Understanding your values can play a big part in your career success.
Values are the things that we believe in and which we think are important; they are things we feel very strongly about. Everyone is unique and we all have our own set of values which are formed in a variety of ways through our life experiences, our feelings and our families. Your career values can be things like recognition, achievement, creativity, contribution, job security, money, structure, flexibility, excitement, independence or variety for example.
If you are struggling to come up with your career values, try answering some of the questions below:
- What do you most want to achieve in the next 12 months?
- If you won the lottery what would you do?
- What things do you value most about yourself?
- What is your greatest achievement so far?
- What is the possession you value the most?
- If you could have one wish, what would it be?
Then list the 10 things that you believe are most important to you in a career and match this list to a previous job (preferably one that you enjoyed), your current job and the job that you think you would like to have. The results should give you an indication as to whether any of these jobs meet with your values and being aware of what we value in our lives is important because if you have a job that supports your value system i.e. it is in-line with your core beliefs and values; it is more likely to motivate you than a job which does not meet with your values.
And don’t just take my word for it. Check out this article on values written by Guillermo a Senior Software Engineer I know. In addition to being an experienced Software Engineer, Guillermo is passionate about technology, people and their combination, he is very keen on emotional intelligence, group and team management. And you can find out more about him here.
