Out of all of the things you need to learn in your early twenties, understanding yourself—your strengths, weaknesses, and the nuances of your own personality—may just be the most important. Without a clear picture of who you are, it can be easy to get caught up in what others think is the right path for you, whether or not that path aligns with your nature.
The type of self-understanding we’re talking about here goes far beyond your likes and dislikes or your interests. This is about diving deep into what makes you tick—your mindset, how you view your environment, the ways in which you interact with others, and much more. And the DiSC personal assessment is the ultimate tool for taking a peek under the hood of who you are.
We’re big believers in DiSC here at College Works, and we ask every one of our interns to take the assessment. By gaining a deeper understanding of who they are through the DiSC assessment, our interns and alumni have been able to determine the college majors and careers that align best with their personality—and deliberately set themselves on the path to fulfillment and success.
Here, we dive deep into what you can take away from the results of your DiSC assessment. Let’s get into it.
What is DiSC?
DiSC was developed by William Moulton Martson, a physiological psychologist with a Ph.D. from Harvard, who was looking for a way to accurately measure an individual’s personality type and behavior style across various situations. The system he devised categorizes behavior styles into four main categories:
- Dominance (D). People with the D personality type like to focus on the big picture and are more concerned with results than the process. They’re confident and outspoken, and can be blunt and demanding. They’re great at closing deals, selling products, driving initiatives, and pushing teams, yet they can be non-compliant to the point of being defiant and can come across as harsh or unpolished.
- Influence (i). Those who score high in the i personality type use their positive energy to influence or persuade others. They’re enthusiastic, optimistic, open, and trusting. i personalities have a natural understanding of how to sway opinions, effectively lead teams, and create strong cultures. Like D personalities, they can also be non-compliant, overly optimistic, and are likelier to make decisions based on gut feelings instead of logic and facts.
- Steadiness (S). S personalities don’t need to be in the spotlight, and are great at creating order out of chaos while focusing on others. That same nature, however, means that they’re at risk of being overpowered or manipulated by other personality types.
- Conscientiousness (C). C personalities are exacting and highly focused on procedure and precision—this means they can move rather slowly, and be restricted or overly regimented in their day-to-day activities.
Martson’s work revealed that your unique combination of these behavioral qualities becomes established in your personality between the ages of 14 and 18—and once they’re settled, studies have shown that they remain consistent throughout your lifetime, regardless of situation or environment.
The DiSC assessment gives you an exact measurement of how each of these four behavior types shows up in your personality. It probes how you respond to challenges, influence others, behave in structured environments, and the pace at which you prefer to work to pinpoint what your dominant personality type is (most of us have two dominant personality types, which we’ll explore in more detail later in this article). It’s important to note that DiSC results are neutral, there are no “good” or “bad” personality types—and all have their own unique combination of strengths and weaknesses.
Taking the DiSC assessment
Before we go any further into how to use DiSC to determine your ideal career path, learning environment, and more, it’s important for you to have taken the personality assessment.
If you’re a part of the College Works team, talk to your manager to get started. If you’ve found your way here from somewhere else (welcome!), we recommend taking this version of the personality assessment. There are many versions of the DiSC assessment that you can find online, and not all are created equal—we’ve used the one linked in this paragraph for years, and it’s helped countless interns and employees discover crucial information about themselves.
It will be helpful to have your personality report in front of you as we explore the information below. Additional context for what we’re about to cover can be found on pages 3, 5, and 12.
Understanding DiSC personality types
The results of the DiSC assessment are meant to reveal how you view yourself as an individual and how you relate to the world around you. Every person has some aspect of each behavior type in their personality, but the two letters you rank highest in will determine your main personality type.
To account for this, DiSC organizes personality types into quadrants that pair complementary personality types together:
Knowing where you sit in this quadrant can help you understand why you approach situations, interact with people, and overcome obstacles in the way that you do. This information is crucial to have in your arsenal as you make big life decisions in your twenties—it can help provide a compass to keep you from getting lost as you search for the right major, career path, friends, romantic partner, and more.
