ESTP

Your Type and Your Career

 ESTP

easy-going
realistic
versatile

Understanding your preferences as an ESTP will make it easier to identify what is likely to feel ‘right’ for you at work and help you when you are planning a career change.

The best employment options for you will allow you to use your natural strengths and limit your exposure to tasks and situations that will drain you.

Here are some suggestions about what is likely to suit you in terms of personal strengths at work, preferred environment and your leadership style. There is also an indication of possible areas of weakness you should watch out for when you are assessing career change ideas.

Your strengths at work

  • Excellent at on-the-spot problem solving
  • Great initiator
  • Active and energetic
  • Like to just get on with things
  • Practical and hands-on
  • Good at responding in a crisis
  • Like change and variety
  • Observant and good memory for detail
  • Feel comfortable with risk
  • Resourceful
  • Persuasive communicator and negotiator
  • Quick thinking

Want to know how understanding your personality can help you choose the right career?

Read more…

Your preferred work environment


  • Technical or practical orientation
  • Loosely structured and flexible
  • Provides lots of new experiences
  • Active, perhaps outdoors, rather than office based
  • Opportunities for practical tasks with relatively immediate results
  • Contains lively colleagues who will work hard towards organisational goals
  • Fast paced, requiring constant change of focus
  • Involves interaction with real people and/or things rather than abstract ideas

Your leadership style

  • Active and energetic leader
  • Readily take charge
  • Will rise to the top in a crisis
  • Persuasive and will convince others of your view
  • Bullish and assertive
  • Results orientated
  • Will keep things moving
  • Focus on what needs to be done rather than on the team

Weaknesses you should watch out for

  • May not always follow through
  • Impatient with detail and long explanations
  • Have little time and interest in underlying theory
  • May offend people’s feelings by being too blunt
  • May not take to long view in your rush to action
  • Can be unreliable in relation to deadlines
  • Can get bored and frustrated if there is not enough going on

These points should help you identify if a job or an area of work is worth considering. But remember that there are successful people of ALL types in ALL jobs. Particular types may find certain areas of work especially satisfying and others more challenging.

Use your understanding of your own ESTP preferences to help you explore and develop your career ideas, not to limit them.

Not sure if this is you?

Then take a look at the other similar types, where only one of the preferences is different. You may find that they are a more comfortable ‘fit’.

ESTJESFPENTPISTP

Interested in personality?

If you are interested in how your personality affects your career change click here to read how your approaches to job search can be influenced by the type of person you are.

About the author

Amy Thomas

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