What typical traits would a person have that might go into business or accounting?

Hi Julian, Great question -- I am a big believer in understanding your personality and strengths to guide you in your professional career path.

I would recommend taking the Strong Interest Inventory Profile and Myers-Briggs Type Indicator through a career coach/counselor. These tools will help you make good decisions about your career and education path. Business and accounting land in the "Enterprising" and "Conventional" themes of the Strong Interest Inventory. Values associated with "Enterprising" (business, politics, leadership, entrepreneurship) is risk taking, status, competition and influence. Values associated with "Conventional" (organization, data, management, accounting, investing, information systems) are accuracy, stability, and efficiency.

On the topic of Myers-Briggs Type indicator, I land on the INTJ preferences. In my job, I own a few businesses and do some accounting work -- this preference is moderately attractive job for my personality trait. INTJ stands for "Introversion", "Intuition" Thinking" "Judging". In other words, I tend to focus on the inner world of ideas and impressions, tend to take in information from patterns and big picture and focus on future possibilities, tend to make decisions based primarily on logic and objective analysis of cause and effect and tend to like a planned and organized approach to life and want to have things settled. These are my traits and I perform well at my job.

I think having an interest in business and/or accounting is an important first step. Finding out what your personality and confidence level lands on these topics by taking these tests would be my recommendation. What you may find out though is that your personality traits lend itself to an entirely different career path -- and that is okay in my opinion. Be open and explore --- you are young and have time on your side!

I hope the suggestion to take these two test and have a career coach/counselor interpret the results helps you. Let me know if you have any additional questions or comments, I'll do my best to help.

I think some of the traits that a person in Business or Accounting would have are:
Methodical in approach
Analytical
Eloquent

Finally i think it all boils down to how you communicate your thoughts effectively. Improve your communication skills and I am sure you would be set on a path to success.

Thanks!

Hi Julian -

You may want to consider a major in business with a minor in finance, economics or accounting. The business degree may provide you with a well rounded background as well as expose you other facets of the business world that may help you indentify an area that you will find a passion for. The minor may also help you vett an area that you may want to pursue but currently uncertain.

Best of luck!

Hi,
Here is a decent link I found to a Myers Briggs based personality assessment online:
http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp

Please keep in mind that these are job assessments to help you and by no means any formal type of psychological assessment or advice --- if you want to do something and put your mind to it, you can do anything in life that you want to.
HEre is another link with some good jobs for people who love math:
http://www.businessinsider.com/best-jobs-for-people-who-love-math-2013-12

Good luck!