What is Your Career Personality?

One of the things that make us all so unique and special is that we all have different personalities. Even those of us who have similar personality traits are slightly different to each other.

But have you ever wondered how your personality is affecting your career? If not you should because the way that you approach tasks, the way that you interact with others and your general attitude can have a huge impact on your career. Your personality can impact the types of career choices that you make as well as how you fare in gaining career advancement opportunities.

To find out how your personality is affecting your career complete the following quiz:

During team meetings you are most likely to:
a. Take charge, lead the direction of the meeting and walk out at the end of the meeting having achieved your desired result
b. Contribute a dozen or so ideas each one more exciting than the other, feel disappointed if any of your ideas are rejected
c. Wonder why so much time is wasted in team meetings
d. Volunteer to take the meeting minuites

Your dream job at the age of 15 would most likely have been:
a. A CEO of a major corporation, A Word Leader or Famous
b. A Roving Reporter, Actress, Socialite or Model
c. Inventor, Scientist, IT Guru, Musician or Artist
d. Yoga Instructor, Charity Committee Member, Full Time Mum

The things that you love the most about your job are most likely to be:
a. Any opportunities that allow you to lead projects and set direction
b. Being able to contribute ideas, interact with clients and colleagues and receiving praise
a. Working independently on the technical aspects of your job
b. Being able to contribute to the team

Your worst career nightmare is likely to be:
a. Finding yourself in a job where there is no opportunity to advance
b. Having your ideas rejected
c. Being surrounded by incompetent colleagues
d. Organisational change

Your colleagues are mostly likely to describe you as:
a. Competitive
b. An Airhead who somehow comes up with the most amazing ideas
c. A prickly genius
d. A gracious hard-worker

If you forgot to take something to a meeting it would most likely be:
a. The willingness to compromise
b. Your pen
c. Nothing, you never forget anything
d. You would be devastated if you forgot anything because you would not want to let the team down

You consider your greatest career strengths to be:
a. Your ability to make things happen against all odds
b. Your positive attitude, enthusiasm and ideas
c. Your technical skills and obvious intelligence
d. That you are very hardworking

If you are very honest with yourself you would most likely consider your career weaknesses as:
a. Being too aggressive and demanding
b. Poor attention to detail
c. Not being a team player
d. Taking on more than you can cope with

Outside of work your friends would most likely describe you as:
a. A fearless go-getter
b. Hilarious, brilliant, confused and fun
c. Intelligent and introverted
d. Easygoing and placid

Your ideal work colleague is most likely to have the following qualities:
a. Agreeable and motivated
b. They love your ideas
c. Someone who can actually do their job properly
d. Hardworking and cooperate

The type of person that you most dislike working with is most likely to be:
a. Against progress
b. Pessimistic
c. Incompetent
d. Aggressive and demanding

What you score means

To find out more about your personality and how it affects your career read bellow. Remember no personality type is better or worse than any other, just different. Don't be surprised either if you have scored highly in more than one section. Every personality is a mix of all traits. Read the answer/answers that most apply to you.

Mostly A's
You are a kick-butt career girl. You want to lead and control everything and you are the right person for the job! However you often put people off coming across as too aggressive. To achieve even greater career success try to be more patient with your less driven colleagues. Rather than bulldozing through objections learn to build alliances with your critics and find creative ways to get even the most unmotivated colleagues to cooperate.

Mostly B's
If there is a crisis in your office it is you who is most likely to save the day and everyone knows it! The trouble is you are also completely scattered, your desk is a mess, you seem unorganised and half the time people have to wonder if you even know what day it is? But when you perform you do amazing work, you are the untapped superstar or your organisation. To ensure that you consitently kick career butt you need to start focussing attention on the smaller details of your job. It will be painful but is will be worth it when the positive feedback, promotions and payrises come in.

Mostly C's
Everyone knows that you are the smartest person in the officer. You consistently do great work and are most competent person when it comes to completing the technical aspect of your job. The only trouble is you often judge your colleagues considering them to be incompetent. This can make you come across and prickly and unfriendly which can negatively impact on career advancement opportunities. To overcome this try to remember that not everyone is as smart as you and recognise that whist technical skills are valuable so are other skills like leaderships skills and the ability to contribute ideas. Praise others when they display these skills.

Mostly D's
You are without doubt one of the hardest working people in your office. You are also one of the easiest people to get on with because you are so cooperative and committed to keeping the peace. These qualities make you a sought after asset to any organisation. The only trouble is that because you are so nice you tend to take on more work than is expected of you, and more work than you can cope with. The risk of doing this is that if you don't meet a deadline management will simply think that you are under performing. This is unfair because it makes you look incompetent. The solution to this is to simply stop taking on other people's work. Soon it will be obvious just how amazing you are.

By Lisa O'Brien
Lisa runs www.careerscoach.com.au and is the author of "Interview Coach" and "Goal Setting Coach".