Do What You Are is an enormously helpful book for those trying to figure out what career paths to pursue based on their interests and personality disposition. The authors–primarily Paul D. Tieger and Barbara Barron, but also their daughter, Kelly Tieger–rely on the Myers-Briggs typology to point readers to possible career paths.

The first two pparts of the book go into the dynamics of Myers-Briggs personality typology, and why it is so important for the career search. Essentially, there are four letters in each personality type, and each has two options:

• Extraverted (E) / Introverted (I)
• Sensing (S) / Intuiting (N)
• Thinking (T) / Feeling (F)
• Judging (J) / Perceiving (P)

In addition to the sixteen personality types, there are four clusters based on their temperaments:

• Traditionalists (SJ)
• Experiencers (SP)
• Conceptualizers (NT)
• Idealists (NF)

I, for one, am INFJ, so my temperament falls under the “idealist.”

In addition to the details of how personality type functions, the bulk of the book offers chapter-length analyses of personality types in the workplace. Each of these begin with three case studies of individuals of a given personality type who are thriving in their job. The book details the career paths involved, and why it is suitable for each profile. Then, each chapter offers a list of career possibilities, divided into categories: mine included counseling/psychological jobs, education, the religious professions, the humanities, and the arts. Other personality types have much more content on sales, accounting, medicine, and so on. Finally, each chapter ways that a given personality type might best plot out his/her career, as well as pitfalls they may fall into.

The book concludes with explanations of how different personality types have managed career changes, as well as a brief summary of the entire text.

While I do find the book really interesting, it actually didn’t tell me very much about my own career path that I didn’t know when I was 18 years old. I think that is the pitfall with these sorts of books: if you know yourself well, or you don’t know much about the labor market, it can be incredibly helpful. However, if you are self-aware about your own strengths, weaknesses, and natural dispositions, what you find might seem laughably obvious. This is no fault of the writers: I think it’s a powerful text for helping those who really don’t know what they want to do or for those who don’t think about alternative options from what they’ve already known.