We’re going to dive more specifically into the right careers for common personality types in a moment, but before we do, here are a few general things to keep in mind:
- Those who score high in D and i tend to be outgoing, assertive, and perceive themselves as having a high level of control over their environment. They’re active, fast-paced, dynamic, and bold, and should enter into careers that embrace these traits.
- Those who score high in C and S, meanwhile, tend to be more reserved and more likely to adapt to their surroundings instead of trying to change them. They’re thoughtful, moderately paced, calm, methodological, and careful; and therefore, they thrive best in careers that embrace protocol, policy, and procedure.
- Those who score high in C and D tend to be more task-oriented and see the environment as more resistant, though how they overcome that resistance depends on their dominant personality type, which we’ll share more about below. They’re outgoing, logic-focused, objective, skeptical, and aren’t afraid to challenge the status quo.
- Those who score high i and S see the environment as more accommodating and friendly, and while both are people-focused, accepting, empathetic, receptive, and agreeable, they tend to use the tools around them slightly differently.
- Those who score high in D and S are friendly, outgoing, and thrive in team environments where they can take the lead. They’re reliable, hard-working, and are highly determined to complete tasks set before them, which means they can have trouble relaxing until the job is finished.
- Those who score high in i and C are both highly creative and extremely analytical, and aren’t afraid to find innovative solutions to problems. They excel at generating new ideas and getting others on board with them, are extremely detail-oriented, and hold themselves to high standards.
Some professions require an inherent orientation to detail, procedure, and protocol. People who are naturally inclined to be detail-oriented—such as those who score high in C and S—will enjoy and thrive in a highly structured work environment. Other careers, however, require the ability to question the norm and defy established processes. Those who are inclined to push boundaries of procedure and challenge the status quo—such as people with high D and i scores—will succeed in these types of professions, and may not do well in the first work environment we described.
Understanding how your personality type relates to these distinctions is crucial for choosing the right career path. Here, we share a few careers that common personality type pairings thrive in, and jobs that they should avoid.
High D and i
If you scored highly in the i and D personality styles, you should look into jobs that utilize the driver and influencer in you. Because you tend to buck convention, you should avoid jobs that require strict adherence to set procedures and intense attention to detail—two things that don’t align with your natural behavioral patterns.
Good career options
- Management
- Sales (especially in the pharmaceutical, technology, and medical industries)
- Trial law
- Investment banking
- Consulting
- Politics
- Sports agent
Careers to avoid
- Exact sciences
- Contract law
- Accounting
- HR
High D and C
If you have a high D and high C personality, consider jobs that combine your leadership and people skills, such as those that involve driving a product, concept, or a team. You’ll also do well in policy and formula-driven careers that need strong leaders. Because you work best when you can set the pace, avoid roles where you’ll always be locked into a support position. Though it’s important to note that if you’re just starting in your career, a support role may be unavoidable—and that’s just fine. The career guidelines we’ve outlined here are about long-term success and happiness, and any personality can thrive in a job or position that may not align perfectly with their aptitudes in the short term.
Good career options
- Financial industry jobs (especially banking, analyst, portfolio manager, and mutual fund manager roles)
- CFO
- CIO
- CMO
- CTO
- Accounting
- Insurance
- HR
- Medical and scientific research
- Real estate analysis
- Sales (especially technology and engineering sales)
- Project management
Careers to avoid
- Psychology
- Marketing
- Team-driven professions
- Support roles (assistant, executive assistant, etc.)
High C and S
If you score high C and high S, look for a career that puts your sharp eye for detail and respect for procedure toward the betterment of a team. Because you value interpersonal harmony and stability, we recommend avoiding careers that will push you into regular conflict with others or that will force you to micromanage the people around you.
Good career options
- Psychology
- Psychiatry
- Medicine
- Nursing
- Sports medicine
- Personal training
- Physical therapy
- Support roles (such as personal assistant or executive assistant)
- Accounting
- Academic research
- Project management
Careers to avoid
- Sales
- Sales management
High i and S
If you score high in i and S, you’re a people person through and through. Your personality type aligns best with professions that allow you to influence customers or teams in a way that supports the broader goals, success, or well-being of those groups. While you can be focused on process and procedure, you won’t find careers that require you to prioritize those two things over interpersonal relationships—such as roles that require you to micromanage others—particularly fulfilling.
