How the Myers-Briggs Test Can Position Your Content Team for Success

4 minute read

Upland Admin

meyers-briggs hiring guide for marketing teams

As Albert Einstein famously said, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

This quote has stuck with me as I’ve built my content marketing company. You can’t expect employees to thrive in roles that don’t match their personalities or innate preferences. The best work happens when you can find where a person’s strengths and passions intersect with your company’s needs.

Because every role in content creation and management involves a different skill set, I’ve relied on the Myers-Briggs personality test to help understand my employees and their preferences and create an atmosphere that respects their individual needs.

The test breaks down a personality type into four letters based on how a person processes information and perceives the world. The markers include extroverted or introverted, sensing or intuition, thinking or feeling, and judging or perceiving, with 16 potential combinations.

To staff your content team for success (and better understand their inner brilliance), here are the personality types that tend to thrive in a few key content roles:

The Content Strategist 

A content strategist understands the overarching company goals and how content can meet them. Often called a chief content officer, this person needs to be able to think about the big picture and keep an eye on processes to effectively manage content production. The position also requires a high level of creativity and the ability to lead a team.

As imaginative, creative, and well-organized people-persons, ENFJs would fit the bill as perfect content strategists. ENFJs find success in providing value for others in all they do, so being the brains behind a brand’s content, which involves dedicating efforts to educating and working to achieve a specific audience’s goals, would be a natural fit.

Famous ENFJs include Oprah Winfrey and Nelson Mandela.

Editors and Writers 

Editors and writers will comprise the majority of your content team. These team members need an acute attention to detail and must be energized by working with words and stories all day. Many writers will be INFPs because they thrive with creative tasks and a structured environment but would rather be buried in words than interact with people, which is where the introvert trait comes into play.

Famous INFP writers include George Orwell and J.R.R. Tolkien.

The Data Scientist

Once your content strategists, writers, and editors have collaborated to publish educational, reader-friendly content, someone needs to measure the results against your KPIs. Enter your data scientist. This individual should be passionate about numbers and able to understand (and communicate) complex issues through data.

INTJs tend to enjoy working independently and are decisive, jack-of-all-trades types, which perfectly positions them to tackle the role as a data scientist.

Famous INTJs include Isaac Newton and Edwin Hubble.

Building Your Content Team

Influence & Co.’s personality tests revealed that individuals who are naturally extroverted tend to excel in content strategy roles, while natural introverts tend to gravitate toward editing positions.

Obviously, your writing staff doesn’t have to consist of INFPs to thrive, and you’ll likely have talented content strategists who aren’t ENFJs. But looking at personality tests such as Myers-Briggs allows you to see the complexities in your workforce and understand what certain traits say about how a person prefers to work and interact with others.

Members of your marketing team need to mesh their skills to produce content that’s creative and goal-oriented. But to foster healthy collaboration, all team members need to recognize and embrace each other’s individual differences.

Using personality tests in the interviewing process (and beyond) can help your team identify certain personality strengths and weaknesses within coworkers and better communicate with them. In turn, you set the tone for a more conscious work environment that will make all members of your team feel appreciated and comfortable in their own skin.

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