Empowering career search and enrichment

Psychometrics Canada conducted a fun survey to see if personality type influences our favorite Christmas activities and things.

Click here to see the results from the Christmas and Personality Type Survey! 

What about you? Do these results speak to you? Share with us and Happy Holidays to you all!

Written by Laura Simonds

Dealing with graduation and a job search at the same time can cause a tremendous amount of stress and lower a student’s resiliency. The excitement and anticipation of graduation, coupled with the fear and uncertainty of a job search, can result in conflict and atypical behavior. At this time of year students unknowingly find themselves in “fight, flight, or freeze” mode to protect themselves from being overwhelmed. On the other hand, “normal” tension can be motivating and stimulating. A healthy amount of anxiety can actually keep them fully engaged.

 What can you do to help students cope during this stressful time and get through it with increased resiliency? You can work with them using the MBTI and TKI assessments. These assessments used together give a clear picture of how students’ inferior function (“in the grip” of stress) informs which conflict style they use. By accessing the appropriate conflict mode for the situation, their goal should be getting back to their dominant function and a better approach to the stress. Then your students will be able to move from “fight, flight, or freeze” to action—and build their resiliency! CPP has some resources to help you learn more about using the MBTI and TKI assessments together.

Here is a guide on how to use the MBTI® and TKI assessments together 

Written by Catherine Rains 

Apply TKI concepts in your workshops or training sessions with

• Sharing Conflict Insights 
• “What’s My Mode? Game”
• Group Conflict Mode Score
• Rapid-Fire Response

These activities can be viewed on multiple devices in their PDF format, giving you the support you need when you need it. There is no waiting, simply purchase, download, use and reuse!

Visit www.cpp.com/digital for details and to view our new downloadable activities for the TKI assessment!

Our hearts and thoughts go out to all of you, our customers, partners, family and friends, who have been affected by the recent disasters that Hurricane Sandy left in her path. We hope that recovery comes quickly and completely. CPP, the exclusive publisher of the MBTI assessment, is donating to the Red Cross to help those in need. To learn more about how to help, please check out the Red Cross site here.

Written by Catherine Rains

In continuation of our last blog, Counseling to Type Strategies - Extroversion (Part 1), here are some suggestions on what you can do to work most effectively with this preference:


Provide opportunity to talk about and experience the options they are considering. Co-op/internships and informational interviewing are a natural choice for career exploration for this preference.  Remember they are not only energized by interaction with people, but also with activity outside of themselves.

Ask lots of open ended questions to encourage them to talk even more. They usually enjoy question and answer techniques as a way to process the information coming out during the session.

Continue the discussion where you left off last time.  If your student comes back for a second appointment, there is an expectation that you will know what was discussed last time.  With my poor memory, this meant I kept a file for student appointments, which noted highlights of each discussion.

Share some strategies of your own on our Facebook or Twitter pages!

We would like to extend a huge "THANK YOU" to all of our customers and online friends! We appreciate you (yes, you!) for your loyalty and for all your interactions with us throughout the years.

To show our appreciation, we are posting 16 type tips (1 tip per type) throughout this week on each of our Facebook and Twitter pages. Therefore, if you follow both our MBTI and CPP Education pages, you'll get all 32 type tips!


Type and Career Development booklet, posted on:

•  Facebook (MBTI page)  
• Twitter:
• MBTI Twitter Page
• CPP, Inc. Twitter Page 

• Google Plus (CPP page) 

Introduction to Type® in College booklet, posted on:

• Facebook: (CPP Education page) 
• Twitter (CPP Education page) 
• Google Plus (CPP Education page

We hope you enjoy these tips!

Off the charts Extrovert

People who prefer Sensing are good with details 

By Patrick L. Kerwin, MBTI^® Master Practitioner

Resilience is the ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.* In other words, being resilient can help you bounce back from changes that are bound to happen in your everyday life, whether they are to your school or work schedule, your relationships, or your life plans. People often think of resilience as bouncing back quickly from change. However, we all bounce back in our own way and at our own pace. There is no one “right” way to be resilient. When dealing with change, what’s important is that you know what you need, and also what your possible blind spots might be.

You can learn a lot about being resilient by looking at the first two letters of your MBTI^® type. Those first two letters provide information about how you respond to change and thus what you need to bounce back. They also tell you what you might do to be even more resilient. Here’s how that works.

If your first two letters are IS (Introversion and Sensing):
• Response to change: ISs often need to spend time alone reading or gathering lots of information about the specifics of why the change is happening and exactly how the change will affect what they’re doing. Once they get all the information they need, then they bounce back and feel resilient.
• Limitation: Be careful of getting bogged down and spinning your wheels in information. Also, realize that sometimes you have to bounce back in the absence of complete information. In those cases, remind yourself that the fact is, you can’t always get all the facts.

