Personality as the Whole Set of an Individual's Characteristics - Assignment Example

Individual Personality Profile 25 February Introduction People have different personalities, defined as the sum total of how an individual will react to certain situations in life and also how he or she interacts with other people. In our life, we encounter various types of personalities by which we learn to categorize the people we had meet according to some descriptive words like aggressive, submissive, shy, ambitious, loyal, timid, introvert or extrovert. Personality is the whole set of an individuals characteristics that identifies that individual uniquely such as cognition, motivation and behavior. A personality is sometimes ingrained for life but there are also ways to modify a personality. The study of personality is undertaken mostly by both sociologists and psychologists to give them an insight into what makes a person tick. There are two broad ways of how to approach or implement the study of personality. The first is through discovering some general principles that apply to all types of people such as self-actualization principle that governs all human beings. The second approach is to observe and understand an individual by his unique aspects. The first approach is generalized or macro view (termed as nomothetic psychology) while the second is a micro view of a person or specific and called idiographic psychology. There are also several theoretical viewpoints used to study personality such as social learning perspective, biological, humanistic, behavioral and psycho-dynamic. Various tests have been designed to determine an individuals personality using some of these theories to arrive at a coherent and complete picture of a persons psychological composition or makeup. Personal psychology is used in a variety of ways such as hiring policies for employment. This paper will describe my personality based on some tests I took and discuss its implications. Discussion Knowing your personality type can help a lot in career decision making. This is due to the fact that certain personalities are more suited to particular jobs or professions. Having a good fit between personality and job description helps towards achieving efficiency at work and increased employee satisfaction as well. This is why personality tests are important in the world of work and many firms use personality tests to determine if an applicant is suitable or not for a vacant job position. Hiring the right employees helps to improve or achieve overall organizational objectives. Training and work experience can come in later and augment all an employees strengths in performing the job functions but the crucial part is the right person is hired through a scientifically-based rigid screening process during the job interview and test. It would be costly in terms of time and resources to hire the wrong employee and has serious consequences for both the company and the person erroneously hired. It is even more costly to fire someone later on when job performance is below par or substandard due to the fault of the company because it hired the wrong person for the job. Efficiency will suffer as a result because there is no fit between capabilities, personalities and job descriptions. A person who cannot perform well is also not happy and will not turn out a good performance. After all it may not be that persons fault being placed in a wrong job that does not fit his personality. It can subject the firm to expensive lawsuits when the real reason could be attributable to wrong fit of personality to the requirements of the job itself. In this regard, it is also helpful to prospective employees to know their personalities. It will serve as good guide for them when choosing what types of work they will work best and produce good or even excellent performance that will exceed common standards. Those who are planning to enter the workforce must first try to determine their personality types based on some standard tests in use today. It will be helpful to them initially and also in the long term. Many organizations employ or use some standard personality test to determine if an individual is suitable or not for a certain position within it. This includes business companies, non-profit organizations, government agencies, charitable agencies and social-work related organizations. This means two things to both the recruitment officer and the job applicant: a good fit between person-job and person-organization. The first determines whether a certain newly-hired employee will have the necessary personality type in consonance or conjunction with the job requirements. The second fit is called an organizational fit and is the more crucial among the two fits; this will make an individual stay with an organization if there is a fit in his values and the organization culture. It is a good predictor of job satisfaction and contributes to an employees commitment to the organization and reduces labor turnover rates. By keeping its employees, a company or organization is spared the additional task and burden of hiring again another employee to replace someone who had resigned. By reducing turnover, an organization also preserves its intellectual capital by having experienced people on its ranks than hiring and training someone new again. Once an employee leaves a company he or she brings along with him or her that valuable knowledge gained through experience and is practically irreplaceable. This is specially true of knowledge-based organizations where its chief asset are its own people who possess that valuable knowledge. For recruitment officers, the implication is that they should look for people who have the right ability, previous work experience (if applicable), academic background and the right personality and value system that is compatible with the organizational culture and beliefs. It is a good guide for managers to use this information in determining the optimum fit. It will enhance job productivity and contribute towards attainment