising copy and produce commercials. Although deadlines are a factor, very little seems highly structured. I’m allowed to come and go as the workload requires. Where the social and enterprising aspects come in is in dealing with people and often persuading them to engage in public activities through announcements or purchase items through the copywriting and production of the ads that air on the radio stations. This is also the case with the outside sales aspect of my current job, which requires me to approach local businesses and organizations to try and persuade them to purchase advertising. Sales have been the bulk of my work duties in previous jobs as well. Much of that is in retail sales. What is lacking in my current and past work is that these activities lack the altruistic qualities that I desire in a career. My social type qualities, in particular, like, sympathetic, understanding, patient, generous, and helpful, seem to be insufficiently fulfilled and underutilized in my work experiences up to this point. These are gaps I hope to fill with a mental health counseling career.

References:

1. Niles, G. N. & Harris-Bowlsbey, J. (2017). Career development interventions (5th ed.).
2. Boston, MA: Pearson. United States. (2000). Interest profiler: O*NET occupations master list. Washington, DC: U.S. Dept. of Labor, Employment and Training Administration.

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