Lean Into Your Personality Traits to Conquer Challenges and Achieve Your Dream Job

What is a “dream job,” exactly?

While it would be easy to limit the definition to a specific career or job title, like CEO, actor, or surgeon, what usually makes a job “dreamy” depends on what you want out of it. Each of us has our own set of criteria – usually influenced by our personality type – for the perfect job that we could dedicate ourselves to for the rest of our working lives. Unfortunately, it often feels like that dream job is exactly that…a distant dream.

Between tangible and intangible roadblocks, landing your dream job might feel like an impossible task. But there’s good news! Each one of your personality traits endows you with specific strengths that you can lean into to overcome the obstacles that stand between you and your ideal career.

Before we explore those strengths, let’s take a brief look at some of the roadblocks that you might encounter.

If you haven’t yet, be sure to take our free personality test to discover your personality type and the individual personality traits that define it.

Common Obstacles between You and Your Dream Job

Professional Uncertainty

Not everyone knows what they want to do with their life, which is perfectly normal and okay. Whether you are just entering the job market, have years of experience in an unfulfilling career, or have a better understanding of what you don’t want than what you do – it can be hard to imagine what a dream job might look like, let alone how to land it. Sometimes you just need to explore and experiment a bit more with different career options or learn to find opportunity in uncertainty.

Lack of Experience or Expertise

You may have to confront a very real gap between your current skills and the professional experience that you need for your dream job. Obtaining a specific degree, certification, or the hands-on training that you’ll need is an obstacle that will have to be tackled practically, i.e., with a plan.

But sometimes what you perceive to be your lack of expertise or knowledge may be surmounted by simply reframing your qualifications, starting in your own mind and then on your résumé. For this particular obstacle, self-confidence – or a lack of it – may be playing a bigger role than you think. Talking with trusted friends or colleagues can be helpful for getting a fresh perspective on what you have to offer.

Financial Hurdles

Some people can’t afford to live on the entry-level wages that they’d have to accept to get in on the ground floor of their dream job. Training costs or advanced degrees may also be prohibitively expensive. And you can’t forget about the additional expenses, like childcare or transportation, that often come with switching careers or going back to school. Depending on your situation, finding realistic and accessible solutions to financial challenges may feel insurmountable. In this case, creativity and thinking outside the box may be required.

Lack of Social Support

Some people are very independent in the ways that they go about living and pursuing their careers, either because it’s inherent in their personality or because life circumstances have obligated them to adopt a self-sufficient attitude. In a professional sense, this can result in missed opportunities. Without mentors or a network, you have to carve your own path. Without meaningful guidance, it can be difficult to gain clarity about how to get where you want to go.

In your personal life, a lack of practical and emotional support from family, friends, and community members can be discouraging. It’s easy to lose faith in your ability to achieve your goals without anyone cheering you on. An intentional effort to build positive relationships (both professional and personal) can be just as important to your success as having the right degree.

Lack of Self-Confidence

A lack of self-confidence often underlies the tendency to downplay professional accomplishments or hard-earned qualifications. This can get in the way when it comes to taking necessary risks for job advancement, reaching out to your network, or feeling capable enough to take on the task of professional development. It can also keep you convinced that you should be happy with “good enough,” even though “good enough” is not what you really want to be doing. If you need help believing that you deserve better, positive self-talk and remembering your triumphs can be a useful way to build a sense of pride in what you’ve achieved so far.

Not Knowing How to Get There

Knowing the job that you want is one thing, and knowing how to get the education or experience that you’ll need to land it is another. Even if your goal is as clear as day, the intermittent steps to get there might not be so obvious. If you don’t have a mentor, don’t know someone who is currently doing what you hope to do, or are forging your own unique path to a career that may not even officially exist, it can be hard to know which step to take next. Studying the trajectory of successful people, regardless of their career, can provide insights and clues about universal strategies that are common among those who achieve their dreams.

How Understanding Your Personality Can Help

Understanding your personality is not going to miraculously make the education that you need more accessible or your career path instantly obvious. But understanding the ways that your personality influences how you envision the future or go about planning it will be helpful for figuring out how to overcome these kinds of practical hurdles.

Likewise, personality theory also helps you explore your strengths and potential weaknesses when it comes to setting goals and how you go about pursuing them. Most importantly, probing your personality allows you to pursue the personal growth that is necessary to take on self-doubt, build self-confidence, and foster satisfying – not stressful – professional relationships.