of organizational objectives. Most managers fail to see this crucial link and suffer for their shortsightedness. This is even more crucial today when the current trend is working in teams or groups that emphasize teamwork. Todays professional HR managers employ or use different battery tests to determine their hiring decisions. They know how important it is to make the right decision right at the start of an employees career – during the job application process such as interview and tests. Some of the personality test techniques are well known such as Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), the Big-5 Model developed by Lewis Goldberg and is variably termed as Five Factor Model (FFM) and the RIASEC test by John L. Holland (vocational model) used to determine a persons suitability for certain job types or career paths. There are less well-known tests but their objectives are the same: to determine an individuals personality and use that knowledge to help choose a right career that will maximize job satisfaction and employee productivity. MBTI is probably the most widely used psychometric personality assessment test that is used today. Individuals are classified either as extrovert or introvert, thinking or feeling, sensing or intuitive and finally, either as judging or perceiving. These four classifications are fairly simple to use that resulted in the popularity of the MBTI and results into 16 different combinations and gives an accurate estimate regarding personality, outlook, temperament and lifestyle patterns. The Big 5 Model is also popular among recruitment managers and human resources professionals because of its simplicity. It uses empirical data and only 5 personality basic over-arching traits are used based on numerous research studies, namely: extraversion, agreeableness, openness to new experiences, conscientiousness and neuroticism. The RIASEC model developed by psychologist John Holland is actually an acronym that stands for the following six factors that categorizes personality types, namely: realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising and conventional. The theoretical model he used can be represented graphically as a hexagon with lines drawn connecting them with adjacent types more closely related; his theory claims it is applicable to both persons and work environment. Along this line, the RIASEC model claims it can help in working out a good person-job fit. Section 1. - Understanding Myself I can best describe myself as an extrovert type of personality and as such enjoy going out and meeting other people. Additionally, I had taken the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test and came up with E-S-T-J which specifically means I am extroverted, a sensing person, make judgments based more on thinking than feeling and lastly, a judging person. Based on MBTI, I can be characterized as a practical and realistic person; I decide quickly on important issues and tends to be more organized than the next person. Furthermore, I am systematic and follow clear logical steps and standards in doing most things. I am detail-oriented and take care of all details that are important to a project, for instance, than the average person. This means I can carry out whatever I plan to their logical conclusions without much effort. Whatever I want to do gets accomplished because I am persistent and follow through in my plans. Out of curiosity and to further validate my initial findings about myself, I also decided to try out the Big-5 Model personality test (Goldberg, 1217). I got high marks particularly in extroversion and agreeableness, somewhat high marks in openness and conscientiousness but with a barely passing score in neuroticism (my score was 30 but still above the median of 24). This means the two test results are somewhat the same regarding my personality type and this gave me an idea on what types of professions will be suitable for me in the future. It means I tend to get excited at times quite easily but this is only an occasional occurrence. I am easily bored by routine work and would be unsuitable for some clerical jobs that has job functions which are repetitive and therefore not challenging enough for me. My being an extrovert would be great in some job that entails meeting with new people but I will try to narrow the choices down later on. In the meantime, being high on the agreeableness score has implied I will work better in group settings like being a member of a sales team or something. My being a conscientious person will allow me to finish tasks no matter how difficult. This means my conscientiousness will allow me to persevere in my chosen profession although there might be obstacles I will meet later on. It does not matter how difficult or how long it will take me but I vow to finish something that I had started or chosen to do. This is a good indicator also that I am an open-minded person that is amenable to enjoying something new or experience something different once in a while. I think being open applies not only to new experiences but also to new ideas as well as other peoples views and opinions. I believe this will greatly help me in having a more eclectic view of all things instead of being mired down in a straitjacket of narrow or parochial interests, concerns or issues. Scoring high on all five personality categories in the Big-5 Model has a strong, direct correlation with certain desirable traits. For example, a high score on agreeableness indicates I can work well with other people and be good in teamwork, a skill that is often demanded by many jobs today and which hiring managers look for in particular in a prospective employee. The same goes for openness which means I can accept adverse opinions from other people without getting offended or discouraged. That means I will do will in some social settings that require a diversity of opinions and viewpoints not necessarily the same as mine. Lastly, I took the time needed to also accomplish the self-efficacy questionnaire of 10 questions