The Science of Career Personalities: What Your Job Says About You
Sunday, November 24, 2024.
Ever wonder if your job is shaping your personality—or if your personality guided you to your job in the first place?
A fascinating new study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology explored personality profiles across 263 occupations, revealing distinct personality patterns tied to specific professions.
Spoiler alert: it turns out not all accountants are shy, and not all salespeople are extroverts, but the trends are as entertaining as they are enlightening.
Why Personality Matters in Careers
Understanding how personality traits align with specific occupations isn’t just trivia for watercooler chats.
It’s essential for career counseling, hiring, and even figuring out why Karen from accounting and Alex from HR butt heads in meetings. Past studies have dabbled in connecting personality traits to life domains like gender or age, but comprehensive research across occupations has been scarce—until now.
Enter the Big Five personality model, which looks at traits like openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. These traits—and their more nuanced subcategories—are the foundation for understanding how people thrive (or flounder) in different career paths.
How the Study Was Conducted
Researchers Kätlin Anni, Uku Vainik, and René Mõttus didn't just rely on self-reports (which are sometimes about as reliable as someone’s Tinder profile). They also gathered informant ratings—feedback from close friends, family members, and spouses—for nearly 20,000 of the 68,540 participants.
These participants, sourced from the Estonian Biobank, answered a whopping 198 personality questions. Their responses were then coded by occupation using the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO-08). Occupations with fewer than 25 participants were booted from the analysis (because no one trusts stats from two dog walkers and a part-time mime).
What They Found: A Breakdown of Career Personalities
Extroverts Rule the Social World
Love schmoozing with strangers? You’re probably in sales, customer service, or another people-oriented field. These professions had high extraversion scores, meaning these folks likely draw energy from social interactions rather than their third cup of coffee.
Open-Minded Innovators in Analytical Roles
People in research, technology, and other analytical jobs scored high on openness. Think creativity, adaptability, and a willingness to try new things—like, say, learning five new software platforms overnight.
Conscientiousness in Healthcare and Management
If you’re managing a team or saving lives, you probably scored high on conscientiousness. These roles demand reliability, organization, and a disturbing level of attention to detail. (Because no one wants their surgeon to “wing it.”)
Nuance is Everything
Beyond the Big Five, the study dove into personality nuances, like curiosity, meticulousness, and social engagement.
For example, while extroverts excelled in sociable roles, those with a knack for intense focus were better suited for solitary, detail-oriented jobs like research. Nuances explained up to 12% of occupational differences, proving that subtleties matter—just like in your carefully crafted LinkedIn headline.
Why This Study Matters
The researchers found that occupational roles explained 2%–7% of the variance in the Big Five traits, and up to 12% in nuanced traits.
While this might not seem earth-shattering, it’s significant when considering the vast diversity of human personalities. The findings also suggest that professions with higher job performance tend to attract emotionally stable and conscientious folks, creating a kind of “personality clustering” in these roles.
The Fine Print
Before you start blaming your neuroticism on your job, it’s worth noting the study’s limitations.
Since all participants were Estonian, cultural factors might have influenced the results. (For example, Estonian accountants might be more introspective than their American counterparts, but who’s to say?)
Future studies could benefit from cross-cultural comparisons to better understand global patterns.
A Few Fun Takeaways
If you’ve ever thought, “Wow, all IT people are the same,” this study backs you up—kind of. Certain traits do cluster in specific fields.
That quirky coworker in finance? They might score high on “precision” but low on “social engagement.”
Your personality might subtly shift over time to better align with your job—so choose wisely.
Wrapping It Up
Whether you’re a detail-loving manager, a curiosity-driven researcher, or a sales extrovert extraordinaire, this study confirms what many of us suspected: careers and personalities are intricately linked.
So, the next time you find yourself thriving at work (or spiraling into existential dread), remember—it might just be in your personality, or your neurotype.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Anni, K., Vainik, U., & Mõttus, R. (2024). Personality profiles of 263 occupations. Journal of Applied Psychology.
Costa, P. T., & McCrae, R. R. (1992). Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) and NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) professional manual. Psychological Assessment Resources.
Judge, T. A., & Zapata, C. P. (2015). The person-situation debate revisited: Effect of situation strength and trait activation on the validity of the big five traits in predicting job performance. Academy of Management Journal, 58(4), 1149-1179.
Sackett, P. R., & Walmsley, P. T. (2014). Which personality traits are most important to employers? Perspectives from recruiters and hiring managers. Social Psychology and Personality Science, 5(1), 21-30.