The Career Within You: How to Find the Perfect Job for Your Personality

by Ingrid Stabb and Elizabeth Wagele

Book Overview

"Wagele and Stabb are great detectives who will help you understand your perfect habitat for all you can bring to the workplace.
--Chip Conley, Founder/CEO, Joie de Vivre Hospitality, and author of Peak

Employing the Enneagram Personality Assessment System, Elizabeth Wagele, author of The Enneagram Made Easy, and career workshop and events organizer Ingrid Stabb can help you discover The Career Within You. Unlike "one-size-fits-all"...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0061718610
• ISBN13: 9780061718618
• Release Date: December 2009
• Publisher: HarperOne
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.12 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 7.3" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Excellent Personality-Based Career Guide

"Wherever you are at this point, you have a feeling there is an authentic career within you. Watch it unfold as you learn about the nine career types, discover which one fits you, and then match yourself to a career that is right for your particular combination of traits, gifts, and wishes. Then, this book will help you determine how to best fit into today's job marketplace. The first step is to ask some questions that have fascinating answers. Who are you? What are your greatest strengths?" - From The Career Within You Whether you're on the cusp of finishing your education, wanting to leave a dead-end job, desiring to find fulfilling work or needing to secure employment in the face of a layoff, The Career Within You by Elizabeth Wagele and Ingrid Stabb serves as both a portable career-coach and a comprehensive job-matching guide based on your unique personality. Perhaps you're the Adventurer type (7) like myself, one who relishes pursuing multiple interests, exploring new ventures and synthesizing information--all with a sense of idealism, optimism, infectious enthusiasm and a "sky's the limit" attitude. Or maybe you're the Peacemaker type (9), one who craves harmony, physical comfort, emotional balance and equilibrium in your career. Your peaceful demeanor brings calm to the workplace, and you're known for being a fair-minded team-player, often with the talents of broad perspective, empathy and mediation. Using a fascinating personality system called the Enneagram (pronounced ANY-a-gram), The Career Within You will help you determine which of the nine types reflects your innate strengths, motivations and preferences. Peppered with clever and type-specific cartoons drawn by Wagele, this book also features the groundbreaking Wagele-Stabb Career Finder tables for each of the nine types. The authors encourage YOU to determine preferred strengths according to your type, and then match those strengths to careers that bring you a twinge of curiosity or enthusiasm when you read them. For example, as an Adventurer, my type's strengths are enthusiasm, idealism, seeking challenges, social networking and synthesizing information. However, the traits I value most in a career are the ability to synthesize and cross-fertilize information. Because I ranked this strength the highest, I then looked at the careers listed in the Adventurer section, noting which ones utilize synthesizing information--as rated by fellow Adventurer types. I was blown away at the accuracy Wagele-Stabb Career Finder. Would you believe that EVERY career that I found interesting was one that I either dreamed about as a child, seriously considered in High School, majored in at college or actually PURSUED as an adult! In fact, I'm insanely happy with my three current careers and--you guessed it--they all use my preferred strength of synthesizing information! (In case you're wondering, the careers are Writer, Entrepreneur and Stay-at-Home Parent). But although information contai

Great stuff!

Reading and following the easy methods provided in "The Career Within You" is a great way to discover what you were meant to do in life in a fun, humourous, and very accurate manner. It will help you to discover what career fits with your personality and natural strengths as well as areas that are more challenging for you and ways that you can work on them. These are presented to you in a humorous manner using cartoons along with practical advice that really works. Match this up with other books by Elizabeth Wagele such as "The Enneagram Made Easy" to gain true insights into yourself and others. It's fun!

Good read. Excellent career guidence.

