How can 'The Mastermind' personality type better prepare for an interview?

Interviews are easier for some than they are for others, but when job seeking, we can’t really get around the fact that we need to put ourselves into these situations. Interviews for ‘The Mastermind’ personality are usually very good experiences because you’re happy to apply yourself. However, there is always room for improvement and this week, it’s all about the INTJ personality type.

Interviews can go either way for an INTJ type. You are more than happy to learn and apply yourself, however, you have a slight issue with the idea of being perfect. Interviews are about selling yourself and persuading the employer that you are the right person for the job, you can’t do that if you’re second guessing yourself and putting yourself down all the time.

Interviews are the time and place to start talking about yourself positively, especially when you are likely to have a lot of good experiences to talk about. INTJ’s can come across very blunt when presenting something, they communicate the overall scenario but often leave out important details. Ones that would be very interesting and useful to the interviewer.

What does your personality type mean?

INTJ stands for Introverted, iNtuitive, Thinking, Judging. This broadly means that people with this personality type are energised by time alone and you may work slightly better in your own company. You like to focus on ideas rather than facts, which makes you a very creative person. However, you make creative decisions based on logic and reason, you apply yourself to a situation and are only happy when that task has been completed.

INTJ types are great problem solvers, you are always eager to improve either yourself or your strategy and professional self. You solve problems with logic and reasoning, despite being a naturally creative individual. You always see room for improvement, which can often lead to you desiring nothing less than perfection.

The Mastermind personality often leads to people being reserved and more serious people. However, you do like to apply a creative flair to your work, despite all the seriousness. You enjoy the challenge of coming up with new ideas and spend a lot of your time thinking about what you can be doing. You challenge yourself and see nothing better than a problem that you simply might not be able to solve, you apply yourself and always make sure that there is a way that you can achieve your goals. Being highly motivated is exactly what employers want.

Strengths of an INTJ type

Your strengths are all focused around your dedication and devotion to better yourself.

You have a great willingness to learn – If it means making yourself and your skills better, you are going to jump right on that opportunity. You like to play around with things and experiment with how they work, a creative mind is perfect for the engineering industry. Employers want to see someone that has the skills but at the same time, they want to hire someone with a passion to learn and develop themselves within the role. This is definitely a skill that not every possesses you should be proud of it.

You are innovators - At work, INTJ types excel at creating and implementing innovative solutions to analytical problems. They naturally see possibilities for improvement and are very organised in doing so. You like change and you want to try things a different way before sticking to traditional ways of working.

Your determination is exceptional – Putting strengths like determination and willingness to learn together and you have an unstoppable force that is willing to try anything to succeed. Employers want to see that spark of passion in a candidate and sometimes determination can be more important that a skill set. Likelihood is that you have both, but never let anything get in the way of your determined attitude.

Potential weaknesses

Not every single person with an INTJ personality is going to be the same, but here are some of the possible weaknesses you could have. Highlighting these can help you understand why you act a certain way and could help you improve yourself for situations like interviews, which can sometimes cause high stress levels in some people.

Perfectionism – The need to get things just right can be overwhelming after a while and the idea of being perfect is always on your mind. You don’t like to settle for something that, in your eyes, can be even better. You are very strict on yourself when things don’t go to plan. Employers are looking for hard workers and people that put a lot of effort into their work, however, they do know that perfect isn’t always achievable. Afterall, we’re all human, we can’t always be perfect.

Imbalance – Work is often very important to an INTJ type and because they put their heart and soul into their job, they often miss out on time that should be spent elsewhere. You don’t often give yourself time to see friends and family or do leisurely activities because you’d much rather be at work. Even though this is what you think you want to be doing, it can still be draining and physically exhausting. It can affect how you work in the long run and you’ll just end up being harsh on yourself when you make mistakes. You need to understand work-life balance and the positives that come with it.

Your personal development

The first thing you should try and focus on is finding a balance that works for you. As much as you might love your work, being there all the time can make it harder for you to work at your best and come up with new ideas. The Mastermind is one who strives for perfection and if you’re not giving yourself time away from work, it can become harder for you to make the progress you want. So, help yourself by taking some time off or even just prioritising your social life on weekends. Whatever works best for you. When you come back, you might see that a little rest can go a long way.

Although you are keen on self-improvement, there is only so close to perfect you can get every time. With perfectionists, they tend to talk themselves down if there are mistakes made. Interviews can be difficult to get used to and you can never really have a 100% perfect interview, it’s never going to happen. It’s not something you can be completely prepared for, so don’t try.

As an INTJ personality type, you have some amazing strengths and you should talk about these to an employer. Let them know that you are willing to learn and you’re extremely determined to get the job done. Your strengths are important, and you should focus on these. Employers want to know that if a mistake is made you will try again, but they also know that mistakes are inevitable. Try not to be too hard on yourself and know that balance in a job will help you succeed.

The next instalment of this series will talk about the INTP personality type. If this is you or you’re just interested in finding out more, come back to E&TJ next week to read!