Best Career Paths For ISFJ Personality Types

For individuals on the cusp of graduating from school or those looking for a career change, you may be overwhelmed with the number of career opportunities at your disposal. If you’re uncertain what career path you want to ultimately end up on, it’s a good idea to consider your individual personality type and your strengths and weaknesses as a working professional.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is an introspective self-report questionnaire that analyzes your psychological preferences in how you perceive the world.

In this article, we’ll focus on the ISFJ personality type. We’ll discuss the traits ISFJ personality types share and the best and worst career paths suited for these individuals.

Top Careers for ISFJ Personality Types

An ideal job for ISFJs is one that involves well-defined work responsibilities that can achieve a concrete or observable result. Preferably they should work a job where they can avoid multitasking and can stay behind the scenes. Here are some of the top recommended careers for ISFJ personality types:

Social Services Specialist

Average Yearly Salary: $46,000
Due to ISFJs tendency to be warm and able to develop genuine and deep connections with others, community and social service jobs are a great place to start.

These careers can range from probation officers, correctional treatment specialists, social or human service assistants, or social workers. These careers also allow for an observable result, which is important for this personality type.

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Life, Physical, and Social Scienctist

Average Yearly Salary: $64,000

For ISFJ individuals who like science, a career in this field might be a perfect fit. These jobs can range from agricultural or food science technician, biological technician, environmental scientist, forensic science technician, or forest or conservation technician.

This is a perfect behind-the-scenes job for ISFJs that produces concrete results. These types of jobs also utilize extensive analytic skills and attention to detail.

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Healthcare

Average Yearly Salary: $63,000

Similar to community and social services jobs, healthcare positions offer an opportunity for ISFJs to use their impeccable soft skills and kindness. Additionally, this personality type fits well as they are perfectionists and take responsibility for their patients incredibly seriously.

These types of positions can include everything from athletic trainers, pharmacists, personal care aides, specialists, registered nurses, radiation therapists, dentists or hygienists, surgical technologists, or veterinary assistants.

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Education, Training, and Library

Average Yearly Salary: $46,000

These career fields feature the best of all worlds, with opportunities to use soft skills and relationship-building, as well as attention to detail and working “behind-the-scenes.” This field can be incredibly rewarding for those who have a passion for teaching or organizing, which is something essential for ISFJs.

These careers can range from technical education teacher, school principal, instructional coordinator, librarian, librarian technician, postsecondary education administrator, preschool or childcare center director, or teacher assistant.

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Administrative Assistant

Average Yearly Salary: $33,000

This is another career choice that bodes well for ISFJs who enjoy attention to detail and being perfectionists. This job requires a high level of organization as well as incredible soft skills. It’s the perfect career choice for ISFJs.

This career field can include bookkeeping, accounting, auditing, customer service, finances, administrative assistants, postal service workers, and bank tellers.

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Personal Care worker

Average Yearly Salary: $23,000

There are other careers out there that don’t involve teaching certifications or specific degrees, such as social work or jobs in healthcare. These jobs are perfect for ISFJs who want to use their soft skills and crave a job with tangible or observable results.

These careers include child care workers, funeral service occupations, or personal care positions, such as manicurists.

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Business and Financial

There are also certain jobs in the business and financial field where ISFJs can put their attention to detail, analytic skills, and observant skills to their best use. These types of jobs can include human resources specialists, loan officers, meeting planners, financial advisors, purchasing agents, real estate appraisers, or tax examiners.
Installation & Maintenance Technician

Average Yearly Salary: $39,282

This type of job field is great for ISFJs because the majority of the work happens behind the scenes.

These individuals can work in jobs like automotive service technicians or mechanics, heating, air conditioning, or refrigeration mechanics, or even medical equipment repairers. These jobs also produce tangible results, which is important for the satisfaction of ISFJs.

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Architectural Engineer

Average Yearly Salary: $83,000

Engineers and architects must have great attention to detail. This work also typically happens behind closed doors, allowing for these individuals to shine in their roles without needing to shout about their accomplishments.

These jobs can include architects, biomedical engineers, electrical or electronic engineers, environmental engineers, environmental engineering technicians, and health and safety engineers.

