Individual Personality Profile - Personal Statement Example

Individual Personality Profile Introduction This paper is a unique attempt of mine, to know myself in such a way that never happened before. Divided into three sections, the first section of the paper would present my scores for four different types of personality tests namely the Big Five model personality Test, Myers-Briggs type Indicator (MBTI), Self-monitoring test, and RIASEC test. Analyzing those results in absolute and relative manner is the next goal of this paper under the section. In short, the reader should be able to draw a picture of mine, in his or her mind once he or she has gone through this section. Moreover, in case of any unexpected contradictions, a through analysis and debate on it would take place. The next section of this paper has the goal to present my career in front of the reader. More importantly, this section would be focusing on the knowledge, abilities, skills, and other characteristics that are required for that job. In short, this section would draw a complete sketch of that job in such a way that even a nonprofessional can understand the same. The third and the last section of this paper has the goal to relate both of the former sections and conduct a thorough analysis on the fact that to what degree there is a match between myself, my personality and my career, my job and its requirements. This section would also highlight some of my key strengths and weaknesses or challenges as well. Moreover, I would also present the ways I think with which I can cope up with those challenges. Section # 1 – Understanding Yourself Big Five-Model Personality Test More than five decades ago, when psychologists, recruiters, and experts were curious to know and understand personalities of people, they found out that there is a possibility to break down personality into five distinct elements or dimensions. They believed, based on the comprehensive and empirical research until that time that it very much concludes, and include all the aspects of personality. These five factors are “Extroversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability or Neuroticism and openness to experience” (Bryon, pp. 5-9). Considering neuroticism instead of emotional stability and with rearranging them, they can form the word OCEAN with there their first letters. The first factor is in this is the test of extroversion which aims at finding that whether a person is an introvert or an extrovert. Extroverts usually are happy go lucky nature, hyper active, energetic, out going people, having many friends, love to enjoy outside world, feel a great deal of pressure and influence from the external world (Bryon, pp. 5-9). However, introverts are the opposite because these people tend to remain clam, cool, composite, reserved, less friendly, less sociable, less outgoing, and less influences from the outside world. It is important to understand that their lack reserved and privacy-loving nature does not mean that these are depressed, stressed, shy, and less-confident people. They just do not like to open up in front of the world because they a have a world inside them which has very few people (Bryon, pp. 5-9). My score in this regard was 33, which indicates that I am an extrovert. Moreover, the highest attainable score was 40 and the median being 24 so it is important to note my degree of extroversion here. The next element is regarding agreeableness. Agreeable people are those who have warm, polite, friendly, concerned, helpful, and considerate. Agreeable people hold an optimistic view about others and believe that the interests of the group should be placed above than anybody’s personal interests. However, people who score low in this regard generally are skeptic, suspicious, uncooperative, self-interest driven, unconcerned and non-friendly people (Mullins, pp. 66-77). My score in this regard was around thirty-six, which is quite an “agreeable” score. The third dimension of this personality in this test is conscientiousness. An individual who prefers planning, discipline, and goal setting, is hungry for achievement, understands, and values his responsibilities and duties would score high on conscientiousness and vice versa (Burger, 52-58). My score in this dimension was 23, which is even low then the median score of 24 indicating that I am a disorganized and unplanned person. The fourth element is emotional instability, often called as Neuroticism. People who score high in this regard are depressive, anxious, fearful, stressful, frustrate, reactive and are filled with negative emotions (Llewellyn & Holt, pp. 85-89). Quite understandably, these people are less happy than those who have higher emotional stability levels. Moreover, mangers often find it difficult to increase job satisfaction for these people since they have an inner tendency to remain unhappy (Mullins, pp. 66-77). My score is this regard was 24 showing that I am just at the middle. Openness to experience refers to the degree to which an individual respects, admires, likes, and appreciates, creativity, new ideas, imagination, diversity, and variety in thoughts, imaginative and non-conventional and non-traditional beliefs. My score of thirty-five in this dimension shows that I am pretty much a person who is open to experience. Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) Experts all around the world refer MBTI as the widely known and widely used instrument for conducting personality today. The basic goal of this test is to assess that how people actually make perceptions about the outside world, and to identify the elements that play their part during the decision making process (Bayne, pp. 52-85). This test actually attempts to classify people as either “Extraverts or Introverts (E versus I), either Sensing or Intuitive (S versus N), either thinkers or feelings (T versus F), and either Judgers or Perceivers (J versus P). The results can be one of the sixteen personality types” (Bayne, pp. 14-16). For example, an introvert, sensing, thinker, and judging person would be ISTJ personality type. This test showed that I am an ENFP personality type individual. Research shows that ENFP are usually energetic and friendly people. They live in the world of possibilities and are quite spontaneous (Mullins, pp. 66-77). However, that does not mean that they do not have any goal in their minds but it means that they keep on changing their courses of action for achieving a wider range of goals. These people are also value driven, inspiring, motivating ones who value life, see as a gift, and try their best to make the most of it. People generally like them due to their understanding, warm, cooperative and friendly nature and even more importantly, ENFP feel even more need to be liked and accepted amongst their social circle (Kalat, pp.33-37). ENFP are generally happy people but the same does not remains true if you confine these people to strict or tight schedules, detailed maintenance tasks or make them work against their value system. They love working with flexibility, little supervision, people, imagination and ideas (Bayne, 52-85). Another important point is their risk taking ability, which makes them pretty much like entrepreneurs. Experts suggest that the careers, which suit ENFPs, are teaching, acting, entrepreneurship, counseling, politician, diplomat, writer, television reporter, and others (Carter, pp. 5). Until this point in time, there is pretty much consistency between my results and scores of MBTI and big five model test. Both of them suggest that I am an extrovert, friendly, cooperative, sensitive to other’s needs, spontaneous, unplanned, unorganized, and creative. Self-Monitoring test This test aims at classifying people as high self-monitoring people or low self-monitoring people. The former refers to people who are quick in adapting to newer situations, do not resist change, and quickly assimilate with new people and new environment. These people are dynamic and acceptable. The later is completely the opposite. This test contains around 18 situations and respondent identifies that how would he or she act in a particular situation (Johns & Saks, pp. 12-18). With a specific formula of assigning points, a score comes up on the scene. If that score is above 12 than the individual has a high self-monitoring ability (Tosi & Mero, 74-79). I had a score of 16, which indicates that I do not face many problems in adapting to new situations. Research indicates that people with higher self-monitoring levels are more likely to receive higher increments, promotions, social acceptability and occupy central and leadership positions (Knights & Willmott, pp. 49-52). It is not a surprise to have a high self-monitoring score for myself. In fact, a person who is ENFP and scores high on openness to experience should have a high self-monitoring score. Therefore, all my scores, until today, are very much in relation with each other and they are making complete sense to me. RIASEC test RAISEC test developed by Holland was an important revolution in the field of personality. For years, recruiters remained in search for the “right” and “matching” people for their jobs (Wilson, pp. 67-68). However, with RIASEC test Holland made the point that one should find individual who has the ability to fit into a particular job not an individual makes a perfect match to the job. He focused more on the ability of people to adapt and assimilate into different job requirements. Holland developed the Vocational Preference Inventory Questionnaire containing around 160 occupations (Mullins, 52-57). The answers of like and dislike of the questions lead to forming an hexagonal shape having six types of personality on its six sides namely, realistic, investigative, social, conventional, enterprising and artistic (Bayne, pp. 13-18). Each personality type fits to some occupations. Moreover, for example, if a person is mainly conventional then he can do jobs, which are realistic, and social if and only these two personality types are on the two sides of the conventional side of the hexagonal shape for that person. My score is making a shape of SERIAC, which indicates that I am a best fit for social occupations like nurse, teacher, counselor, business trainer, psychologist, and caretaker. Moreover, I also have the ability to fit into the jobs of enterprising and realistic jobs. Enterprising includes jobs like those of lawyers, real estate agent, business managers, public relations specialist, and