Personality Test: How The Enneagram Test Can Help You Pick Your Career
The Problem of Choosing
We choose a path, be that study or a career or a job, that we hope we will be good at. One that fulfils a set of criteria based on the outside world: money, job prospects, social prestige. But all too often we don’t consider how a potential job will fit your personality. How do you know how a job or field will fit with your natural inclinations?
Will you be a match?
What is this ‘Enneagram’?
Ennea-what now? The Enneagram of Personality is a system that attempts to explain personality in people. There are 9 types, and they are based on archetypes – typical characters, themes and symbols which appear repeatedly throughout a culture, for example in literature and psychology.
from the Greek words
Ennéa
nine
gråmma
written / drawn
So you’ve seen some personality tests before. Why is this one any different? Perhaps you’ve already figured out your Myers-Briggs type, or undergone some kind of assessment in your study or professional life. The difference is that most tests and systems look at how you interact with the world, and how you behave.
The Enneagram looks instead at the underlying drivers, your motivations. The aim of taking the test and identifying your archetype is to gain self-awareness, which will enable you to see your own patterns of behaviour. You can then choose which ones are helpful and unhelpful, and even make choices about the shape of your future life based on what will support you best.
This system can get kind of complicated – if you want to do a deep dive there are some resources at the end of this article. But in the meantime, the main thing to remember is that there are 9 archetypes. Even though you might identify with parts of a few of them, there is one that will describe you more fully than the others.
Benefits of the Enneagram in Life & Work
Self-knowledge can be empowering, and the Enneagram is designed to assist you in uncovering some key parts of yourself that may not be immediately obvious. It can tell you about your inclinations – what you are likely to choose when presented with different options. It also tells you about your deeper life goals, your desires and especially the values. Your values underpin what you strive for, and can help you clarify your goals.
It does not, however, tell you about the kind of skills you have, and how well you’ve learned them. Neither does it have much to say about your abilities; for example, whether you’re good with numbers or have excellent spatial abilities.
The Enneagram can offer the following benefits in your life and work:
How The Enneagram Can Help You Pick a Career
The Enneagram has lots of useful applications when you use it to make big decisions about work, life, and everything in between.
Once you know your archetype, it can enable you to see which types of professions are a good match for your motivations – which kinds will enable you to feel fulfilled and useful. It can help you to choose subjects at university. Perhaps even more importantly, you can look at the ‘personality’ of a potential employer and see whether you’d be a good fit there.
Some Questions To Ask Yourself When Evaluating an Employer
Are you ready to make friends with your archetype? We’ve designed a quick quiz to help you get a feeling for which one might be yours.
If you’re not sure, read through all the descriptions below and choose the one that sounds most like you.
Type 1: The Reformer
Wants: To be good, to have integrity and balance
Fears: Being evil, defective
Motivation: To improve everything, and bring about a perfect world
Self-development tips: Be more spontaneous and joyful – enjoy life! Let yourself go every so often and forgive yourself for your mistakes.
What kind of job?
Look for something that is
- Practical and concrete
- Allows you to create structure from disorder
- Focus on perfect execution and lack of mistakes
Potential career pathways:
- Law
- Financial planning
- Management
- Executive
- Environmental Science
- Politics
- Social Advocacy
- Social Care
Type 2: The Helper
Wants: To be loved
Fears: Being unworthy of love, unwanted
Motivation: To be loved, needed and appreciated, and express feelings for others
Self-development tips: Try to be more self-nurturing and emotionally aware.
What kind of job?
Look for something that will let you
- Influence others behind the scenes, in a positive direction
- Have lots of contact with people
- Give helping, humane treatment of others
Potential career pathways:
Type 3: The Achiever
Wants: To feel valuable and worthwhile
Fears: Being worthless
Self-development tips: Try to be more cooperative and committed to others. Be honest with yourself and others about how you really feel. Remember to take breaks and relax.
What kind of job?