regarding my perception of my own abilities and got a total score 34. this means I am quite self-confident in my abilities to accomplish difficult tasks in the future based on my previous experiences in life. This is consistent with the earlier findings on conscientiousness in which I tend to persist in achieving whatever I had planned to do to achieve success. This is a measure also that validates my self-efficacy findings. Now that I know my score on this self efficacy rating system, I can make better job choices that has to do with setting ambitious goal and higher motivational requirements to succeed. Whether my self-efficacy rating is entirely accurate is something that will have to be proven by future experience but it gave me ideas. My RIASEC test results were quite interesting for me. I found out that I scored high in realistic factor (5) and also in the investigative factor (5). However, I got extremely low score in conventional factor (2) and artistic factor (1). For the enterprising factor, I got a score of (4) and in social factor, a score (3). This means I am not really that sociable all the time so I need to make a special effort to improve on my sociability. This means it will be a conscious effort to try to be nice to everybody most of the time, if not all the time. I had taken the shortened version of the test (five questions only in each factor instead of either 15 or 30) but it gave me a clearer idea of how I would fare in a prospective profession I will chose later on. Section 2. - Understanding my Work All the various tests had by now given me a clear idea on what personality type is and will therefore serve me as a good guide in my future career choices. Based on the personality test results, I think I am ideally suited in the field of professional sales and marketing jobs. In this particular career aspiration, I would probably start out as a sales representative of some manufacturing company (except for technical or scientific products) probably of some drugs or pharmaceuticals firm. It could also be a manufacturing firm such as the automotive sector. Some of the more detailed aspects of the job task are providing clients with samples and catalogs, answer customers questions about price, product availability, product uses and credit terms, recommend product to prospective clients based on their assessed needs, interest and requirements. Other job tasks for this type of work include contacting regular and future clients to apprise them to show them new products, demonstrate new features and solicit new orders from them. Additionally, this type of job requires giving estimate or price quotations, define contract terms, explain credit extension qualification requirements, define warranties and fix delivery dates of product items. In general, the job requires a lot of direct or indirect people contact that requires an outgoing personality, in short, traits of a salesperson type. Knowledge – this job requires knowing the principles of showing, promoting, selling and demonstrating new products and their features. This means knowing marketing strategies and techniques that will convince skeptical clients to try out the new product. Additionally, it requires expertise in knowing how to deal with difficult customers, the principles of customer service and meeting customer expectations and requirements. This means ability to correctly assess customers needs and then provide appropriate feedback to higher management. It also requires basic mathematics like algebra, arithmetic and statistics (includes applications). Skills – the skills needed for this type of job are active listening, persuasive speaking, time management and reading comprehension. Knowing how to listen and when to interrupt is a critical skill to draw a customers ideas and opinions without offense. Speaking in a kind but forceful manner that is persuasive will swing doubting customers to the product. A good time management skill is required so as not to spend time unnecessarily on the unimportant matters but focus on those crucial aspects of the job. Reading comprehension is a required skill in order to better understand some product brochures and then it explain it well to clients. Abilities – in particular, what are needed are good oral skills like oral comprehension and speech clarity. Speech recognition is the ability to understand what another person is also speaking so that one need not ask the client to repeat himself because you did not hear well. Other skills are written comprehension, which is the ability to understand information and ideas presented in written texts and good near vision to see some details at closer range and not straining the eyes or asking someone else to read it for you (http://online.onetcenter.org). Other characteristics – a marketing or selling job requires a high degree of patience to deal calmly with client complaints and also dealing successfully with irate customers without feeling stressed out. Another quality which I think is necessary for a salesperson is dealing with ambiguity in a professional manner that allows for the logical decision to be arrived at. Salary Information – this job category pays an average of $24.68 per hour for a total of about $ 51,330 annually. It is also medium-growth category with an average demand at 7% to 13% annually until year 2018 which is an additional 457,900 employees will be hired until then. At present, it employs approximately between 1,540,000 to 1,600,000 people. For the employees between 25 to 44 years old that were surveyed, more than half (51%) had college degrees with the rest having some college (28%) and the remainder high school level (21%). Work Activities – by its very nature, selling job requires establishing and maintaining close interpersonal relationships with the clients to develop trust and cooperation. This means getting required information not obtainable elsewhere because of good rapport with customers and then convincing to influence them to buy a product or change their minds about it. Other