Let Your Personality Traits Influence Your Career Path

It’s important to remember that our personality traits do not operate independently. While some traits may have stronger sway than others, it’s the combination that ultimately impacts how we go about pursuing professional growth – or just about anything else.

That said, understanding the potential strengths of each individual trait and how you can lean into them will allow you to consciously leverage your personality to overcome the obstacles between you and your dream job.

Introverted (I)

Lean into your social selectivity. Focus on building authentic rapport within specific professional circles. Networking may feel like a superficial exercise in blatant self-promotion or making self-serving connections, but when you tend to your individual relationships in a spirit of genuine respect and appreciation, you’ll organically receive professional guidance, valuable insights, and possibly even access to professional opportunities.

Extraverted (E)

Lean into your expressive nature. Connecting with professionals, both in your field and beyond it, probably comes easily to you. Within these relationships, you can open up and share your desires, express your needs, and ask for the help and advice that you’re looking for. Your enthusiasm will likely spread to others, resulting in a more collaborative form of professional development. Even if no one is exactly sure how to help you get where you want to go, your eagerness and passion have the power to invoke the logistical assistance and social support that you’ll need to get there.

Intuitive (N)

Lean into your ability to visualize the big picture. Let your imagination run wild with the different scenarios that could possibly lead to you landing your dream job. Your capacity to contemplate possibilities allows you to simultaneously explore potential career paths while anticipating many of the obstacles that you might encounter as you chase down your goals. And much like how you can foresee roadblocks, you can also use your creative vision to figure out how to get around them.

Observant (S)

Lean into your talent for working with what you have. With your pragmatic mindset, you know it’s possible to build upon the skills, experience, and expertise that you already have to get where you want to go. You also pay heed to tried-and-true strategies, so with a little research or by following advice from people in the know, you’ll find the most practical way to move toward your ideal career.

Thinking (T)

Lean into your gift for analysis. Whether it’s objectively reviewing the best options for financing your goals or relying on your logic to make informed, rational, and levelheaded decisions, you are capable of finding effective solutions or work-arounds for any obstacle. Your intellect is often the key to your many accomplishments, and landing your dream job is no different.

Feeling (F)

Lean into your supportive nature. Your innate sense of empathy, willingness to serve, and passion for supporting those around you can potentially open the doors to your dream career. Why? Because people will want to support you in return. It’s called reciprocity. You might be surprised by how readily you receive invaluable guidance, validation, or other forms of support from both your professional community and social circle at large.

Judging (J)

Lean into your ability to plan long term. You are goal-focused and more likely than others to have a clear vision of what you want in your career. If life gets in the way, you are usually quick to get back on track. Even if you’re not 100% certain of your final goal, you still have a plan, and you’re going to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Your drive to move forward will power you through every roadblock.

Prospecting (P)

Lean into your flexibility. If anyone is going to enjoy success without stressing out about how to get there, it’s you. Your willingness to cede control, respond to evolving demands, and improvise in the face of obstacles allows you to dance around any hurdle. You are able to explore alternative paths while simultaneously discovering and developing the passions that will likely shape your concept of your ideal career.

Assertive (-A)

Lean into your confidence. You likely know what you want – so go get it. You’re generally proud of what you’ve accomplished, you trust in your capabilities, and you are decisive in the face of complicated decisions. All that’s left is to take the initiative to pursue your goals.

Turbulent (-T)

Lean into your community. Your sense of belonging has a huge influence on how you feel about yourself, and to land your dream job, every bit of confidence helps. Find someone you trust to share your career-related doubts and insecurities with. Move forward with the helpful advice that you receive from those in the know who care about you. Try to take it to heart when your colleagues affirm your skills. The people you surround yourself with, professional or otherwise, have the power to build you up, so let them do just that.

Final Thoughts

Now that you’ve read through each trait, think about the five that make up your personality type. How do each of those traits interact? How do they potentiate one another? How can you apply each of these strengths in creative and strategic ways to overcome the specific challenges that you face and achieve the career of your dreams?

Then, think about each of the personality traits at the other end of the spectrum that may be useful to you. Would you benefit from embracing a bit more flexibility? Or maybe you might want to hone your planning skills. Inspiration and personal growth can be found through studying and borrowing from those traits opposite your own. Besides, it can be useful to adopt strategies that don’t necessarily come naturally to you, especially for overcoming those obstacles that you feel ill-prepared to deal with.

Finally, consider sharing in a comment below how each of your strengths has influenced your professional development up till now. And if you already have your dream job, consider how your personality influenced the process of landing it. You never know how sharing your experience may inspire another.