This month’s podcasts are covering the importance of incorporating your skills, values, personality, and areas of expertise into your career decision.

Remember that your career decision is on a macro- and micro-level: Choosing the career field you will pursue, and the jobs within that career field. Even on a more micro-level, this self-knowledge will help you decide which assignments, projects, or committees you volunteer for – or you boss assigns you to.

Today, I want to talk about your core values…what is most important to you in an employer, a work environment, and the specific work you’re doing.

Identifying these “non-negotiable” values helps you align your career choices with what is most important to you. And alignment increases your chance for career success, compensation, and satisfaction.

Here’s how you use this information:

-If there is a career or specific job you are considering, evaluate it against your core values to determine how well it meshes with your values.

-If you are exploring careers, look for those that hold your most important values. No matter how many “niceties” the career might have, if it doesn’t offer the value you hold most important, you won’t be satisfied.

Note that some of your values may apply to a career as a whole; other values may be job-specific. For example, “Using physical strength/coordination” is a universal value for a career in physical therapy. Within the career of physical therapy, however, some jobs may satisfy a value of “work on a team,” whereas other jobs may be geared more towards a value of “opportunity to work independently.”

Here are the values on the sort activity:

Utilize physical strength and coordination

Utilize courage and take risks

Utilize creativity and originality

Opportunity for advancement

Ability to do a job as efficiently as possible

Receive recognition for accomplishments

Ability to exert power and influence

Higher than average financial rewards

Ability to help and serve others

Ability to teach and train others

Search for knowledge and truth

Closer relationships with co-workers

Opportunity for continued learning

Opportunity to work independently

Good relationship with manager

Job security

Intellectual challenge

Ability to freely express faith and beliefs

Ability to exert authority and leadership

Ability to give ideas and suggestions

Respond to problems or emergencies

Perform clearly defined tasks

Ability to complete tasks with autonomy

Flexibility in work hours and schedule

Work on a team

Quality, luxurious surroundings

Earnings directly tied to your contribution

A quiet workspace

Opportunity to travel frequently

Experimenting with different solutions

Highly structured environment

Unstructured, open environment

Variety of work tasks

Having a fixed set of tasks

Working on multiple projects simultaneously

Working on one project at a time

A competitive work environment

Work that mentally challenges you

Receive clear instructions

Let’s play out a couple of examples. Let’s say your 5 top values are:

Utilize physical strength and coordination

Utilize courage and take risks

Respond to problems or emergencies

Unstructured, open environment

Opportunity to travel frequently

Does this sound like the values of an accountant? A school teacher? A writer?

What comes to mind is someone who takes groups out on extreme vacations…hiking, rafting, horseback riding.

See how these values play into that career choice? Here’s another example:

Someone’s top 5 values are:

Ability to exert power and influence

Higher than average financial rewards

Competitive work environment

Work that mentally challenges you

Quality, luxurious surroundings

These would be ideal values for someone entering the field of law, particularly in private practice (their value of higher than average financial rewards might not be satisfied working for the DA’s office, and they probably wouldn’t have quality, luxurious surroundings there, either).

There are no right or wrong answers here, and there are an infinite number of values.

These values then become the yardstick by which you measure a career field and job opportunities within that field. It helps you not be swayed by other things that are nice enough – but not one of your Core Values.

For example, if one of your Core Values is having a quiet workspace…you know you won’t be able to do your job without a fair amount of solitude.

You interview for a job and learn that your office will be the first one in the door. People will be sticking their heads in all day every day, and you are the first line of defense when there’s a problem (this situation actually occurred with the last university I worked for).

You have a couple of options: You can not accept the job if it’s offered or you can negotiate a different location for your office once they offer the job to you and before you accept. But you KNOW you won’t be happy and productive in the office they are offering you.

At the end of the month, we’re going to be putting all the aspects we’re talking about this month together. In the meantime, I hope you’re listening to each episode and drawing some conclusions about yourself.

To visit my website: www.exclusivecareercoaching.com

Follow My YouTube channel (Lesa Edwards); it’s chocked full of value career management content is easily digestible bites.

Want to speak with an expert about your career/job search goals? Need help figuring out what’s holding you back from achieving your dream career? Let’s talk. Here’s the link to schedule a 30-minute consult call with me:  www.timetrade.com/book/D6KLN. Hope to see you soon!