Your Results

Strategic Insights

With variety in your top attributes, you should consider jobs that don’t necessarily look the same from one month to the next, or even from day to day. One option could be project-based jobs. You may also enjoy working on a team where everyone needs to wear multiple hats from time to time (for instance, most startups). Variety comes with unpredictability, which for some is a perk. You get to solve problems, and you’ll often be thrown into situations in which you are not yet an expert. This is a fast track to gaining competency and experience across many different areas.

Variety doesn’t necessarily mean a chaotic or unpredictable workplace (though it can in some fields if that’s what you want). Some jobs, such as K-12 teaching, coaching, and construction, have variety built into them because of the different topics, lessons, projects, and people you interact with every day.

To find a job that’s high on variety, look for positions that have structural reasons for why your work would vary. Does the position entail working for diverse clients on their various needs? From consulting to accounting to home remodeling, working with clients is one way that variety can be built in. Another often overlooked source of variety is working on a small team or in a small company. As part of a smaller firm, relatively few people must address the day-to-day tasks and problems. Everyone has to pitch in for the venture to succeed. This is a good way to avoid boredom.

Interview Questions

• How many clients do we work with at any given time, and how different might the jobs be for various clients?
• What will my day-to-day work look like? (Often, in positions with high variety this will be a hard question for them to answer, which is a good thing in this case)
• How big is the team I will be working on and how do job assignments get handed out?

Job Search Tips

• Look for the words “client” and “project” or “project-based” or “many/multiple/different hats.” These are not the only ways to find jobs with high variety, but they’re a great start.
• Want variety? Go work for a startup. There are job boards that post positions specifically for startups and you will likely end up doing work across all sorts of areas in a fast-paced environment.

Strategic Insights

Sociability relates to the importance of your relationship with others, whether they are your coworkers, clients, vendors, or customers. The people that we work with are often those with whom we spend the most time. As someone with sociability high in your results, you are particularly attuned to these relationships, whether positive or negative. It is therefore important that you do your best to choose an environment that suits your personality and your social needs.

Everywhere you work will have a company culture. Even within the same industry, one firm might be very professional and another more laid back. Your ability to fit in and be a valuable part of the team may depend on your innate connection to the company’s culture and the team. There is nothing wrong with you if you don't fit in at a particular business. Like romantic relationships, sometimes it just doesn't work out.

You would like to avoid negative social situations and for good reason! Studies have estimated that between turnover, loss of productivity, loss of commitment to the company, and decreased creativity, having one major jerk on staff can cost a company over $100,000 annually.

There are situations, such as highly competitive jobs/cultures, where being intimidating or putting others down can appear to help people gain power. The effectiveness of the organization and team, however, will suffer as those individuals have built no goodwill or trust, yet they will carry on thinking that their cutthroat ways are the key to their success. Numerous studies show that this is false, but they still believe it, and so will others. You will often run into some amount of competitiveness in your workplace, and that’s ok, but look for red flags that the entire culture is competition-based.

Being high in sociability does NOT mean that you are emotionally dependent; it means that you desire and appreciate the relationships you have with people at work. It also doesn’t mean that you can’t handle having a jerk around. The world’s top researcher on dealing with workplace jerks suggests that his favorite way to cope with them is emotional detachment, or teaching yourself not to care about negativity from that person. It’s their problem, not yours, and you don’t have to play their game. This is also a useful life skill in general.

You aren’t necessarily doomed because of less ideal social situations at work, it’s just harder. It’s even possible to gain great satisfaction from being a force for goodwill, forgiveness, and service in a previously less-functional group. You’re never going to find a job with perfect people who are always kind to each other. So just do what you can to be a force for good, foster a healthy relationship with your coworkers, and then go from there.

Studies show that if you work for a jerk, you are more likely to become one. So, no matter who ends up around you, take control of your own choices and choose to be a decent human being first. As someone who prizes sociability, you’ll appreciate the friendships and goodwill that come from being kind at work.

And finally, take this mantra to heart: Be slow to label others as jerks, be quick to label yourself as one. Being quick to label yourself the jerk, or at least pausing to consider how you might be contributing to the problem is vital. All humans tend to deny and downplay their imperfections. Just because you highly value sociability doesn’t necessarily mean you’re good at it (sorry!). But knowing that you value your workplace relationships means that you have the advantage of knowing what to get good at. You may benefit more than anybody else by learning and practicing the skills of sociability, teamwork, peacemaking, and friendship-building.

Interview Questions

• Can I meet a few other members of the team?
• Could you describe the company culture to me?
• Can you describe your ideal coworker?

Job Search Tips

• When considering opportunities, pay special attention to how the employees interact with one another. Try to even sit in on a meeting. Can you see yourself contributing to their conversations?
• Try to find someone who has worked with or for the company you are considering. Often the impressions others have of an employer and their team can help us determine how we might fit in.
• It doesn’t take many jerks to affect a workplace. Feel free to ask employees if any such people are working there. A word of caution, don’t ask for WHO they are—that’s gossip, and it sets everyone up for trouble. Instead ask something like, “I don’t want any names, but are there some workers here that you feel generally make your life difficult/miserable?” If you get a couple of people who say yes, realize that there is a decent chance this will be more contagious than it might seem upfront.

Strategic Insights

Specialization means that you value becoming very good at something. Virtually every superhero story (Avengers), crime procedural (Bones), or heist movie (Oceans 11) features a team of highly specialized individuals. These teams work because the group is made up of people who are incredibly good at their individual specialties. That is their calling card. It’s exciting, satisfying, and meaningful to be the resident ‘expert’ on something. The fact that specialization is in your top three means that this is something that will be particularly enjoyable to you.

Scholars often delineate between generalists and specialists. You want to be a specialist. To be a specialist, focus on hard skills that are easy to quantify. That doesn’t mean you have to be a coder (though that’s a great job), but you’ll want to find a position in which you can measure and show your progress.

Perhaps surprising to some, specialization often dovetails nicely with low-variety jobs. This does NOT mean boring jobs. It means jobs that you have a chance to become very good at because you are allowed the time and opportunity to become excellent. Professional video gamers have extremely low-variety jobs that are almost impossible to attain because so many other people would love to be paid to play the same thing over and over for so long that they get extraordinarily good at it. Most areas of specialization have far less competition than video-game streaming, so even a little expertise can make you the best in the room, the best in the company, or even beyond.

Becoming a specialist is very fulfilling because you can see that you are getting better at something. It’s also clear how important your work is because often you’re the only one around who can perform a particular task. This also comes with some social status. Expertise can be achieved in any job or at any education level. Master’s degrees and trade certifications are, by definition, paths to mastery in a specific area, and a great way to show your expertise.

Interview Questions

• What hard skills are vital for this job?
• Are there any company-sponsored trainings/certifications that are part of this job?
• Does the company offer any education programs to help employees gain more skills?

Job Search Tips

• When considering a specialization, ask yourself, ‘how many people could put this on their resume?’ If the answer is very few, you’re on the right track.
• Imagine a current or future supervisor introducing you as “This is (your name). They’re our _______ expert!” Are you working on something that could fill that blank? Does this job provide you the opportunity to learn skills that would lead a future employer to say this about you?