The Meyers-Briggs Personality Test: An Information Interview With Mrs. Marcie Yourman

To gain a full and thorough understanding of my potential career options, a key focus in this class, I took the Meyers- Briggs Personality Test and conducted an information interview. Based on the test results I am personality type ESTJ, although my preferability in each category is only slight to moderate. For help in seeing how my personality type would be transferrable to the workforce I took part in an information interview with Marcie Yourman, a Project Manager and Business Analyst at the PNC Bank headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the Investment Operations Department. As a step to further enrich my understanding of the topic I asked Mrs. Yourman to also take the Meyers-Briggs exam and found out that she is also personality

Marcie Yourman, I learned that a career in project management might be right up my alleyway. According to Mrs. Yourman her daily tasks include, overseeing the work of her team and helping troubleshoot any problems that arise while they attempt to implement new software into the current PNC system. A major part of Mrs. Yourman’s daily challenges are delegating certain tasks to the employees beneath her while also having to deal with what she calls, “personal issues” (Yourman, n.d.). Mrs. Yourman goes on to explain that more often than not these “personal issues” are related to performance. She further elaborates on her point by saying, “Employees that don’t have the skills to perform their role or shuffling of staff members on projects to best utilize their skills to achieve project results while trying to balance assignments so I can continue to provide challenging growth opportunities to further develop staff is often the hardest part of the job” (Yourman, n.d.). These moments leave Mrs. Yourman tasked with being an effective leader by placing staff in places that they will be most effective while also having to manage the human nature of the job. She acknowledges the fact that in the business world, management decisions are often black and white. If an employee continues to underperform, probation and eventually termination are often the

Yourman stresses how these personnel decisions impact every facet of her job. According to her, her team of 6 often has over twenty projects running simultaneously. She must ensure that these projects are moving forward and for that to happen, she has to organize her resources, including her employees, efficiently. As a wrap up to our interview, Mrs. Yourman outlined the key qualities for working as a manager in her field. Among the many qualities are the ability to work hard, analyze, apply old information to new situations, organize, and communicate expectations. Finally, Mrs. Yourman described how she climbed the corporate ladder to get to where she is today, highlighting her time in human resources which helped her understand human relationships. She stated, “My career began in human resources which gave me a foundation for understanding personal interactions and effective management skills, then I moved into a technical role before moving to operations role. Each position I had over my 30-year career, provided me more information about myself and helped me determine what I enjoyed doing until I settled into a project management and business analysis role” (Yourman,