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 Dreamy Idealist (DI)

Dreamy Idealists are very cautious and therefore often appear shy and reserved to others. They share their rich emotional life and their passionate convictions with very few people. But one would be very much mistaken to judge them to be cool and reserved. They have a pronounced inner system of values and clear, honourable principles for which they are willing to sacrifice a great deal. Joan of Arc or Sir Galahad would have been good examples of this personality type. Dreamy Idealists are always at great pains to improve the world. They can be very considerate towards others and do a lot to support them and stand up for them. They are interested in their fellow beings, attentive and generous towards them. Once their enthusiasm for an issue or person is aroused, they can become tireless fighters.

For Dreamy Idealists, practical things are not really so important. They only busy themselves with mundane everyday demands when absolutely necessary. They tend to live according to the motto “the genius controls the chaos” - which is normally the case so that they often have a very successful academic career. They are less interested in details; they prefer to look at something as a whole. This means that they still have a good overview even when things start to become hectic. However, as a result, it can occasionally happen that Dreamy Idealists overlook something important. As they are very peace-loving, they tend not to openly show their dissatisfaction or annoyance but to bottle it up. Assertiveness is not one of their strong points; they hate conflicts and competition. Dreamy Idealists prefer to motivate others with their amicable and enthusiastic nature. Whoever has them as superior will never have to complain about not being given enough praise.

As at work, Dreamy Idealists are helpful and loyal friends and partners, persons of integrity. Obligations are absolutely sacred to them. The feelings of others are important to them and they love making other people happy. They are satisfied with just a small circle of friends; their need for social contact is not very marked as they also need a lot of time to themselves. Superfluous small talk is not their thing. If one wishes to be friends with them or have a relationship with them, one would have to share their world of thought and be willing to participate in profound discussions. If you manage that you will be rewarded with an exceptionally intensive, rich partnership. Due to their high demands on themselves and others, this personality type tends however to sometimes overload the relationship with romantic and idealistic ideas to such an extent that the partner feels overtaxed or inferior. Dreamy Idealists do not fall in love head over heels but when they do fall in love they want this to be a great, eternal love.

Adjectives which describe your type

introverted, theoretical, emotional, spontaneous, idealistic, dreamy, effusive, pleasant, reserved, friendly, passionate, loyal, perfectionist, helpful, creative, composed, curious, obstinate, with integrity, willing to make sacrifices, romantic, cautious, shy, peace-loving, vulnerable, sensitive, communicative, imaginative




http://www.your-career-change.com/personality-tests.html

Career Guide

ABOUT YOU

You are a steady, dependable and amiable individual who likes to be challenged by interesting projects. Results are important to you and in general you will apply yourself in order to achieve your objectives and reach your goals. Being a hard working, no-nonsense person you will try to tackle most jobs and work persistently in order to see them through to a conclusion.

You are usually kind, accommodating and will readily accept and try to help those around you. Because of this, people are likely to warm to your sincerity and come to put their trust in you. Although you can be assertive and will stand up for yourself, you probably try as far as possible to avoid arguments or disputes.

Being well organised and clear thinking you can collect facts and information in order to solve a problem and as you are a good verbal communicator you can use this in order to influence others and gain their commitment.

You can be quite firm and will on occasions take up a stubbornly independent stance, especially if you feel very strongly about something.

YOU IN THE WORKPLACE

As your career develops and you gain experience in the workplace colleagues will realise that once you take on a project you can be relied upon to work persistently until the job is complete. As you progress in the job your natural inquisitiveness will allow you to explore situations and carefully assess specialist information.

Ultimately, as you gain experience and knowledge in your specific area of expertise your confidence is likely to grow and you will approach both people and projects in a positive and confident manner. Being people-orientated you will want to work as part of a team and enjoy interacting with them. You are a good verbal communicator but equally you will want to listen to what your colleagues have to say. By doing this you will be in a position to assess the opinions of others and consider what they have to say before moving forward. This can have a steadying effect on colleagues who may want to move too quickly.

