Best Career Paths For ESFP Personality Types

Does your career fit your personality? If you’re feeling a little lost in your career or you’re searching for a new profession, then doing a personality test might yield the answer.

There are a lot of personality tests out there, but of course, they’re not all the same. One of the most popular personality tests is called The Myers Briggs Type Indicator®. This personality inventory is based on the work of psychoanalyst Carl Jung.

Jung theorized that personality is made of cognitive function and that the order these functions appear, or their dominance in an individual, determines their personality type. Through his work, he discovered that there are 16 different personality types, and ESFP is one of those personality types.

1. Fire Fighter Jobs (Overview)

2. Brand Ambassador Jobs (Overview)

3. Entertainer Jobs (Overview)

4. Interior Designer Jobs (Overview)

5. Coach Jobs (Overview)

6. Physical Therapist Jobs (Overview)

7. Real Estate Agent Jobs (Overview)

8. Food Critic Jobs (Overview)

Top Careers for ESFP Personality Types

If you see yourself in the ESFP personality, then you might discover that you’re interested in a job that lets you engage with others, keeps you in the center of the spotlight, and doesn’t involve a lot of long-range planning. The following careers might just be a good place to start looking for your next job title.

1. Fire fighter

   Average Annual Salary: $39,000

   Firefighters are thrown into drama and high-stress situations. They need to be able to make snap decisions and trust their intuition with their lives. This is a strong point for ESFP personalities. They’re ready to dive right into things based on intuition alone, which is good because they have great intuition.

   They love being in the middle of the action, and they can be lighthearted and fun in their downtime. Those are great personality traits for someone who is a firefighter.

   Find Firefighter jobs near me

2. Brand Ambassador

   Average Annual Salary: $30,000

   Handing out samples, working at events and tradeshows, even coming to someone’s home to throw a party is a good time for an ESFP. That’s why being a brand ambassador is an easy fit for them. They love engaging with other people, and people love to be around them.

   Another aspect of this job is that it’s often different. Some brand ambassadors sell different brands from day to day. Others stick with one brand, but they frequently have new products. This sort of change and flexibility is divine in the mind of an ESFP.

   Find Brand Ambassador jobs near me

3. Entertainer

   Average Annual Salary: $61,000

   ESFPs love the spotlight, and they love to make people happy. This means that they can be phenomenal entertainers. They shine when people are watching them and kick it up a notch, adding personality and charm to everything they do.

   While an ESFP usually isn’t a great tragic actor or orchestral musician, they are phenomenal with lighthearted bits, comedy, and pop or impromptu music. In fact, impromptu is something they do brilliantly. With their ability to read a room without even realizing it, they could even find work as a psychic.

   Find Entertainer jobs near me

4. Interior Designer

   Average Annual Salary: $54,000

   Aesthetics matter to ESFPs. They like to look their best and are often ahead of the trends. They tend to be foodies, influencers, have the coolest stuff, and their homes spark envy in others. That’s why you want an ESFP to be your interior designer.

   Being on top of trends, or even ahead of them, is part of their instinct. They can see when people have tired of gray walls and need to add color. They can sense what colors look best on people and surrounding them.

   When it comes down to the little things, the innate ability to understand people will help them connect the homeowners with objects they’ll love.

   Find Interior Designer jobs near me

5. Influencer

   Average Yearly Salary: N/A

   ESFPs can be considered fickle, but they simply want to be entertained, to be entertaining, and they want variety. This makes them fantastic influencers.

   They’ll try something, and if they love it, you’ll know because they love to rave about how wonderful things are. They’re actually people you’ll want to follow because they tend to be brutally honest.

   While their inner desires make them great in this job, their ability to connect with people also helps. They’re those people who everyone leans toward and gathers around at a party. They bring lightness and joy to events. They have a problem being serious and thinking long-range, but those are not job requirements for influencers.

6. Coach

   Average Annual Salary: $47,000

   That one coach that everyone loves, that’s the ESFP. They get people to listen to them, they are incredibly enthusiastic, and they have boundless energy.

   But an ESFP is typically not a great head coach. They can’t plan out into the future, and when there are serious moments, they’ll retreat into the corners. Of course, that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be coaching.

   Assistant coaches are still critical to any team, and the ESFP will be happier without all of the stress and pressure of a head position anyway.

   Find Coach jobs near me

7. Physical Therapist

   Average Annual Salary: $69,000

   If you’re an ESFP and drawn to the medical profession, then you might want to consider going into the field of physical therapy. This requires a lot of educational dedication, which can be difficult, but the rewards will be worth it.

   Physical therapists often work with people after injuries or surgery to help them get back on their feet and move as close to “normal” as possible. This takes a person with an inspiring personality to encourage others to get up and move and try to do just a little more.

   It also takes a lot of creativity to reach the right muscles and to do it in a way that inspires patients to stick to their therapy.

   Find Physical Therapist jobs near me

8. Real Estate Agent

   Average Annual Salary: $99,000

   Much like ESFPs are great at interior design, they’re also fantastic real estate agents. They can instantly pick up on what their customers like or don’t like about a home. That helps them either sell the high points to them or find a home that has what they really want.