Look for something that will let you
- Work with others who have high esteem in society
- See results of your efforts and receive recognition
- See clear advancement opportunities
Potential career pathways:
- Law
- Public Relations
- Communications
- News Journalism
- Media
- Performing Arts
- Sport
- Coach
- Advertising
Type 4: The Romantic
Wants: to create an identity, ‘find themselves’
Fears: being without identity or significance
Motivation: to express themselves, create and surround self with beauty, care for emotional needs
Self-development tips: Do things whether you ‘feel like’ them or not. Avoid having lengthy imaginary conversations. Exercise regularly and try to get a routine going.
What kind of job?
Look for something with
- Deep meaning and purpose
- Allow you to express yourself in creative ways
- Nothing administrative, or about enforcing rules
Potential career pathways:
- Counselling
- Writing
- Art
- Music
- Hair and Beauty
- Design
- English / Art Education
- Filmmaking
- Publishing
Type 5: The Observer
Wants: to be capable and competent
Fears: being useless, incapable, or helpless
Motivation: to possess knowledge and understanding of the world.
Self-development tips: stay connected with the physical world through mindfulness, and open up more to others.
What kind of job?
Look for something that will enable you to
- Increase your knowledge
- Pursue a topic that interests you
- Have a high level of autonomy
- Work with facts
- Avoid customer service or client facing roles
Potential career pathways:
- App Design
- Game Design or Development
- Engineering
- Research
- Analytics
- Scientist
- Teaching
- Management
Type 6: The Loyal Skeptic
Wants: to be secure and supported
Fears: being without support and guidance
Motivation: to fight against insecurity and anxiety.
Self-development: Try to be present with your worry and anxiety and recongise pessimism. Work to be more trusting and vulnerable in your relationships.
What kind of job?
Look for something with opportunity for
- Problem-solving
- Managing risk
- Expressing loyalty, being supported and secure
- Nothing that involves too much risk-taking
Potential career pathways:
Type 7: The Enthusiast
Wants: to be satisfied and content, have needs fulfilled
Fears: being deprived and in pain
Motivation: to maintain freedom, avoid missing out, and stay excited and engaged
Self-development tips: work at observing your impulses, rather than giving in to them. Be patient, good opportunities come back. Choose quality over quantity in your experiences.
What kind of job?
Look for something that involves
- Creativity and innovation
- Challenging situations that go beyond conventional thinking
- Not too limited or criticised
- Novelty
- Avoid anything with a consistent routine and red tape
Potential career pathways:
- Marketing
- Sales
- Tourism
- Media & Journalism
- Hospitality
- Entertainment
- Design
Type 8: The Challenger
Wants: self-protection, control of your destiny
Fears: being controlled by others, being harmed
Motivation: to be self-reliant, prove your strength, and stay in control.
Self-development: Let others have their way sometimes. Realise how much you depend on other people and don’t alienate them – being surrounded by good people makes you much stronger.
What kind of job?
Look for something where you can
- Be the boss
- Get things under control
- Have influence over outcomes
- Fight injustice
- Avoid jobs with no growth potential, or where you’ll be micromanaged
Potential career pathways:
- Business Management
- Business Development
- Executive / Leadership Roles
- Publicity
- Entrepreneurship
- Strategy Consulting
- Financial Advising
- Real Estate
- Advertising
Type 9: The Peacemaker
Wants: peace of mind, inner stability
Fears: loss and separation
Motivation: to create harmony and avoid conflicts
Self-development tips: Be more independent, rather than going along with what others want. Deal with your negative feelings. Exercise regularly to strengthen your connection to your body and the physical world.
What kind of job?
Look for something that involves
- Working with others to bring peace and harmony
- Resolving conflicts
- Facilitating conversations and making sure everyone is heard
- Avoid anything that requires aggression or lots of competition
Potential career pathways:
- Therapist
- Education
- Human Resources
- Animal Care
- Social Care
- Art & Performing Art
- Writing
- Natural Sciences
- Designer