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Construction and Extraction Operator

Average Yearly Salary: $32,163

These types of jobs are similar to architecture and engineering because it requires great attention to detail, but the majority of the work happens on a project by project basis, with the completed result being something you can see and touch.

These jobs can include carpenters, construction or building inspectors, electricians, painters, and plumbers.

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What Does ISFJ Mean?

The Myers Briggs Type Indicator results in one of 16 personality types for the individual taking the questionnaire. ISFJ is one of these personality types, also referred to as a Defender. ISFJs make up nearly 13% of the population. ISFJ stands for:

Introverted
Observant
Feeling
Judging

These individuals have the tendency to be warm and unassuming in everyday life. As employees, they are efficient and responsible, paying careful attention to detail. ISFJ individuals have excellent analytic skills and effective soft skills.

Although somewhat conservative, ISFJ personality types are open to change and new innovations and meet their colleagues with kindness. They are engaged in their work and tend to only work with people they believe in.

ISFJs can be meticulous to the point of perfectionism and take their responsibilities personally. However, they may meet the challenge of their work getting noticed. These individuals have the tendency to be incredibly modest.

Their kindness can sometimes be taken advantage of, so this personality type must learn how to say No and learn to draw healthy boundaries with their colleagues. Still, ISFJs typically find a high level of satisfaction in anything they do.

Career Choices ISFJ Personality Types Should Avoid

As you can see, there are a wide variety of jobs that are suitable for ISFJ personality types, many of which they will excel at naturally. However, just like any other personality type, there are a few different career choices that are best to be avoided by this personality type.

ISFJs can do well in business-type environments, but more competitive positions such as sales positions can prove to be frustrating for them.

ISFJs are inherently meek and humble and set very high expectations for themselves. They often neglect their feelings and seek to avoid conflict. Therefore, high-pressure jobs that may require hard boundaries for sanity’s sake may not be the right fit for this personality type. These jobs can include:

Journalist. A journalist requires some type of aggressive traits to get to the story, information, or answer they’re after. It would be difficult for ISFJs to take this type of job, as they would experience high stress and be uncomfortable constantly asking others for crucial information they may need for their job.
Actor. This is another high-pressure job that shoves people into the spotlight, often in situations that are uncomfortable. Being humble, ISFJs may struggle with talking themselves up and finding their fit.

Additionally, this job comes with a lot of rejection. ISFJs are often hard on themselves and may find it difficult to keep the motivation to keep going.
Attorney. This high-pressure job also requires some aggressive traits to defend clients properly. Additionally, this puts the individual into the spotlight, where they may be required to fight for something they might not necessarily believe in. These requirements do not translate well for those with the ISFJ personality type.
Executive. Executives require skills of many kinds, including multitasking, making difficult decisions, drawing hard boundaries, and conflict resolution. These are circumstances that an ISFJ personality type may find difficult to navigate.
Sales. As previously mentioned, sales can be an incredibly difficult position for ISFJ personality types due to the competitive and aggressive nature many successful salespeople must have to do their job well.

It also requires a lot of effort that isn’t necessarily tangible or evident to the success of a sale, which can be frustrating for this personality type.
Politicians. Politician careers combine some of the responsibilities of actors, attorneys, and executives, so it’s safe to say this may be a difficult career choice for ISFJ personality types.
Marketing. Marketing is a high-pressure job that often puts the person into the spotlight. Marketing also requires a lot of multi-tasking. If a mistake is made, it’s often very noticeable by colleagues and may be difficult to recover from. This isn’t ideal for ISFJs who put a lot of pressure on themselves.

When ISFJs work on their strengths, they’ll be able to naturally enhance their talents and be more productive and successful in work environments. ISFJs often come to the table with many skills, including education, as ISFJs are the second most common personality type that graduates from college.

ISFJs are a great addition to any team, as they are incredibly supportive individuals that can significantly improve team morale and productivity.

Never miss an opportunity that’s right for you.

Author

Kristin Kizer

Kristin Kizer is an award-winning writer, television and documentary producer, and content specialist who has worked on a wide variety of written, broadcast, and electronic publications. A former writer/producer for The Discovery Channel, she is now a freelance writer and delighted to be sharing her talents and time with the wonderful Zippia audience.

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