Good career options
- Personal training
- Physical therapy
- Counseling
- Social work
- Advocacy
- Teaching
- Sales
- Sales management
- Marketing
- Financial planning
- Family law
- Supply chain supervision
- Operational management
Careers to avoid
- Exact sciences
- Academic research
High i and C
If you score high i and C, you have a unique combination of traits that allows you to be both people- and task-oriented. That means you’ll do well in careers where you can use your personality to influence others and decisions within a more procedure-driven environment. On the flip side, this also means that you’ll struggle in careers that are high-pressure and that require micromanagement of others.
Good career options
- Medical sales
- Pharmaceutical sales
- Technology sales
- Insurance sales
- Architecture
- Engineering
- Leadership in the sciences
- CFO
- HR
- HR sales
- COO
- Advertising
Careers to avoid
- High-pressure sales
- High-pressure management
High D and S
If you score high in D and S, you’re just as comfortable stepping up to lead as you are being a team player. Look for careers that allow you to drive initiatives, but as part of a team that you can support as you work towards a bigger goal. Because the high D side of your personality means you’re better with big ideas than granular execution, avoid careers that require you to be highly precise or detail-oriented.
Good career options
- Politics
- Philanthropy leadership
- Military
- First responder
- Customer service leadership
- School principal
- Educational leadership
Careers to avoid
- Accounting
- HR
- Research
- Exact sciences
Additional career ideas for your DiSC personality
The information we shared above just scratches the surface of the types of jobs that align with each of the most common personality type pairings. If you’re high in only one score, take a look at the careers listed under your dominant personality trait in the chart below.
Dominance (Driver)
Manufacturer’s Representative
Lobbyist
Business Manager
Fire Marshal
Travel Guide
Principal
Fashion Coordinator
Landscape Architect
Sales Agent, Insurance
Production Coordinator
Show Host/Hostess
Manager, Customer Services
Sales Agent, Real Estate
Announcer
Writer
Entrepreneur
Business Owner
Influencing (Expressive)
Training Representative
Clergy Member
Manager, Advertising
Preschool Teacher
Arbitrator
Sales Agent
Administrator, Health Care
Home Economist
Actor/Actress
Reporter
Office Manager
Insurance Sales
Optometrist
Illustrator
Faculty Member
Interior Design
Steadiness (Amiable)
Investigator
Pharmacist
Physical Instructor
Psychologist
Survey Worker
Counselor
Social Worker
Teacher, Secondary School
Correspondence Clerk
Market Research Analyst
Veterinarian
Nurse
Podiatrist
Programmer
Lab Technician
Chiropractor
Librarian
Compliance (Analytical)
Medical Record Technician
Nurse, Licensed Practical
Nurse, General Duty
Secretary
Accountant
Job Analyst
Mail Clerk
Caseworker
Architect
Biochemist
District Ext. Service Agent
Geologist
Physical Assistant
Historian
Environmental Analyst
Airplane Pilot
Painter
How to apply this knowledge to your career hunt
In our experience, about 75% of the college students who pass through the College Works internship have chosen a major that aligns with their interests and passions, and are already focused on landing a job that aligns with their DiSC profile. By providing DiSC assessments and guiding our interns through their results, we’re able to help the other 25% find the career path they’ll be most successful in.
In our experience, about 75% of the college students who pass through the College Works internship have chosen a major that aligns with their interests and passions, and are already focused on landing a job that aligns with their DiSC profile. By providing DiSC assessments and guiding our interns through their results, we’re able to help the other 25% find the career path they’ll be most successful in.
Take, for example, a biology major who has always loved science. Before they took the DiSC assessment and understood their personality more deeply, they had their sights set on getting a product development role at a pharmaceutical company after graduation. But once they discovered that they have a Dominant and Influential personality, they decided to focus on applying to jobs in medical device sales—something that will allow them to use both their people skills and knowledge to their fullest potential.
Now that you know a little bit more about your personality and what jobs align well with your unique strengths, it’s time to apply the DiSC framework to your job search. Here are a few of our tips for using the results of your DiSC assessment to help choose a career.
