If you're wondering why it's so difficult for you to hold down a job, you might consider taking a personality assessment.
Science suggests there's one personality type that's more likely to be unemployed than others.
A new report from Truity Psychometrics, a provider of online personality and career assessments, found that, overall, being a "Perceiver" significantly predicts your tendency to be jobless.
ISFPs (people with a preference for Introversion, Sensing, Feeling, and Perceiving) were the most likely of all 16 personality types to report being unemployed. And INFPs, INTPs, ENTPs, and ESFPs were all more likely than average to report that they were out of a job, according to the report.
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Molly Owens, CEO of Truity and developer of the TypeFinder® personality type assessment, isn't too surprised by this finding.
She tells Business Insider the result replicates previous studies of the Big Five personality model that have repeatedly found that people with high levels of a trait called "conscientiousness" - or a person's tendency to be goal-oriented and persistent - tend to earn more and be more successful in their
She says Judgers are often highly conscientious while Perceivers tend to have lower levels of conscientiousness, so it's expected that Judgers would experience more career achievement.
"Perceivers tend to be freewheeling, spontaneous types who dislike schedules and structure," Owens says. "At the extreme, and if they haven't developed good organizational skills, Perceivers can have trouble meeting deadlines and keeping up with demanding jobs. So they may actually be more likely to lose their jobs in the first place, if they're not meeting expectations."
Owens says Perceivers might also be more likely to spend more time unemployed once they're out of work than Judgers. "Unlike Judgers, who dislike unpredictable circumstances, Perceivers are more likely to take the unexpected loss of a job in stride, considering it a good excuse for a little time off. Undoubtedly, it was a Perceiver who coined the term 'funemployment.'"
"Judgers, on the other hand, are usually organized, goal-directed folks who prefer a predictable routine. They are valued in the workplace because of their attention to schedules and deadlines, so they may be less likely to lose their jobs in the first place."
On the flip side of this, Owens says Judgers are far less likely to take to being unemployed since they thrive on structure and want to feel that they are constantly moving forward.
"So they're more motivated to get back to work, and probably more organized about the process of finding a new job," she says.