Your responses suggest that before starting a project you will probably need to be given time to prepare yourself and get things organised in your own mind. Once you have accomplished this you are likely to apply both patience and tenacity to the task at hand. Equally, before you make decisions you will want to check out all the available information and feel confident that the route you are going is the right one. Achieving your goals and the challenge of completing a task or solving a problem thoroughly are important to you.

Given all these factors, the ideal working environment for you to consider would be one where the job has a certain amount of routine but also keeps you challenged. You should be allowed to work to predetermined and agreed timescales and the parameters of the job should be clearly defined and of a structured nature. The ideal career for you to pursue would be one where you can work as part of a specialist or administrative team and interact with people on a regular basis. Security in the job is likely to be very important to you.

KEY CAREER CRITERIA

When identifying your future career you should consider and utilise your particular skills. Thus key factors to consider are areas where you can organise and lead people to complete tasks of a specialist or administrative nature.

The following tasks and responsibilities are likely to be appropriate to your behavioural characteristics.

• Working persistently to achieve a result.
• Leading and motivating people in a specialist area of competence and expertise.
• Communicating verbally, building relationships and gaining the commitment of others.
• Being part of a team and working in a structured environment.

Ideally the job should not require you to make impulsive decisions or involve you in confrontational issues.

YOUR WORK STRENGTHS

Once you have decided upon your career path and any matching educational opportunities, you can move towards realising your full potential and test and develop your work strengths.

The contribution you are likely to bring to an organisation will be your drive to take on a task and see it through to conclusion. Being amiable and communicative you can work alongside others and will quickly establish their trust. You can persuade people to your point of view using facts and information and by example of hard work.

You will enthusiastically tackle projects and focus yourself in order to achieve your goals and objectives. Although fairly assertive you will try to keep the environment non-antagonistic and endeavour to stabilise conflict situations.



Ref : http://www.thomasinternational.net/productsandservices/samplereports/tabid/247/Default.aspx

Example of a Personal Leadership SWOT

Strengths

• Compulsive
• Strong follow-through
• Articulate
• Writes well
• Balanced work-life perspective
• Multi-interested (e.g., work, recreational activities [e.g., curling, golf, etc.])
• Ambitious

Weaknesses

• Strong need to “get things done and off my list” with consequence of getting it done right away, thereby undermining the benefits of more careful deliberation over time
• Compulsiveness sometimes causes me to begrudge being given tasks, i.e., stress of many tasks and need to do each carefully can lead me to think unkindly about the people and/or circumstance creating the task
• Can be impatient, i.e., not tolerate those who do not understand (“suffer fools poorly”)
• Time pressure causes stress and can lead to emotional “hijacking”
• Do not handle multiple immediately competing demands well

Opportunities

• To engage others in providing feedback about their experience of me
• To receive coaching in service of improving my leadership skills
• To learn from others in similar roles to mine
• To enhance my ability to manage the need to complete task quickly in order to be able to deliberate more carefully
• To enhance my equanimity about work-related tasks

Threats

• Time pressure, which can derail my plan for self-improvement because it catapults me back to my “usual” habits
• The multitude of everyday demands, which conspires against self-reflection
• Etc.

Personal SWOT

Do some homework before you appear for the interview:

• Have participatory sessions with your friends to know more of your strengths and weaknesses.
• List down all your strengths and weaknesses.
• Explore the prospective job/employer/company to identify opportunities.
• Gain more knowledge about the industry to detect threats.

Handling SWOT at interviews

Before the interview, ensure your resume maps to what you might talk about. It should also highlight your strengths. 

1. Strengths: Positives you can capitalise on, these should be your ‘key selling points.’

Think of what makes you special. What influences and motivates you? What are your attributes for success? What key traits do you have? You can talk about your personal characteristics here like: Good analytical skills, determination, persistence, etc.

Examples of strengths:a. Very confident and assertive.b. Good communication skills.