If your first two letters are IN (Introversion and Intuition):
• Response to change: INs often need to spend time alone conceptualizing the change and processing how the change relates to other things. Once they understand how the change connects to other things, then they bounce back and feel resilient.
• Limitation: Be wary of “overswirling” in your mind about connections and possibilities. Also, realize that sometimes you have to bounce back without exploring all the connections. In those cases, remind yourself that you can continue to explore the change internally.

If your first two letters are ES (Extraversion and Sensing):
• Response to change: ESs often need to take action on the change and do something to make the change happen. Once they take action, then they bounce back and feel resilient.
• Limitation: Be careful of taking action too quickly. Also, realize that sometimes making the best bounce means slowing down. In those cases, remind yourself that slowing down is taking action.

If your first two letters are EN (Extraversion and Intuition):
• Response to change: ENs often need to explore the change with others and to identify additional changes that could be made. Once they explore the change, then they bounce back and feel resilient.
• Limitation: Be wary of making too many changes out of one change. Also, realize that sometimes you have to bounce back in the absence of exploration. In those cases, remind yourself that you can come back and revisit the change and make suggestions later.

Check in with yourself about your perceptions of what it means to be resilient. It’s easy to look at someone with a different MBTI type and think he or she is taking too long to bounce back, or is bouncing back too quickly. Remember, different types have different ways of being resilient—so bounce back in the way that’s right for you!

*Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th ed.

Join us Thursday, November 15th, 2012 for a free Ask an Expert webinar: MBTI® Type and Stress.

By Patrick L. Kerwin, MBTI^® Master Practitioner

Whether you are exploring a major or a career, the goal is the same: eventually getting to work! There are many factors to consider when exploring a career, or the major that will lead to a career—including your interests, values, and skills, and, of course, your MBTI^® personality type! You can use information about your personality type to help you make a choice that will be a really good fit for you.

First, think about your preference for Extraversion (E) or Introversion (I). How much does the career you’re considering include your preference? When I taught a college Career Planning class, I would often hear students say, “I’m an E, and I love being around people and talking to people. So I’m going to be a marriage and family therapist!” And I would often say, “That’s great—except that as a therapist, you spend a lot of your time listening, not talking! How would that be for you?”

Now that’s not to say that people who prefer Extraversion can’t be therapists. But before making that career choice, they will want to think about what it would be like for them to operate outside of their preference (that is, in Introversion) for long periods of time. In addition, they will want to explore whether there are other ways to be a therapist that would allow them to spend more time actively interacting with and talking to people, such as being a community college counselor, or perhaps also teaching as part of their work.

Second, think about the middle two letters of your type. They will tell you a lot about how you’ll approach your career, whatever it is you do. If your two middle letters are:

• ST (Sensing and Thinking), you’ll likely want to work in a way that allows you to be practical and logical
• SF (Sensing and Feeling), you’ll likely want to work in a way that allows you to be of practical service to others
• NF (Intuition and Feeling), you’ll likely want to work in a way that allows you to contribute to the growth and development of people or things
• NT (Intuition and Thinking), you’ll likely want to work in a way that allows you to be strategic and contribute to the development of systems

When choosing a career, make sure that you’ll be able to express those two middle letters in your work.

And lastly, think about your preference for Judging (J) or Perceiving (P). If you prefer Judging, how much structure will be part of your career, and how much closure will you be able to get in your work? If you prefer Perceiving, how much will you be able to explore as part of your work, and how much freedom will you have to do things on your own schedule?

Join us Thursday, November 15th, 2012 for a free Ask an Expert webinar: MBTI® Type and Stress.

By Patrick L. Kerwin, MBTI^® Master Practitioner

When we’re faced with a problem, it’s natural to solve it using our natural MBTI^® preferences. For example, if you prefer ISTJ and you are trying to solve a problem in your relationship with your boyfriend or girlfriend, it’s natural for you to:

• I: Use Introversion to spend time reflecting on the problem
• S: Use Sensing to look at the reality of the situation and practical alternatives
• T: Use Thinking to analyze the problem objectively
• J: Use Judging to come to a conclusion quickly

As natural as that might be, here’s the problem: There are eight preferences, not just four! When we solve problems using only the four preferences that are natural to us, we overlook valuable information and make lopsided decisions!

To make well-rounded, thorough decisions, we need to also engage our four opposite preferences. For an ISTJ, that would mean engaging his or her opposite preferences of E, N, F, and P. So the ISTJ would:

• E: Use Extraversion to talk to others to get their perspective on the situation
• N: Use Intuition to consider other possible ways of looking at the problem and other alternatives to solving it
• F: Use Feeling to consider how his or her boyfriend or girlfriend might feel about the situation
• P: Use Perceiving to stay open to letting the situation unfold

When you’re making a decision, remember to look at your opposite preferences, as described above. Have you taken those into account? When you use your four opposite preferences in addition to your four preferences, you won’t just make a natural decision—you’ll make a good decision!