How to Assess Your Career Values

How to Assess Your Career Values How to Assess Your Career Values When considering a new job or career, your career values count as one of the most important factors guiding your choices when deciding on a potential company or position for employment. Your career values represent the beliefs you have about what is important in your work, and what makes it meaningful to you. What Do You Want From a Job? Are you looking for prestige, creativity, flexible hours, independence, high income, people contact, advancement or some other satisfaction from your work life? Values vary greatly from person to person, making it essential to understand the unique makeup of your value system. Once you figure out what you value, youll have the answer to what motivates you to do your best job, and you can use this knowledge to guide your employment choices. Career Satisfaction Some career theorists believe that how well a job or career satisfies our values should be the most important consideration when evaluating options. These theorists posit that work which lines up with our values will be more meaningful, and we will be more likely to invest our energies to master the roles and achieve success. Most career experts recommend considering personality traits, interests and abilities in conjunction with values when making career choices. How to Assess Your Career Values What’s most important to you? Review the examples of work values below and rate their importance to you on a scale of 1 - 10. Then examine some of the highest rated values and choose 6 - 10 that should have the greatest weight when considering career and alternatives. You can also separate these descriptive terms into categories, such as who, what, where, and workload. Instead of a numerical ranking system, you may choose to rank the terms using Must have, Nice to have, Ok not to have and Must not have. Examples of Career Values Some of the values you want and require in your work or career probably involve qualities and opportunities that enhance your life emotionally and intellectually. Achieving these values as part of your job or career might make you feel challenged, inspired and fulfilled. Some career or job values have to do more with the environment in which you spend a large proportion of your waking hours, and the conditions under which you perform your work. While these values may not offer as much emotional fulfillment, they can make your work life easier to navigate, such as having a mentor, or easing financial stress, because you have job security. The following list captures examples of some of these types of values: AdventureAutonomyAvoiding StressBuilding ThingsCamaraderieCasual Work EnvironmentChallengeChanging the WorldCollaborating with OthersCompetitionCreating New ThingsCreativityDiversityEmployee BenefitsExposure to BeautyFast PaceFunHelping OthersHigh IncomeHigh Level of Interaction with PeopleIncome Based on ProductivityInfluencing OthersIntellectually Demanding WorkJob SecurityLocationMoral/Spiritual FulfillmentOpportunity for AdvancementOpportunity to LeadOpportunity to Learn New ThingsOutlet for Creativity Physical ActivityPleasant Work EnvironmentPowerPrestigeRecognitionRisk TakingRoutine WorkSeeing Tangible Results from Work CompletedSharing Ideas or InformationSocializationSolving ProblemsStatus as an ExpertStructureSupportive ManagementTeam MembershipTime FreedomTravelVariety of TasksWork/Life BalanceWorking AloneWorking Outside You can also use this list to generate ideas for different types of jobs or positions to explore if youre in the midst of a job search, and flesh out your resume by adding a few in your resumes employment objective section and in your cover letter.