Situations for Using the Keirsey Career Temperament

The following post explores Situations for Using the Keirsey Career Temperament.
The Keirsey Career Temperament (‘Keirsey’) is a well-known assessment that offers guidance and insight into your personality traits. It’s a useful resource for self-introspection and reflection.
Read: Understanding Your Resume’s Audience
Related: Gauging Your Job Search Effectiveness (with PDF Worksheet)
In certain situations, taking the Keirsey Career Temperament can be quite helpful. So, when does taking the Keirsey Career Temperament make the most sense?
Here’s what you need to know.
Keirsey Overview
The Keirsey Career Temperament offers insight into your personality characteristics. Those characteristics will impact your career choices, workplace behavior, and other factors that contribute to your success or failure.
“In a world filled with unique individuals, when it comes to personality there are only four different temperaments and sixteen types of people.” – Dr. David Keirsey
Selecting a Career Path
Keirsey is popular with students and young professionals seeking to create alignment between career choices and innate strengths and preferences. Understanding how you ‘tick’ is key when evaluating career paths.
Making a Career Change
Unhappiness, burnout, and fatigue are key motivators for those seeking career change. Feeling this way isn’t fun but it’s potentially avoidable! It requires taking a step back to understand how you function best and using that information to identify career paths that naturally compliment you.
Job Interviews and Salary Negotiation
Keirsey offers tips on communication and interpersonal skills, based on individual personality type. This information is useful for refining and improving your performance during job interviews. By understanding your own personality type, you can better convince the interviewer why you’re the best one for the job.
Four Personality Types
The framework for the Keirsey Career Temperament is there are essentially four main personality types. Underneath those four main personality types are 16 different types of people.
These are the four main personality types:
- Artisan (30% to 35% of population) – typically bold and spontaneous.
- Guardian (40% to 45% of population) – typically helpful and dutiful.
- Idealist (15% to 20% of population) – typically spiritual and intuitive.
- Rational (5% to 10% of population) – typically ingenious and independent.
The main factors that the Keirsey covers include:
- Understanding You and Your Career
- Learning About Your Temperament in the Workplace
- Choosing the Best Occupation
In Conclusion
In conclusion, I hope this article helps you understand the value of taking the Keirsey Career Temperament for better understanding your personality. It’s a helpful self-evaluation tool when selecting a career path, making a career change, preparing for interviews, and more.