- As you begin your job hunt, think about your interests first—there’s a job that will fit your personality type in nearly every industry, whether you love the arts, are passionate about politics, or are an environmental enthusiast.
- Identify a few companies that you’d like to work for within your target industry.
- Take a look at the types of roles they’re hiring for and that already exist at their organization and start to make a list of the ones that fit your personality best. For example, maybe your C personality can be put to work in the accounting department of an entertainment company.)
- Once you have that list, do some research to find job descriptions for those roles. Read them closely and reflect on the types of tasks you’ll need to do—assess if they’re people- or task-oriented, if they require a deep understanding of processes, if you’ll be exposed to conflict, etc.
- Begin applying for the roles that align well with your personality type’s strengths and weaknesses.
A deeper dive into the basic DiSC personality types
Up until this point, we’ve largely been focused on how your DiSC personality type can inform your career path. But the information in the report you received with your DiSC assessment results reveals how your personality type impacts almost every area of your life.
Below, we’ve summarized just a few of the key things to know about each of the four basic personality types. Give them all a read, but focus specifically on the information we’ve provided here about your two highest personality styles.
Dominant (D)
Those who score high for Dominance are motivated by power, authority, competition, winning, and success. They prioritize immediate results, taking action, and challenging themselves and others—which can lead to them being impatient, insensitive, and coming across as having a lack of concern for others. They tend to fear losing control, being taken advantage of, and being vulnerable in front of others.
Here’s how the D personality type comes to life in school, professional settings, and when interacting with others:
School
If you score high in the D personality type, you likely love fast-paced learning environments where you can participate in discussions, debate the merits of ideas, and question the status quo.
- Likes to learn quickly, and may be frustrated with a slower pace
- Define your own goals, and have your own internal motivations for learning
- May like to structure your own learning design, and does well with independent self-study
- May have a short attention span
Challenges you’ll likely face in professional settings
While the career paths we’ve outlined above will help you turn even the weaknesses of a D personality type into strengths, there are some challenges that your personality type tends to face in work environments that come as a result of your desire for quick, decisive action.
- Realistically gauging risks before taking action
- Exercising more caution and deliberation before making decisions
- Following permanent rules, regulations, and expectations
- Recognizing and soliciting others’ contributions
- Telling others the reasons for your decisions
- Cultivating more attention and responsiveness to the emotions of others
How other personality types can best interact with D personalities
D personalities are confident, direct, unafraid to take risks, and can be forceful. Whether in a work or social setting, here’s how to best interact with someone you suspect (or know!) to have a Dominant personality.
- Let them know that you don’t intend to waste their time
- Convey openness and acceptance
- Listen to their suggestions
- Show appreciation for their achievements and accomplishments
- Give them your undivided attention
- Provide options and let them make the decision, when possible
Influential (i)
Those with high Influence (i) personalities prioritize expressing enthusiasm, taking action, and collaborating with others. They’re motivated by social recognition and friendly relationships, and love doing activities with others—and, unsurprisingly, fear social rejection and being ignored. Because of this, they can be impulsive, disorganized, and lack follow-through.
Here’s how the i personality type comes to life in school, professional settings, and when interacting with others:
School
Outgoing and collaborative, i personalities do best when learning in group settings where they can regularly interact with their peers, participate in discussions, and build relationships.
- Likes learning in groups where you can frequently interact with others
- Responds well to extrinsic motivation, praise, and encouragement
- Needs structure from the facilitator, including detailed instructions of what needs to be done and when you should complete those tasks
- Without this structure, you may miss or exceed deadlines and lose track of time
Challenges you’ll likely face in professional settings
Because i personality types are so focused on people, it can be easy for you to overlook the finer details of the tasks in front of you. This can lead to a few challenges in your professional life, including the following.
- Prioritizing and organizing your work
- Seeing tasks through to completion
- Viewing people and tasks more objectively
- Avoiding overuse of giving and taking advice
- Writing things down
How other personality types can best interact with i personalities
i personalities are social butterflies who love the limelight. They’re lively and warm, and do best in situations that allow them to put their personality on display. Here are a few tips for interacting with someone with an influential personality.