I have to admit I'm a little bit of a junkie for books related to self-actualization, so it was with great pleasure I read through the Career Within You by Elizabeth Wagele and Ingrid Stabb, and much to my delight, I can say the book does not disappoint. The Career Within You is basically a strengths finder guide that helps you assess, based on your psychological type, the greatest strengths you bring to the workplace. From there the book offers pretty good advice not only on how you can use those strengths to succeed in your current career, but also to help you assess your long term career goals, or determine if another career is more suitable for you. Wagele and Stabb do this, by first helping you determine what your basic personality type is and then demonstrating many of the strengths that people of that type often possess. All of which is pretty common in a strengths finder guide, but what made the book truly unique for me was the hundreds of career stories Wagele and Stabb meticulously collected by various people representing the basic personality types. These stories, which seem to have been collected from hundreds of interviews, provide revealing and helpful looks at the trials and tribulations of many of the various personality types as they struggle to find fulfillment in their careers. At times I found myself laughing out loud In knowing recognition as I read through the chapter of my own type, which showed me both he strategies I employ to succeed and the traits that hold me back in the work place. In short, if you are confused about the career you want, are struggling in your current career, or just need help finding a job, The Career within You could be the book for you.

covers everything important & anything else that can't be found elsewhere

I had the fortune of attending the workshop hosted personally by the authors before the book was published, and it has amazingly been changing the course of my career! The Career Within You has guided me toward better personal fulfillment by realigning my personality and strengths to the right career and work environment! If you are like me who's had few years out in the business world, or even if you are just starting out, this book can help you rekindle the fire in you that you once had as a child, when you knew your passion and had your big dreams for the world but was just waiting patiently to grow up one day when you can make it all happen. If you are like me, somewhere along the way in growing up through the systems, in higher education and in the working world, you had to adopt to claim that piece of the regime for a living, and in the process gradually lost touch with what you once knew so well as a child, the passion and the dreams that put you on such a natural high that you thought anything was possible. The Career Within You utilizes Enneagram to identity your basic motivations and natural tendencies, and it then recommends the career choices that are the best fit for your personality. Furthermore, the book provides practical information on the market demands and pay rewards of these various careers, several job search exercises, and tips on getting the job you want. If you are looking to own one career book, Career Within You is the only one you would ever need. It covers everything important and anything else that can't be found elsewhere, from understanding what career you will truly be happy in to getting that job with smart salary negotiation! My investment in purchasing the book has paid off very handsomely, *Big Time*! :) On top of all these, the cartoons are so hilarious!! Who said career talk must be all serious and dry?! This career book is high in its entertainment value too! :->

Discover a Career That Gives You Joy

"Just as important as knowing your strengths is understanding your needs" is a quote from page 9 of The Career Within You. We would all love to have a career that not only utilizes our talents, but helps us feel fulfilled and happy. Using knowledge of the Enneagram, a personality typing system, Wagele and Stabb will help you do just that. If you do not already know your Enneagram type, the authors have included a short questionnaire to help determine your personality type. They added examples of famous people and their characteristics to help you get a better feel for each of the nine Enneagram types. Additionally, Wagele's illustrations and witty humor help reveal characteristics of the Enneagram types in a fun way. The first nine chapters are devoted to the each of the personality types of the Enneagram. Each chapter lists positive aspects of the type, along with traits of "the other side", as the authors call our more self-destructive behaviors. These traits will then be used, as the authors put it, "to coax your career preferences from the truest part of yourself." The Wagele-Stabb Career Finder is an easy-to-follow guide designed to take you step-by-step through a process to find a career using the qualities most important to you. Chapter Ten contains information to help you assess your current job and decide whether to keep it or find another. There are worksheets for each Enneagram type that will help answer that question. This chapter will also help you rate the importance of other factors such as salary and predicted future growth. Finally, it will help you prioritize aspects you feel are job necessities, such as location, hours, and benefits. The last chapter deals with the actual job hunting. Wagele and Stabb help you identify job objectives and give helpful advice on writing a resume using the knowledge of strengths of your Enneagram type. There are also sections on networking, cover letters, employment agencies, interviews, and more. I found this book to be an excellent guide to making the best career choices for each Enneagram type's happiness, job fulfillment, and success. I highly recommend it for all ages and groups of people. It would be beneficial to high school and college students trying to discover where they want their career paths to take them, people in mid-age who are finding themselves dissatisfied with their career choices, those who have recently become unemployed, or anyone wanting to live their lives to the fullest and follow their heart's desires.