interesting information – I discovered almost by accident that this site offers an assessment of the job requirements based on the six RIASEC factors and rated accordingly. In this job type, what is required most is the conventional factor (89%) and then followed by the enterprising (83%) and realistic factors 45%). The rest were social (33%), investigative (17%) and artistic factor at 0%. This is quite a shock for me because some of traits are not needed. Conclusion Section 3. - Integration and Insights Based on the preceding paragraph, I found out that being an extrovert may not be truly needed from a superficial point of view because the social factor was only at 33%. I believe, however, that the on-line site is correct in having the enterprising factor at a high of 83% as it is required for salespersons to be aggressive, intuitive and entrepreneurial in their outlook and actions. The conventional factor is rated the highest at 89% because selling can become quite a routine if the salesperson does not know how to vary his tasks and duties to avoid boredom. However, I still believe that agreeableness and extraversion are necessary for a selling job. Along this line, I believe I possess the necessary knowledge required in a marketing career. For example, I am open-minded about new ideas and new things which is ideal when selling new products or services to prospective customers. I can easily grasp the requirements of what it takes to successfully sell something because I am flexible and dynamic. Marketing is a process and I have the skills to convince people to try out something new. This is useful if there is a new product launch that requires a demonstration on how to use it properly. Careers in marketing also requires good people psychology to be able to judge people correctly when presenting something to them and gauge their probable reactions to a sales pitch. I really like meeting new people and this is a good skill to have because people can be convinced that you are somehow really interested in them and not just as prospective clients. People are often very wise when it comes to salespersons and they can see whether you are just pretending to like them or not. It means someone like me who is genuinely interested in people can easily get my message across together with my good oral skills and in presentation of sales materials. Taken together, all these skills and abilities will be great in marketing. The RIASEC fits with my future career in marketing in terms of being realistic and in having an inquisitive mind (investigative factor). This means I will set realistic, doable goals when it comes to marketing quotas or targets and not try to over-reach myself in this regard. If people will reject my sales proposal for the first time, I will try to investigate the reasons why they did not like and do better the next time. This way, I do not just give very easily when the odds seem to go against me. It means I will find ways to overcome their sales objections. My outgoing, easy-going, open-minded, dynamic and flexible personal nature are good fits for the career in marketing. A positive personality like me will always tend to attract people even if I am not actually selling them anything. In short, a positive attitude will make selling an easier job than would otherwise be possible because people associate positivism with good products. I found out that the conventional factor in the RIASEC test is needed in the marketing field. At first, I thought this is inconsistent with a future chosen career but realized it is really necessary in a selling job because in marketing, there will be many rejections and someone should be prepared to handle this aspect of the job. It requires persistence, in other words. On another aspect of RIASEC, this concerns both the artistic and the social factors. Marketing is an art as it is not an exact science and so requires a lot of artistry which I do not have right at the moment. The social factor is also another concern of mine but this can be resolved soon in time with me going out often in social activities and functions to improve my confidence. A key strength I have that is extremely useful in the marketing field is my real interest in meeting new people. Those who really like people will find marketing to be an interesting job because it is not boring at all. One gets to meet new people all the time and acquire new experiences too. Another key strength is my sharp mind which allows me to observe people and judge them more correctly each time. This is a combination of intuition and intelligence. A key challenge in marketing is that is a very competitive profession and one needs to able to constantly update oneself about new trends in the market. Selling requires being adept at trend detection and know what is hot or not based on popular market perceptions. The challenges in marketing are many but success can be attained by not getting easily discouraged. I also intend to attend marketing seminars to enhance my selling skills, people – handling skills and negotiation skills to improve my chances of becoming successful. What it all requires is persistence and correct practice. Many successful marketers have initially failed many times before they finally became successful in the end. Marketing is a complex field; I know that success requires hard work on my part. A marketing career requires learning to be creative and analytical too (WetFeet, 53) and is actually a good launching pad for a career in entrepreneurship and for many other specialized fields in business management. Works Cited “Details Report for: Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Except for Technical and Scientific Products.” http://online.onetcenter.org/ n.d. Web. 24 February 2010. Goldberg, L. R. An Alternative “Description of Personality”: The big-five factor structure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59.6 (1993): 1216-1229. Print. Wet Feet. Careers in Marketing 2008. San Francisco, CA, USA: WetFeet, Inc., 2008. Print. Read More