Hey, Dan here, and I hate to break this to you. But
if you've been looking for ENFP career advice, I got to tell you
the list out there, listing all the careers for ENFPs as a
whole, they are complete and utter BS. And in this video, I'm
going to tell you why and what you should do instead, to figure
out what the heck career you should take on as an ENFP.
At this point, in your search for career advice, you may have
even seen my older video on Three Disappointing Careers For
ENFPs where if memory serves me, right, it's been a couple of
years. But I think that talked about digital marketing,
architecture and teaching. And if you're interested in one of
these three, don't freak out just yet. But in general, these
can actually be very disappointing careers for ENFPs.
I've been on this path for a while warning ENFPs about these
careers, and other careers, that can end up being really
disappointing. Now, when you go there, and you search for
careers for ENFPs, you're going to find these long lists. And
the thing that no one really tells you is these lists are
archaic, and everyone's just copying everyone else, like
someone in the 1960s came up with a list and then every other
blog ever, because they're trying to just make content,
copies these lists and passes them around and whatever else.
So whether or not they hired a writer to write a cute little
blurb at the beginning, there's actually no thought going into
these lists, and really thinking about what actually matters for
ENFPs when it comes to your career. So you might see
something on the list, like being a teacher. And on the
surface, being a teacher can be a great job for ENFPs. We like
teaching, that's exactly what I'm doing right now. And ENFPs
can be great teachers, and mentors. And in theory, high school or elementary school teachers can do really well in
it. Here's the problem. in a lot of countries, the teaching
system is a bureaucratic nightmare. And the actual thing
ENFPs do well teaching is like held up behind a gate, and an
electric fence and a moat with alligators and stuff. And the
teachers I've talked to often feel like they're in a battle
just to do their job having to deal with all kinds of
bureaucracy, funding issues, paperwork, all kinds of other
things. And this applies to a ton of other jobs, if there is a
huge level of bureaucracy, you're often not spending a lot
of your time doing the thing that you love doing, which is
sometimes what those career lists are based on this sort of
ideal movie scenario of what a teacher does talk and inspire
students to be their best yet that we do. Well, problem is a
lot of the institutions are so broken, or at least run by
administrators, which, in my opinion, just leads to them
being broken, that you can't actually do your job really
well. So I found in many cases that your job title and
essentially, the purpose of what you're doing, like teaching
isn't actually as important as the culture, the people you're
working with, and most importantly, in my opinion, the
day to date of the job. How do you actually spend your time? If
you look at a teacher, and you say, and I'm not trying to pick
on the teaching role, and I actually have an interview with
an ENFP teacher that has some complaints, but generally like
the profession, but if you were to talk to a teacher and ask
them, How do you spend the 8, 10, 12 hours a day you are
working, like break that down for me in a chart, because we
like charts, right? is I want to understand actually how you
spend your time. And what you would find is some teachers at
some schools would spend 95% of their time teaching and
inspiring and having a great time doing it. That teaching job
is amazing as an ENFP. But you might find others caught up in
bureaucratic nightmares, spend 20% of their time doing
administrative work 30% of the time dealing with some kind of
budget stuff, dealing with conflicts with parents, all this
and maybe only 40% of their time is actually spent teaching. And
that's not very fun. I forgot about marking papers, we'd
include marking papers in there somewhere as well. And going
through paperwork, usually not our most fun thing to do either.
Digital Marketing is a another example that I discuss in that
video. And in digital marketing. There is a wealth of options.
First of all, it's not even really a job, it's dozens of
jobs, but you might have this vision because us ENFPs we
like to watch movies and TV shows and be like yeah, yeah,
that's what we want to do. Right. I thought I wanted to be
a lawyer for a period of time, because I've watched the
Practice and coming up with really crazy ways to get clients
off seeing like something I could do. Turns out lawyers mostly
just fill out forms and review documents. Doesn't seem like
something I could do, right? So digital marketing, you might
think of marketing and think, yeah, I could come up with
really creative campaigns and understand people and get into
psychology. And this would be really interesting. And a few
digital marketing careers are that way, but a lot of them are
spreadsheets and repetition. So some digital marketing jobs
involve creativity and making something amazing. But a lot of
them involve spreadsheets and data and letting the algorithms
do stuff. And basically, really, really not ENFP friendly kind of
work. Now, at this stage, I have to say, don't get down, don't
get worried, I'm going to provide some resources here and
some advice to help you along the way. So this is not going to
end with a well, we're all screwed pack it in. There's a
lot you can do differently, not relying on these archaic ENFP
lists. One of the last issues with these lists and looking at
careers in a very broad sense is within a career, you move up a
ladder, usually, if you're working for a company, and along
that ladder, seems to me like people didn't really think
through how it goes. So the lawyer example at the top, when
you become a partner, in a lot of law firms, your work is
around getting clients, it's around recruiting and mentoring
younger lawyers, it might be around handling really big
cases, it's probably somewhat ENFP friendly work, ENFP, ENTP
friendly work right? A lot on theory, mentoring, relationship,
sales, problem is to become a partner, you are driving on the
paperwork, highway of hell. And basically, if you do not have an
insane level of grit to just power through, and in some ways
waste like 7, 10 years of your life, you're not going to get to
that partner stage. Now some people are good at both of those
roles, and all the roles in between. Between a new associate
and a third year associate and everything else. But some people
aren't. And often career ladders are just assuming you always
want to move up. But you might be a much better fit for the
person on top. And as charming as ENFPs are you can't
usually walk into a law firm and be like, let me tell you who you
should hire as your next partner. Probably not going to
work out right. And so a lot of careers are weird like that. And
that leads me to my major piece of advice here. And if you want
to go deeper on this, I'll set up a page on my site at dreamsaroundthe world.com/ENFPcareeradvice where
you can go a lot deeper into more my advice on this. But the
number one tip that I always share with clients about this is
whatever career you're considering, speak to at least
five people who work in that career. And when you hear that,
it seems like yeah, that seems obvious. How many people will
actually do that. Pretty much nobody. And when you're speaking
to those five people, ideally, you want to spread them out on
the ladder a little bit. If you're thinking of becoming an
architect, speak to that person who is 50 or 60, and has reached
the top of the architecture ladder, and find out how they
spend their time and what the job is like and think, do I want
this? Is this what I want to be doing it 20 years, 30 years,
which is a tough question in and of itself for an ENFP and then
talk to people through the ladder as well. And when you're
speaking to them, don't ask vague questions get very
specific. How do you spend your time? What are the three most
important things about your job? What do you do on a typical
Wednesday from eight to five? What are you actually doing? And
then ask yourself, is that how I want to spend my time for the
next X number of years and if it is, then move on to
investigating that career more, figure out how you would do it,
the opportunities everything else, but if the way they're
spending their time is not appealing to you. Even if having
that great job title of architect sounds really cool,
then it's probably not a good career choice for you. That is
my number one piece of advice. If you do that you will learn
more about a career than anything you're going to read
online. If you're new to the channel here. My name is Dan I
am an ENFP. I publish new videos each and every week. And my
mission here is to help you become the best version of
yourself all while creating the most awesome life possible for
you and those you love. So hit the subscribe button and the
bell and catch you in the next video soon. Bye for now