What the interviewer ‘buys’ is ‘how are these strengths helping in the job he has to offer’ and ‘what is the value they add to the job’. For example, while appearing for a sales job interview, the following strengths can be highlighted:

1. I am very confident and assertive in whatever I do. I have been able to leverage customer service by converting unhappy customers to loyal customers by understanding their problems, educating them, giving them confidence and being able to solve their problems.
2. I have been involved in company presentations and workshops, and have been imparting training. My communication skills help me stand up and put forward my views in front of a group of people.
3. Having worked in customer service for two years, I have good customer service skills and customer relations.

2. Weaknesses: Negative areas you need to improve on.

This is the toughest aspect to think of and share with your future/potential company. Also, this is one area where your answers need to be more diplomatic. Avoid hinting at something that may impact the job execution in your potential company. 

We all know and admit that no one is perfect. Do not say ‘I don’t have any weakness’. Be realistic and show that you realize and are well aware of your weaknesses. Give confidence to your prospective employer that your weaknesses are not going to hamper your job.

Examples of weaknesses:

1. I sometimes tend to get into too many details that delay execution.
2. I can’t say ‘No’ if someone asks me for help with some work.

Never highlight personal weaknesses like ‘being emotional’, ‘short tempered’ etc.

3. Opportunities: Positive external conditions you can take advantage of.

Talk about various opportunities you foresee in that prospective job. This will show your interest and reflect a positive attitude.

Examples of opportunities:

1. While working with international customers, I may have the opportunity to learn new cultures; newer ways of working that will further help me to provide customised and better services to my customers.
2. By imparting training, I will be able to improve my confidence level and presentation skills.

4. Threats: Negative external conditions you can’t control but can minimize.

There are threats we all face at our workplaces, but we need to know how to survive with them. While talking about ‘threats’, try to foresee the ones you may face at your prospective job.

Examples of threats:

1. Competition for the job I want.
2. Overworking myself by taking on so many responsibilities.
3. Changing job requirements of the field.

Also suggest certain ways you may minimise these threats. For example:

1. Getting trained on certain skills to survive competition for the job.
2. Trying time management to avoid getting overworked.
3. Upgrading my technical skills and proficiencies and keeping abreast of industry changes to cope up with job requirements. 

 

Take away points

• Map your STRENGTHS to your prospective job.
• Avoid hinting at WEAKNESSES that may have a negative impact on your prospective job. Also try to present an improvement plan that you have to overcome these weaknesses.
• Identify OPPORTUNITIES in the prospective job and mention how these can be advantageous to you and help in performing the job better.
• Detect THREATS and present ways to minimize them.

Interview Tips - How to Self Assess Your Resume

Below is a guide that you can use to self-assess your resume. For each of the pointer, you have the opportunity to evaluate your resume by giving marks for each section. In this work you will be needing a pen or pencil, and a scrap paper to note down your marks. Apart from assessing your resume, the guide is also useful for you to immediately making the necessary changes to your resume based on the guidelines given.

1. Grammar and Spelling

Are there some obvious spelling and grammar mistakes detected across your resume? Spelling mistakes in your resume can cost you job interview as you’ll be seen as a clumsy person who does not seem to care to get things done right. You can run the spelling and grammar detector in your Word document. You can also get someone to take a look at your resume and proof read it. Sometimes, we missed to realize the mistakes because the spellings are very much close to the correct one. For example;

Maintaining (not maintaning)
Transcribing (not trascribing)
Liaising (not liasing)
And so on.

Now, on the scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 the perfect score), how do you rate your resume in terms of Grammar and Spelling?

2. Objective and Profile Summary

Refrain yourself from writing too short and meaningless objective or profile summary such as

“A highly motivated engineer looking to work with an established organization”.

Think of a way to summarize your professional or educational experience in a few sentences to give the prospective employer a grasp of your overall career development & expertise. For example, here’s a professional summary of a Production Specialist for a manufacturing firm which should give you a clearer picture:

“A highly experienced production specialist with more than 10 years of experience in production covering preventive maintenance, yield control & improvement, R&D, failure analysis and machines troubleshooting. Wide experience with product and technology transfers as well as machines and testers set up & calibration in the production floor.“

Do you see the difference?