others (Tosi & Mero, 74-79). In addition, realistic jobs are those which of which require physical activity, skill, and strength like those 9of farmers, assembly line workers, carpenters and others. Again, there is no significant room for objections on the results of RIASEC test because since it is suggesting social jobs as the best fit for ENFP person who ranks high on self monitoring and also ranks high on extroversion, agreeableness and openness to experience which is quite understandable. Therefore, at the end of this section, I conclude that all my results seem to be co-related and showing the same results or in line and parallel with each other. Section # 2 - Understanding Your Work As mentioned above, this section of the paper would provide some insights to the career which I want to pursue and that is human resource management. According to its basic definition, Human resource management deals with the four basic functions of staffing, recruiting, training and development and reward and compensation (Johns & Saks, pp. 14). Everything and anything, which relates to the human resource of the organization comes under the umbrella of an HR manager. “Recruiting, selection, human resource planning, labor laws, handling grievances, training and development, rewards and compensation, job design and redesign, performance appraisal, managing diversity, employee motivation, deciding on the organizational structure, negotiation and bargaining and others are a few of the tasks that HR managers have to perform” (Martin, pp. 36-37). Since HR is very much an interrelated field, therefore, an HR manager should have the knowledge of psychology, human behavior, HR practices and approaches, work place, and information technology skills. In addition, skills of English language and other important foreign languages, organizational behavior, labor laws, leadership studies, training methods, coaching and counseling methods, sociology and others (Martin, pp. 36-37). As far as the skills required for a manager, they include firstly great communication skills, listening ability, and written expertise. HR mangers also require good observation skills and great skills for strategic planning as well since these people have to look out of the box and come up with long-term plans and strategies of the organization (Hoffman, pp. 74-79). Also, research shows that their jobs requires integrity, stress handling capability, good leadership qualities, flexibility, concern for others, and cooperation (Mullins, pp. 47-49). Section 3 - Integration and Insights The most important portion of this paper is this section since it would be comparing all the results and research done until yet. After the integration of results from the two former sections, the results are very mixed and there is no perfect answer to the question that whether there is a match between by job and my personality traits. The positive side of this picture is that a HR manager needs to be very understanding, cooperative, warm, friendly, considerate, concerned for others, sympathetic and a good leader and according to my results for all the tests I am all of these and a good match. However, on the darker side of the picture, as the research suggests that a human resource manager has to conduct a very important function that is very much a core duty of an HR manger and that is “strategic human resource planning.” Now two words in it are entirely the opposite of me, which are “strategic” and “planning.” A person who scores low on conscientiousness, is an ENFP, is spontaneous, less organized and discipline, how you can expect her to be a strategic thinker. This is a clear mismatch. Now, I am faced with two options. Either to leave HR and think of marketing as a career for me or if I stick to HR then I would have to work a lot on the “strategic planning” element. Despite the fact that this bringing this element inside me would take a lot of time but it is not impossible. By planning little things in my everyday life, setting goals and evaluating then after every now and then, trying to be consistent and others would allow me to adapt to this situation as well. Works Cited Bayne, Rowan. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Nelson Thornes, 1997. Bryon, Mike. The Ultimate Psychometric Test Book. Kogan Page, 2006. Burger, Jerry M. Personality. Cengage Learning, 2007. Carter, Philip. IQ and personality tests. Kogan Page Publishers, 2007. Hoffman, Edward. Ace the Corporate Personality Test. McGraw-Hill Professional, 2000. Johns, Gary, & Saks, Alan M. Organizational behaviour. Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007. Kalat, James W. Introduction to Psychology. Cengage Learning, 2007. Knights, David. & Willmott, Hugh. Introducing organizational behaviour and management. Cengage Learning EMEA, 2007. Llewellyn, A. Bronwyn., & Holt, Robin. The Everything Career Tests Book. Everything Books, 2007. Martin, John. Organizational behaviour. Thomson Learning, 2001. Mullins, Laurie J. Essentials of Organisational Behaviour. Financial Times/Prentice Hall, 2008. Tosi, Henry L., & Mero, Neal P. The fundamentals of organizational behavior. Wiley-Blackwell, 2003. Wilson, Fiona Margaret. Organizational behaviour. Oxford University Press, 1999. Read More