ISFPs are not the best at making decisions when it comes to their careers. Being aware of ISFP jobs to avoid and careers that are not suitable can help to direct their focus in the right direction.
Making smart career-related decisions means looking at your skills, strengths, weaknesses, education, and as more people are finding out – your personality type as identified by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).
ISFPs prefer jobs that allow them a hands-on position, they make great chefs, massage therapists, police officers, and firefighters. They are introverted, but when motivated by their work they can come out of their shell a lot.
ISFPs are known as, ‘The Artists’. Their four pillars that make up their personality type are broken down as follows:
(I) Introverted – quiet and reserved, prefer smaller circles of friends and acquaintances.
(S) – Sensing – focuses on small details, are attentive, looks at the immediate opposed to the future.
(F) Feelers – values personal considerations, gives weight to social implications over logic when making decisions.
(P) Perceptive – prefer to keep options open, will stall on decision making.
Looking at the four pillars of this personality type you can see they are caring, personable, private, and passionate when in the right role. They value input from others, and although they are introverts they make excellent team players.
Careers ISFP Should Avoid
It’s always interesting to look at the careers and jobs that are not suitable for ISFPs to help paint an overall picture of where their skills, strengths, and weaknesses lie. Being introverted and private it’s important they find a career they are comfortable in.
Here are some jobs to avoid if you’re an ISFP:
Sales Rep/Manager
Being introverts and leaning more on social implications than logical solutions makes for pretty bad sales people. The competitive nature of sales and the need to be persuasive and engaging with other people makes all kinds of sales roles very difficult for an ISFP.
Psychiatrist
The personality traits of an ISFP line up terribly with the role of a psychiatrist. Talking through deep, intimate problems with a stranger does not come easy to them. As well as being able to make decisions and administer medical and psychological solutions based on their consultations.
Lawyer
It’s not going to come as a surprise that being a lawyer is going to be very challenging to an ISFP. Lawyers need to be outspoken, address and convince a number of people, and be able to read and deal with people. With communication and social skills at the top of the bill for a lawyer, don’t expect to see too many ISFPs representing clients.
General Administration
General admin work will not stimulate an ISFP for very long. They need to be involved in work that gives them a sense of involvement. Repetitive short tasks do not motivate them in the long term.
Financial Controllers
Financial controllers need to look at both the short, and long-term financial position of an organization. ISFPs struggle to look at the long-term and also find it difficult to make decisions that hold a lot of financial weight on short notice. They are better on the budgeting side than the financial and actual monetary control in a business.
ISFP Famous People
There are some interesting famous personalities that fall into this personality type. It’s always fun and interesting to see which personalities are the same type as us, how their careers have gone and what they are know for. Check these few names and see if there are any that come as a surprise:
- Prince – Singer/Songwriter
- Michael Jackson – Singer/Songwriter
- Jimi Hendrix – Singer/Songwriter
- Brad Pitt – Actor
- Princess Diana – U.K. Royal (Married to Prince Charles)
- Britney Spears – Singer
Best Jobs and Career Choices for ISFPs
Here are some of the best-suited jobs and careers for this personality type:
- Artist
- Chef
- Massage Therapist
- Police Officer
- Firefighter
- ER Physician
ISFP Career Choices in Summary
It’s important to an ISFP to feel involved with their work and colleagues. They prefer to get their hands dirty and really dig in when needed, as well as admiring their work and being involved in large projects.
Their ideal working environment is quiet and organized, and they enjoy keeping a low profile and letting their achievements do most of the talking for them. If you’re an ISFP or work with any I hope these ISFP jobs to avoid and careers that conflict with their personality traits has helped to paint a clearer picture of what they need from their professional life.
Phil lives in England, UK, and has around 20 years experience as a professional life, career and executive coach. He started this blog to help others find and define their own self development journey. Blogging about a wide range of topics to help facilitate a better future.
In regards to the Careers to Avoid, I think you are basically correct for the ISFP. The ISFP would not really like the routine of Genera Administration and Financial Controller. These jobs are more “Judging” and “thinking” in origin. The Lawyer and Psychiatrist also possess a Judging/theoretical nature that would be very stressful for the ISFP. You might also add any Paralegal or Paraprofessional job in the “mental health” sector. Sales Rep goes without saying. I question the Police Officer, Firefighter, and ER Doctor Jobs. Although these are popular and excellent careers for most SP/Artisans; especially the extraverted/thinking type; although the ER Physician might want to have a feeling representation. I think you should add any and all artistic/craftsy related fields. Most particularly, I would add musician, songwriter, and poet. They are all very much related. Even Kiersey comments on the ISFP Composer in his book, Personology and Please Understand Me II. This is especially noteworthy when considering that Bob Dylan received the Nobel Prize in Literature for basically as Kiersey would state his “song-poems.” Thank you very much
Hi, I appreciate your thoughts, very insightful, and spot-on.
It’s hard knowing how much/which details, etc to include and I went back and forth with myself on some of these points.
I’m meeting with friends next week to discuss some topics and book chapters that are related to this, and some other posts. I will look at making some changes are that round table discussion.
Appreciate you taking the time to comment.
Years ago, I spent three years working as a department head. I was responsible for scheduling 60 full and part time workers, the equipment schedule, forecasting, management, workload management, and ordering of supplies, and forget what else.
In some ways, I enjoyed it immensely. I actually enjoyed creating the worker schedules and equipment schedules, as well as workload management. Those were puzzles that were fun to solve, but forecasting, and visualizing long-term equipment and supply needs? That was horrible. When one is a manager, one needs to have things so that one isn’t always running around, putting out fires, and I really struggled with that part. I quickly learned to assign many oversight tasks (little things) to workers, who would help me keep abreast and ahead of things. Using a tickler file was essential to my sanity. But overall, I would have to say that the long-term planning was my achilles heel. I don’t think I could have done that job long-term. But there are some aspects of lower management, dealing directly with a good team of people–especially if you get to choose who is on the team–that would make it a fun job with lots of rewards–but those rewards better be frequent, though. 🙂
You forget the fact that we are nature lovers and some of the best jobs are those that help us engage with the environment and the outdoors. Zoology, environment research, landscape photography, botanology, archeology, etc. I’m surprised these weren’t mentioned.