Now, on the scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 the perfect score), how do you rate your resume in terms of Objective and Profile Summary?

3. Use of Verbs and Tenses

Check the consistency of tenses you’re using across your resume, especially on your job description part. For a better picture, which is the style you’re using? Is it

a. Assist team members (most common – it is suggested you use this)
b. To assist team members
c. Assisting team members

Are you using mixed tenses at different places and parts in your resume? If yes, then it’s time for a change. Just pick one tense, and use it all across. Also, are you using repeated and duplicated verbs to explain your roles and responsibilities? For example, perhaps running out of ideas, many candidates choose to use the verb involve in their job descriptions. For example;

Involve in credit assessment of new businesses, credit review of business and risk profiling for consumer landing.

Involve in periodical review of current portfolios and initiate proactive measures.

Involve in marketing and business development in the Cyberjaya area.

The repeated use of verbs not only degrade your credibility, it also makes your resume sounds and looks boring. It translates you as being someone with a lack of creativity as well. Here, try to replace those duplicated verbs with a better use of ‘power verbs’. Instead of repeatedly using involve, try to use other varieties of verbs such as administer, oversee, manage, organize, perform, produce, supervise, facilitate, improve and so on.

Now, on the scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 the perfect score), how do you rate your resume in terms of

Use of Verbs and Tenses?

4. Achievements

Are your major achievements clearly indicated in your resume? Achievements can be put on together with the job responsibilities (where the roles are rephrased to underline your achievements). The achievement list can also be separated with the job responsibilities as long as you can keep the presentation neat.

Do not miss to list down major achievements in present and past employments. For instance, have you been involved in any major business engagement project? Was it successfully implemented within the budgeted time frame? Does it contribute in producing some high volume of revenues to your organization?

Achievements are best described in numbers and figures in terms of percentage, how fast, amount of expenses saved or sales generated, number of headcounts involved and so on. You may not know all the figures, but you can always use a sensible estimate. Some simple examples:

“Participate in a successful, major cost-saving IT transition project that in July 2005 which save the company’s annual IT expenses by 20%.”

“Secured a major contracting agreement with Telekom Malaysia in 2004 for broadband infrastructure set up across peninsular Malaysia, contributing to total revenue of RM1.2 millions.”

Now, on the scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 the perfect score), how do you rate your resume in terms of Achievements?

5. Resume Presentation and Layout

Is your resume influxed with many number of those annoying text boxes? This is especially true when you copy and paste your online resume from your online job portal account into Word document. Not only it is not user friendly, the alignment will also come out in all sort of forms. Don’t overdo it.

If you put up your photo in the resume, does it project a professional image, or does it make you look like you’re joining the Scorpion rock band?

Now, on the scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 the perfect score), how do you rate your resume in terms of Resume Presentation and Layout?

Your marks and overall evaluation.

40 and above: Excellent work on the resume. But never stop short of finding ways to continuously improve it. Well done.

35 – 39: Above average. Your resume is a decent effort and ranks at the better half of the candidates in the similar field. Keep it up, and continue to work to perfect your resume.

30-34: Average. Nothing much to be proud of and with this resume you will be facing challenges in your quest to find the next job.

29 and below: Poor. It is highly suggested you work to improve your resume before applying for jobs. Otherwise you will find that, in many of the cases, you will end up in disappointment of not getting the job interview.


Ref - http://skorcareer.com.my/blog/resume-tip-how-to-self-assess-your-resume/2007/07/31/

Interview Tips - Interview Myths That Keep You From Landing the Job

With so few jobs currently available and so many people currently hoping to fill those jobs, standing out in an interview is of utmost importance. While jobs themselves are scarce, job advice is overly abundant. And with an influx of information comes an influx of confusion. What career counsel do you take, and what do you ignore?
There are a number of common misconceptions related to interview best practices, experts say. Kera Greene of the Career Counselors Consortium and executive coach Barbara Frankel offer tips below that can help you stand out from other interview subjects, avoid frequent pitfalls, and secure the job.

