College, Trade School, or the Military?: Understanding Your Personality May Help You Decide

For people who are contemplating different career paths, the choice is often narrowed down to three options: go to college, sign up for a program at a trade school, or join the military.

Each of these options has certain pros and cons.

Completing a bachelor’s degree program not only provides a well-rounded education – it also opens up a lot of well-paying job opportunities. But the four years (or more) of full-time study and the financial costs associated with completing a degree can be challenging for people who want – or need – to jump into the workforce as soon as possible. This traditional path of higher education may also be quite the undertaking for learners who struggle in traditional classrooms.

Trade schools offer hands-on training opportunities to earn the certifications that are needed to enter certain specialized careers. People often associate trade schools with traditional industries like construction or manufacturing, but there are programs that lead to well-paying positions in nearly every sector of the economy. Graduating from a trade school usually takes up to two years and often leads to immediate job offers, but the basic nature of the training might translate to limitations in how far you can advance without pursuing further education.

And the military – at least in the United States – combines the opportunity for immediate work, specialized training programs, and the chance to serve your country all in one fell swoop. Enlistees receive health insurance and other benefits (like free or subsidized housing and a monthly food allowance) that are rarely found in regular jobs, not to mention an attractive retirement plan. It does require an up-front, long-term commitment, however, and there’s no backing out if you change your mind or start to question the personal sacrifices that are asked of military personnel. It’s common for them to pass long periods of time away from their family, and they are often required to put themselves in dangerous situations.

If you don’t have a clear career plan, it can feel overwhelming to think about which option may be best for you.

This is where understanding your personality type, and particularly the traits that define it, can be very useful.

Understanding Your Personality Can Help You Decide What’s Next

First off, it’s important to be clear that no specific line of work or career path is better for one personality type compared to another. Each of us are individuals, and every trait that defines our personality reveals itself uniquely from person to person. But there are some clear common tendencies that can be observed.

By reflecting on these shared inclinations, you can gain valuable insights that can be used to inform your decisions for the future. The goal is to use self-awareness to choose a path that aligns with how you navigate life.

In this article, we’re not going to go over the nuances of every individual personality type. Instead, we are going to explore certain traits that strongly influence how and why a person sets their career goals and goes about achieving them.

If you have yet to take our free personality test and discover your personality traits, now is a great time to do so.

The Judging and Prospecting Traits

Where you fall on the Judging and Prospecting spectrum plays a key role in how you set goals and go about realizing them. This makes it one of the most important traits to develop self-awareness around when contemplating your long-term career plans.

Consider the following data points:

An average of 61% of Prospecting types admit that they often try to avoid their academic responsibilities, compared to just 26% of Judging types.
Nearly 87% of Judging personalities say they always do their best to finish what they start, compared to about 54% of Prospecting types.
Nearly 50% of Prospecting types admit that they change their long-term goals often, compared to only 25% of those with the Judging trait.

Prospecting Personalities and Figuring Out What’s Next

These three statistics highlight two very important realities for Prospecting personality types. First, as intellectually oriented as some of them may be, they might feel restricted or confined by the rigid structures of formal education, even if they see it as an absolute necessity for their future. And second, short-term, achievable goals are their forte.

People with this trait may find it less overwhelming to think of their career path as a series of baby steps. There’s no need to have everything figured out right now. Committing to a four-year degree program might feel off-putting or overwhelming, while a two-year associate’s or certification program may feel more doable. The beautiful thing about formal education is that you can always go back for more as you deem it necessary.

Judging Personalities and Tackling What’s Next

Judging personality types, on the other hand, may have clear career goals quite early in life. While not every individual with the Judging trait has this long-term clarity, many do have academic plans and anticipated professional trajectories that stretch years into the future. These types are also significantly more likely to appreciate clear expectations and structure in their postsecondary learning path, whatever form it may take.

Long-term planning tends to come naturally for these types. Even if they have a change of heart, they’re more likely than Prospecting personalities to follow through with the commitments that they’ve made. People with this trait tend to find drawn-out, specialized education less intimidating and easier to sign up for.

Other Personality Traits

It’s important to remember that the Judging or Prospecting aspect of your personality exerts its influence in conjunction with your other traits, some of which underlie noteworthy tendencies on their own.

