Preferred work environment
- Offers opportunities to work with people who are experts in their field
- Is on the cutting edge or innovative
- Provides opportunities to work on complex problems
- Is hard driving and achievement oriented
- Challenges people intellectually
How type affects career exploration
How you go about exploring career options will be influenced by your INTJ preferences. Your type will help you in your career exploration activities in distinct ways, just as it may present some distinct challenges for you.
An INTJ tends to find career satisfaction with careers that have the following characteristics:
- Involves analysis, creativity, knowledge, and focus
- Challenges their intellect
- Encourages innovative thinking and revolutionary ideas
- Gives the time and freedom to put their ideas into practice
- Provides an opportunity for continuous learning and creative problem solving
- Ensures full control over completing a project to meet their high standards
- Allows them to create change that promotes system and people efficiency
- Provides an opportunity to work with intelligent and competent colleagues
- Involves a limited amount of routine
- Provides compensation that is based on what they have done and their diligence in completing the task
When exploring career options, an INTJ will often
- Set various long-term career goals and create an action plan
- Create or design their own career
- Need to be open to tailoring their plan if obstacles arise or alternative plans are required
- Research jobs and their future outlook but may neglect considering specific aspects of a career
- Use an objective approach to evaluate the pros and cons of each potential career
How type affects career development
The career development process will be influenced by INTJ preferences. Career development almost always involves coping with new demands that do not come naturally to you and often requires working and communicating with people with different preferences. At times, career change can be a beneficial stimulus to further development of your type. Type development means knowing and accepting your natural preferences and then consciously choosing to use nonpreferred preferences in certain situations when appropriate. Listed below are some typical strengths of and challenges faced by INTJs, as well as some suggestions for development.
During their job search, an ESTJ will often:
- Develop a creative job search plan that sets them apart from the competition
- Compile information on the industry or company and tailor their personal application to these trends
- When appropriate or necessary, design their own job
- Need to remember to pay attention to the uninteresting details of their job search
- Benefit from expanding their networking group
- Need to maintain their energy and motivation throughout the job search
- Need to remember to stay open to job offers and potentially negotiate the unappealing aspects of a position
- Need to look at all aspects of a job and consider their personal values when making a decision
During an interview, an INTJ will often:
- Display confidence but should be cautious not to appear arrogant
- Have a tendency to undersell their abilities and appear impersonal or distant
- Need to remember to present their immediate contributions to the organizations in addition to their potential contributions
- Need to be open to discussing their ideas and accepting criticism
- Need to ensure they display an eager attitude for the job
INTJ and work
At work, the INTJ will often:
- Be organized, confident, productive, and committed
- Look at the big picture and see how things are connected
- Be focused on the task and understand what can be accomplished
- Have a vision for the organizations potential
- Set long-term goals and determine the process to meet those goals
- Enjoy challenging, theoretical, or conceptual work
- Have high standards for all involved in a project
- Objectively examine issues and create workplace systems
- Make future predictions and evaluate the overall impact of their ideas
- Prefer autonomy in their work and find set procedures too restricting
- Work best in an independent environment that is void of interruptions
- Tolerate interruptions from competent colleagues they respect
- Want to be respected by their colleagues
At work, the INTJ should be aware that they may:
- Be unmotivated to complete a project after finishing the creative component
- Experience difficulty changing their ideas, reevaluating their decisions, or considering opposing viewpoints
- Miss the practical requirements necessary to ensure the success of their plans
- Spend time making unnecessary improvements to projects or workplace systems
- Become impatient with those who do not meet their standards
- Need to intentionally appreciate others and realize the importance of feelings
- Have limited patience for slow learning coworkers and niceties
- Have a tendency to lack tact when they are in a hurry
- Need to include other peoples ideas throughout a project’s duration
- Have ideas that people find difficult to comprehend
- May excessively gather details without reason or alternatively may neglect all details
Teamwork
On a team, the INTJ will often:
- Contribute a fresh perspective
- Ask the tough questions
- Organize information and schedule tasks to ensure they are completed
- Persist in advocating for their ideas and visions
- Prefer to work with individuals they perceive to be knowledgeable
On a team, the INTJ should be aware that they may:
- Place their own high work standards on others
- Refrain from sharing their feelings and prefer other members to not share this type of information
- Need to intentionally elicit the input of others
- Find it difficult to delegate tasks
- Become frustrated with team members who do not finish their assigned jobs, are not open to questions, focus on irrelevant details, require immediate answers, waste peoples time, and are deemed incompetent
Leadership
An INTJ often has a natural inclination towards leadership and will often seek out these types of positions.
As a leader, the INTJ will often:
- Create necessary paths to ensure that the ideas become reality
- Motivate themselves and others to meet their goals
- Ensure that everyone is kept on task
Communication
The INTJ will often:
- Prefer direct and honest communication
- Communicate their decisions, opinions, and plans but rarely discuss their personal insights
- Use a task-orientated approach that focuses on their big-picture ideas
- Have a tendency to point out flaws or be critical
- Become impatient with others when their ideas are not understood
The INTJ should be aware that they may need to:
- Incorporate concrete facts and details in order to paint a clear and tangible picture for their audience
- Consider how their words affect or impact people
- Accept feedback from people
- Listening to the peoples personal sharing and respond without being unfriendly or impersonal
- Communicate their own feelings that relate to a situation
Decision making
When it comes to decision making, the INTJ will often:
- Be logical and objective
- Thoroughly analyze and assess the situation or problem
- Need to consider specific details when evaluating their options
- Make a decision without consulting an outside source
- Need to consider the impact their decisions have on people
Stress
An INTJ will often experience stress when:
- Required to alter their plans or are given limited time to adjust to variations
- Achieving less than desirable results
- Encountering details that contradict logic
- Working with people they do not perceive to be competent, rational, or logical
- Surrounded by a disorganized work environment
- Pressured to breach policies or accept deception in their workplace
When affected by stress, an INTJ will often:
- Use card playing, excessive eating, watching tv reruns, or focusing on detail-orientated activities as a mechanism to avoid reality
- Gather details to support their self-destructive behavior and attack their self image
- Become preoccupied with the cause of their stress and have trouble focusing their energy on work
- Mentally review issues which lead to sleepless nights
- With chronic stress, become irritable, tired, tense, or angry
Advice: An INTJ can reduce stress by:
- Realigning their perspective by completing a task
- Taking time to reflect and potentially reduce their commitments
- Getting involved in a physical activity with friends
- Allowing other people to help by delegating some responsibilities
- Learning that relaxing does not require pushing themselves to achieve
- Learning how to connect with people