Myth #1: Be prepared with a list of questions to ask at the close of the interview.

There is some truth in this common piece of advice: You should always be prepared, and that usually includes developing questions related to the job. The myth here is that you must wait until it is "your turn" to speak.

By waiting until the interviewer asks you if you have any questions, "it becomes an interrogation instead of a conversation," says Greene.

Greene recommends that you think of an interview as a sales call. You are the product and you are selling yourself to the employer. "You can't be passive in a sales call or you aren't going to sell your product."

Frankel mimics Greene's comments. "It's a two-way street," she says. "I recommend asking a follow-up question at the tail end of your responses."

For example, Frankel says, if the interviewer says, "Tell me about yourself," you first respond to that question and complete your response with a question like, "Can you tell me more about the position?" The interview should be a dialogue.

Myth #2: Do not show weakness in an interview.

The reality is that it is OK to have flaws. In fact, almost every interviewer will ask you to name one. Typically job seekers are told to either avoid this question by providing a "good flaw." One such "good flaw" which is often recommends is: "I am too committed to my work." But, these kinds of responses will only hurt you.

"Every recruiter can see through that," Greene says of faux flaws.

Recruiters conduct interviews all day, every day. They've seen it all and can see through candidates who dodge questions. "They prefer to hire someone who is honest than someone who is obviously lying," Greene says.

And for those of you who claim to be flaw-free, think again. "Everybody has weaknesses," Frankel states. But one is enough. According to Frankel, supply your interviewer with one genuine flaw, explain how you are working to correct it, and then move on to a new question.

Myth #3: Be sure to point out all of your strengths and skills to the employer.

Of course, you want the interviewer to know why you are a valuable candidate, but a laundry list of your skills isn't going to win you any points. Inevitably, in an interview, you will be asked about your skills. What can go wrong in this scenario?

"You don't want to list a litany of strengths," Frankel says.

"What is typical is that they will say: 'I'm a good communicator,' 'I have excellent interpersonal skills,' 'I am responsible,'" Greene explains. "You have to give accomplishments. I need to know what did you accomplish when using these skills."

Frankel recommends doing a little groundwork before your interview so that you are best equipped to answer this question. She tells her clients to find out what the prospective job role consists of. "What makes an interview powerful is to give an example related to their particular needs or challenges that you have demonstrated in the past."

Provide three strengths, with examples. You will get much further with a handful of real strengths than with an unconvincing list of traits.

Myth #4: Let the employer know your salary expectations.

One of the trickiest questions to answer in an interview relates to salary. Money talk can be uncomfortable, but it doesn't have to be. The fact is you don't even have to answer when asked about desired salary.

According to the book "Acing the Interview: How to Ask and Answer the Questions That Will Get You The Job!" a perfect response would be: "I want to earn a salary that is commensurate with the contributions I can make. I am confident I can make a substantial contribution at your firm. What does your firm plan to pay for this position?"

Greene suggests a similar response: "I prefer to discuss the compensation package after you've decided that I'm the best candidate and we can sit down and negotiate the package."

Myth #5: The employer determines whether or not you get the job.

While yes, the employer must be the one to offer you the position, interviewees have more control than they often realize. According to both Greene and Frankel, candidates have a larger say in the final hiring decision than they think.

"They should call the interviewer or hiring manager and say: 'I'd really like to be part of the company,'" says Greene. "It can't hurt you. It can only help."

"Acing the Interview" encourages all candidates to conclude their interviews with one question: "'Based on our interview, do you have any concerns about my ability to do the job?' -- If the answer is yes, ask the interviewer to be explicit. Deal forthrightly with each concern."



Source :
By Karen Noonan, TradePub.com