- Focus on a positive, upbeat, and warm approach
- Listen to their personal feelings and experiences
- Show that you’re open to creative solutions to problems
- Don’t overload them with details
- Allow for spontaneity, and when possible, avoid requiring long-term commitments
Steady (S)
It should come as no surprise that those with Steady (S) personalities are primarily motivated by stable environments, and prioritize cooperation, giving support, and helping others to maintain harmony. They tend to fear change and offending others—which can make them overly accommodating and indecisive.
Here’s how the S personality type comes to life in school, professional settings, and when interacting with others:
School
Scoring high in S means you tend to be more cautious and reflective. You likely enjoy well-structured learning environments where expectations are clear, and where you can work regularly with their classmates.
- Enjoy a balance between group and individual work
- Show patience when learning detailed or technical processes
- Prefer explicit instructions, and wants to know expectations and performance outcomes in advance
- Like journaling and opportunities to reflect on what you’ve learned
- Doesn’t struggle with follow-through, but may need help prioritizing tasks
Challenges you’ll likely face in professional settings
S personalities are lovers of process, order, and regulation—which means that it can be all too easy for you to become overly comfortable in your work routine, causing you to miss opportunities to advance, making you more likely to struggle with the concepts below.
- Utilizing shortcuts and discarding unnecessary steps
- Tracking your growth
- Avoiding doing things the same way
- Realizing there is more than one way to approach tasks
- Becoming more open to some risks and changes
- Feeling sincerely appreciated
- Speaking up and voicing your thoughts and feelings
How other personality types can best interact with S personalities
People with S personalities are usually empathetic, humble, and will do their very best to avoid letting you down. That said, they can become overwhelmed when pressured to make quick decisions—here’s how to interact best with them.
- Focus on a slower-paced approach
- Respond sensitively to arguments and conflict
- Privately acknowledge them with specific, believable compliments
- Give them concrete tasks and show them step-by-step procedures
- Be pleasant and optimistic
- Give them as much stability as possible
Conscientious (C)
Those with high scores in Conscientiousness (C) might best align with the stereotypical “type A” personality traits. They’re independent, prioritize accuracy, pay close attention to quality, and are motivated by opportunities to use their expertise, gain knowledge, and challenge assumptions. They fear criticism, sloppy methods, and being wrong, and, as a result, can be overly critical and analytical towards themselves.
Here’s how the S personality type comes to life in school, professional settings, and when interacting with others:
School
If you have a C personality type, you tend to be analytical, precise, and determined, which usually means you excel in academic environments.
- Prefer individual work over group projects
- Emphasize details, deep thinking, and theoretical bases for what you’re learning
- Do well with remote or online learning
- Have high expectations of your own performance
- Need explicit goals and outcomes established when structuring your own learning
- May get overly bogged down in the details, especially when pressured or stressed.
Challenges you’ll likely face in professional settings
C personalities tend to be perfectionists and people pleasers—a combination of traits that can cause you to face a unique set of challenges in the workplace, including those listed below.
- Sharing your knowledge and expertise with others
- Standing up for yourself with people you prefer to avoid
- Setting realistic deadlines and parameters
- Viewing people and tasks less seriously and critically
- Balancing completing work tasks and building relationships with those around you
- Keeping on course with tasks without checking in repeatedly
- Maintaining high expectations for high-priority items, but not for every single task
How other personality types can best interact with C personalities
Though C personalities tend to be more introverted, they’re deeply thoughtful and value stability, especially in their social lives. Here’s how to best get along with the type Cs in your life.
- Use a logical approach
- Listen to their concerns, reasoning, and suggestions
- Solicit their insights and suggestions to help solve challenges
- Privately acknowledge their procedures and thought processes
- Show them what to do, not what to say
- Give them time alone to think and avoid pushing them to make quick decisions
Embracing who you are
Understanding your personality is like unlocking the blueprints to why you act the way you do. Once you know who you are, you can make decisions about your field of study, career, and lifestyle based on your natural behavioral patterns. Aligning those choices with your individual personality style—instead of swimming upstream by doing what others expect of you—is the key to building a life that is balanced, fulfilling, and successful.