career advice for people with enfj personality type
Career Advice for People with ENFJ Personality Type
The ENFJ personality demonstrates warmth, benevolence, and guidance. Buzzle offers some career advice for people with the ENFJ personality type.
Point to be noted:
As parents, children, or lovers, ENFJs give their 100% in the relationship. They love people and want everyone to be happy, therefore they handle relationships in the most positive manner.
ENFJs are among those personality types who give almost all of their importance to people, in general. Given a choice, they would always choose people over other factors - meaning, they are very caring and affectionate. Generally, they push the logical reasoning of any situation aside, but you will be surprised to know that they have an excellent approach when it comes to manipulating situations (positively). Given their qualities, they have a lot of career paths to choose from; yet, there are certain fields they need to avoid. In the paragraphs to follow, you will find a list of careers for the ENFJ personality type.
An Overview
- ENFJ stands for Extraversion, iNtuition, Feeling, and Judging.
- As already mentioned, an ENFJ is a people's person. Come what may, he will put people first and then take a decision.
- ENFJs are called 'The Mentors', because they are exceptionally adept at leading people.
- They reportedly have outstanding interpersonal and communication skills. This helps them lead people.
- They work brilliantly in an organization due to their ability to get on with practically everyone. They also do very well in school and college, apparently.
- Creativity is another object; they are very aesthetic and love integrating beauty in their personal and professional lives.
- They are very good at nurturing and caring for people; you would find that a majority of them love doing social work.
- They have very less patience with logical analysis and reasoning.
- They may be harsh and judgmental at times, however, this could very well because of opposition and resistance to their thoughts and ideas.
- As children, you can be sure that they would have idolized someone, wanting to grow up and be like them.
- They are very imaginative and enjoy challenges as well.
Personality Traits
Strengths
- Very caring, loving, and warm
- Highly imaginative
- Brilliant leadership qualities
- Very good people skills
- Ability to manipulate people
- Great organizational capabilities
- Honest
Weaknesses
- Inability to handle criticism
- Lack of a pragmatic approach
- Less of rational thinking
- Requirement of constant assurance
- Inability to handle rejection of their ideas
- Less of an analytical approach
- Easily influenced by negative behavior
Suitable Careers
A list of ENFJ careers is given below:
Psychology
- It is one of the best careers for the ENFJ personality type.
- As a psychologist, one has to understand the working of the human mind.
- He has to have a genuine love for humanity and the desire to make people happy.
- In short, he has to be loving and patient and understanding so that he may be able to help his patient face the problems in his life.
- Since an ENFJ possesses all these qualities, it is one of the most suitable careers for him.
- For that matter, any related career, like social service, psychiatry, clergy, etc., is a good choice.
Medicine
- For the same reason as above, a career in medicine will be very suitable for an ENFJ.
- Doctors and nurses have to be kind and considerate towards their patients, motivate them, and assure them that they will be in good health.
- The quality of wishing for others' well-being induces great positivity in the patients.
- Of course, there needs to be a practical side to this profession; however, it is also vital that a doctor-patient relationship is established. Therefore, there is more emphasis on the nurturing quality of the individual, which is why ENFJs are perfect candidates for careers in medicine.
- Another point is that they are great leaders; this quality helps when urgent decisions are to be taken (especially by surgeons, prior to operations).
Sales and Coordination
- ENFJs have brilliant salesmanship qualities.
- They are not just interested in spreading harmony among people, but are interested in people as a whole, that is to say, they love talking to and interacting with people.
- They love to present ideas, talk, discuss, and debate with people. This attitude is perfectly in sync with what is required for one to succeed in sales.
- Besides, they are adept at the art of manipulation (rather, persuasion, in this case), and can easily influence people to buy products.
- They are excellent coordinators as well; they can plan and coordinate meetings, presentations, events, and conferences.
- Related careers include sales manager, event manager, wedding planner, sales executive, etc.
Writing
- ENFJs are very creative. Most of the careers related to creative fields will be suitable for them, with the exception of a select few.
- They love to express themselves in an innovative fashion, and the field of writing enables them to do so.
- They are very imaginative and have the ability to pen down beautiful texts.
- Again though, they may be more fond of creative writing than technical writing; however, this varies from individual to individual.
Unsuitable Careers
Certain careers that ENFJs should avoid are enlisted below:
Mechanical Engineering
- ENFJs are as attracted to people as a firefly is attracted to fire. In other words, they are more interested in people than machines.
- Being with machines may seem like a waste of time for them; they might be good enough to understand the specifications, but they would rather be out somewhere, helping someone, talking to someone.
- Moreover, they are least interested in rational thinking. With mechanics and related disciplines, one needs to follow a logical perspective to understand the working of the machines and its components.
- All these idiosyncrasies may make an ENFJ a very unsuitable choice for a career like mechanical engineering. This may also include disciplines, like instrumentation, electronics, etc.
System Technician
- For the same reason as mentioned in the above option, the career path of a technician is a poor choice for an ENFJ.
- Technicians need to be tech-savvy and pragmatic. They have to have an analytical approach to troubleshoot system problems.
- Moreover, they have to be in the company of computers almost all day. This may not be such a big problem; however, the lack of coordination with people may begin to irritate an ENFJ.
- Consequently, they concentrate lesser and lesser on work; till the dam bursts and they are at the end of their tether.
- Any kind of a technician job (hardware technician, electronic technician, etc.) is a wrong career choice.
Core Business
- Ironically, core business may not be a good choice for an ENFJ.
- The reason for irony is that ENFJs have brilliant organizational and leadership capabilities. These traits are extremely important for business.
- However, they are also highly people-oriented; this means that in situations where a pragmatic approach has to be considered, they may consider the feelings of the people involved and may refrain from taking a practical decision.
- For example, if an ENFJ runs a bakery business and needs to fire 2 people to save funds, he may think about how those two people might manage their livelihood, rather than thinking about how the business might benefit.
- While this may be the right thing to do from a humanitarian approach, it may not do very well for the business if he decides to retain those two employees.
- Thus, an ENFJ can use his leadership skills very well in an organization, but entrepreneurship is not a very good choice for him.
Auditing
- Repetitive work may bore an ENFJ to death.
- Any kind of work that does not involve speech and discussion is frustrating for him.
- Auditing records, documents, and other clerical work is repetitive and monotonous, thus making it a bad career choice.
- Moreover, these jobs offer no scope for an ENFJ to demonstrate his leadership skills.
- Another point to be noted is the lack of creativity. ENFJs may find this kind of a work atmosphere to be highly stifling.