Consider how the Extraverted and Thinking personality traits are strongly associated with the desire to be an important and successful person. It seems only natural, then, that people with these two traits are often drawn to leadership roles and are much more likely than their Introverted and Feeling counterparts to consider long-term earning potential to be a significant factor in their career choice.

People with the Observant trait have a tendency to be more pragmatic about their options, compared to Intuitive types. For them, the best career path is likely to be (at least partially) determined by whether it allows them to take care of their immediate needs while continuing to advance professionally. Intuitive personalities, on the other hand, love to explore ideas and learn for the sake of learning, often approaching their career options with curiosity and an open mind.

My final example is how Turbulent types and, to a lesser extent, Feeling personalities, are more likely to let their goals be influenced by the weight of other people’s expectations. If their parents or mentors think they should pursue a specific career, they might feel pressured to go down a path that is not explicitly of their own choosing. Comparatively speaking, Assertive types are less likely to let the fear of rejection or disappointing others hold them back from going after their goals.

While there are certainly factors beyond your personality type that play a role in how you go about defining and navigating your career path, taking the time to understand your personality preferences can help you make important decisions that are a good fit for you.

So, Which Career Option Is Best for Me?

It would be easy to make blanket statements like Virtuosos (ISTP) should skip college and just sign up for trade school or Commanders (ENTJ) should think about becoming surgeons or Logisticians (ISTJ) would do great in the military. But the idea is not to use a stereotype of your personality to determine your career path.

Instead, we encourage you to develop self-awareness about how your traits may impact your journey – whatever the destination may be.

A university degree does require a certain level of commitment. Judging types may be fine jumping headfirst into a bachelor’s program knowing full well that they’ll pursue their master’s immediately after that. Prospecting types may not be so sure. Some personalities might love the broad options provided by a liberal arts education, while others want a clear career outcome right from the get-go. It’s a good thing that university-level learning can be broken down into very manageable steps that can be expanded upon as you gain work experience and clarity about what, exactly, you want – or don’t want – to do.

Trade school is a great option for people who are looking for a quick path into specialized and potentially lucrative careers that do not require a university degree. Judging types might appreciate how shorter programs allow them to jump-start progress toward long-term goals, while Prospecting personalities are likely to value the opportunity to develop their skills, even if their long-term goals remain unclear. Either way, it’s always possible to go back to school and continue your education if the need (or desire) arises.

And the military may be the perfect option for someone who thrives with – or may benefit from – a highly structured life with clear expectations. Judging and Prospecting personalities of all stripes may find that this type of institutional career path offers everything that they need, from economic stability to opportunities for personal growth and professional development.

Each of these options provides opportunities for those who strive for leadership roles and those who are happy just to do their job. Each one can lead to a high-paying career or just an average job with a good enough salary, which is fine for a lot of people. And each option can be navigated successfully by every personality type with a little self-awareness.

Wait a Minute… What If I Opt for None of the Above?

If none of these options sound ideal for you, there’s nothing wrong with jumping into the workforce with no specialized training. There are many opportunities out there that allow you to learn as you go, start covering your economic needs immediately, and even advance to higher-level positions based solely on experience.

Jobs can be found across nearly every sector of the economy and offer options for people with every personality type to shine. With no formal education, it is possible to build up highly specialized skills and expertise in many fields. And if you eventually want to pursue some kind of formal education, holding off and directly joining the workforce will potentially allow you to set aside money for those future expenses. You can also use this time to explore your interests and bring your goals into sharper focus.

There are downsides to jumping straight into the so-called unskilled labor force, of course, just like with any career. The most notable is that benefits like health insurance, retirement plans, or paid time off for vacation or sick days are significantly harder to come by in nonprofessional, entry-level positions.

Facing the Future with Confidence

The options for your future are many. As you mull them over, keep the following questions in mind:

Do you already have a general sense of what career you would like? If so, what are the conventional and unconventional career paths to get to that goal?
Being honest with yourself, how might your Prospecting or Judging trait influence how you go about pursuing your goals?
What motivates you the most? Expectations of success? The desire for wealth and status? The need to make a difference in the world? The fact that you have to pay your bills?

In order to make a confident choice for your future, it is essential to tune in to who you are, understand how your personality influences you, and hone in on what you believe you want. Then, go for it! Yes, you may end up changing your mind at some point in the future – many people do – and that’s okay. It’s called a career path for a reason. The important thing is to take that first step.