   In addition, because ESFPs are often referred to as “people persons,” they are enjoyable to be around, and homebuyers like shopping with them. Home buying is incredibly stressful, so having an agent who makes you happy and you enjoy working with can change everything.

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9. Food Critic

   Average Annual Salary: $50,000

   ESFPs love the finer things in life; they want to treat themselves to nice things and have a discerning palate. These are great qualities for food critics to have.

   Their personalities draw other people to them, so they easily get the viewers, listeners, and readers they need to thrive. Their ability to gush over things they like makes them popular, but they’ll point out the bad aspects too.

   Trying new food constantly is a dream for many ESFPs because it’s all about novel experiences, and being one of the first or the authority in anything will fuel their desire to work.

   One thing to note: ESFPs might not enjoy being a food critic who writes about their experiences. Writing can be a solitary activity and take a long time, which isn’t in their wheelhouse. But they would be excellent on-camera critics.

   Find Food Critic jobs near me

10. Restaurant Host

    Average Yearly Salary: N/A

    Speaking of working in the food industry, ESFPs make fantastic hosts. They don’t need to do any long-term planning; they don’t have to deal with anything more serious than being overbooked or running behind. They get to meet and greet people constantly and show off their interpersonal communication skills.

    All of these things make this job an easy fit for a restaurant host. They’re there to make diners feel welcomed and to set their expectations for a great experience. That’s easy for any ESFP.

What Is an ESFP?

If you’ve done one of these personality tests and discovered that you are classified as an ESFP, you’re probably wondering what that means. Each letter stands for a cognitive function and its order in your personality. For ESFP, that means:

• Extrovert

• Sensing

• Feeling

• Perceiving

While that’s all well and good, it doesn’t really give you much information. Let’s dive deeper so you can understand how those characteristics line up and what that means.

• Extroverted people are basically what you’d expect; they’re people who enjoy spending time with others. They enjoy focusing on the here and now and group activities. They’re typically not great organizers.

• Sensing means that these individuals are keenly aware of what is happening at the moment. This is part of their attention to the here and now, whereas others might be thinking about other things and miss nuances in the moment.

• Their feeling function is pretty important to them, and they tend to pay close attention to how they feel or their personal intuition. Interestingly, they are so good at assessing situations that they often don’t even know they’re doing it. That gives them the ability to have gut feelings without understanding (or caring) why.

• Perceiving is a function that’s tied closely to the above feeling function. That means that the ESFP will be concerned with how situations make them feel and their perceptions. Based solely on their perceptions, they might not even wait to learn all the facts before jumping to conclusions.

Strengths and Weaknesses of ESFP Individuals

If you’re an ESFP, then there will be some innate strengths you have and some weaknesses. That’s not to say that they are set in stone or impossible to work on; this just means that you probably are born with these strengths and weaknesses.

Some strengths you’ll find in ESFP individuals:

• Friendly and outgoing

• Creative

• Adaptable

• Observant

• A natural leader

• Positive nature

Weaknesses that you’ll find in ESFP people include:

• Sensitive to criticism

• Not a planner

• Gets bored easily

• Needs immediate gratification

• Internal conflicts

Careers ESFP Personalities Should Avoid

If you’re an ESFP, the following careers might not be the best options for you. It certainly doesn’t mean you can’t succeed in these areas or go into them, but you may find that they don’t line up with your personality.

1. Attorney

   Attorneys are often dealing with very serious matters, and they need to be able to see the big picture and do a lot of long-range planning. These are not areas that typically appeal to an ESFP, nor are they ones that they excel in.

   Attorneys have very stressful jobs, and this is not something most ESFPs feel comfortable with. They’d rather play and enjoy spending time with others.

2. Auditor

   Another serious profession is that of an auditor. Just the job title often puts fear into some company accountants and CFOs. The auditor is there to look at the books and make sure a company is being financially honest and upright. They could work for the government or banking institutions.

   While they have a lot of flexibility and diversity in their job, which would appeal to an ESFP, auditors are typically not encouraged to be lighthearted and engage with others in a friendly manner.

3. Data Analyst

   Sitting in a room and crunching the numbers or analyzing numbers and statistics will sound like torture to most ESFPs. This is a solitary job that doesn’t really solve anything and is often just tracking trends.

   All of this is exactly what ESFPs shy away from. Collecting data might be a more interesting part of this profession for ESFPs, but they’re probably happier staying out of this business entirely.

4. Copywriter

   Writing can be a very lonely profession, especially copywriting, which will not appeal to an ESFP. Copywriters often work alone on assigned topics.

   In most situations, they get a lot of flexibility and versatility, but the work can be tedious and rarely leads to accolades and excitement. ESFPs will go a little stir crazy if they have to spend their entire day stuck at a computer.

5. Administrative Assistant

   Clocking in and out at the same time every day and doing what you’re told to do by others is not going to appeal to many ESFPs.

   They would be great receptionists because they get to greet people and chat them up before they go in for appointments, but when it comes to doing the daily work of an administrative assistant, they’d rather avoid it altogether.

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.