Finding your core values to help you find the right job

In my experience, most people do not think about their value set when they are looking for a new job. A lot of people never do – and I was one of them up until maybe five years ago.

Then I realized that I would be much more likely to find a great job if my values and the company’s values aligned. After that, I also learned that job search and career building becomes so much easier when I know my values. I’m betting the same thing goes for you.

It is all about knowing yourself and your values, because when you do that, the choices about your job and career are easier, and you will be more assertive in your communication, which will help you get to that next step faster.

What are your values?

I have noticed that a surprisingly large amount of people do not know what their values are. This is quite a shame because knowing this can be a great help in the job search and life in general.

Once I facilitated a workshop on this, and one of the participants was saying that she did not care about her values, she just wanted a job – Bu that also says something about her values.

In this article I am going to give you a way to determine your values, but first I want to tell you how you can use the knowledge in your job search and career development.

Before jumping into helping you determine your values, I want to tell you about The Job & Career Network. 

This is my (mostly) online Network where we focus on job search and developing your career. If you value community, network, and learning and need some support on your journey, this is the network for you. 

Values in your job search and career development

When you know your values, it is much easier to determine if a company is a place for you to be. It is easier to find out what questions to ask when you call the company before you apply, and what questions to ask at the job interview. All of this can take its starting point from your values because you want a value match between yourself and the company you work for.

If there is a value match you are much more likely to thrive and not end up in a stressful or harmful environment.

Discovering your values

here is A WAY to find out your values – There are also lots of tests online you can take – I like the more manual way because it leaves it more uo to you to choose what is right for you, and not an algorithm based on your answers. You could do the manual one first and then see if the online ones agree – That might be fun 😉

I suggest you do this while alone and undisturbed, as it’s important not to be influenced by others in the process.

Below I have written a lot of values (ChatGPT helped me out a bit on this one), here is what you do:

• Print out all the value words, or write them on a piece of paper and then cut them out so you have one word on each piece of paper

• Now you take two words, which could be creativity and money, and you decide which of these are more important to you. Remember that there is no right or wrong answer here – This is all up to you.

• Lay the two words on the table, with the most important above the less important – both still visible.

• Now you take the next word, and you determine if this goes above or below the word you have lowest, and then you keep moving up the list till you find where that value fits in your list.

• For each word think about where this feels like it would fit in with you.

• When you have all the words lined up, you take the 3 – 5 works at the top of your list and write out what they mean to you. The reason you want to do this is that words do not mean the same to different people and different companies, so it’s important to be able to use this effectively so that you also know what’s behind the words. What do these values actually represent for you?

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Word list

Acceptance

Adventure

Altruism

Ambition

Authenticity

Balance

Beauty

Belonging

Boldness

Calmness

Caring

Challenge

Change

Clarity

Collaboration

Commitment

Community

Compassion

Confidence

Connection

Consistency

Cooperation

Courage

Creativity

Curiosity

Dedication

Determination

Discipline

Empathy

Equality

Ethics

Excellence

Exploration

Fairness

Family

Flexibility

Freedom

Friendship

Fun

Generosity

Gratitude

Growth

Happiness

Harmony

Health

Helping others

Honesty

Hope

Humility

Independence

Innovation

Integrity

Intuition

Joy

Justice

Kindness

Knowledge

Leadership

Learning

Love

Loyalty

Mindfulness

Moderation

Nature

Open-mindedness

Optimism

Patience

Peace

Perseverance

Positivity

Power

Purpose

Quality

Reflection

Respect

Responsibility

Self-care

Self-control

Self-expression

Service

Simplicity

Spirituality

Stability

Success

Teamwork

Tolerance

Trust

Understanding

Unity

Vision

Wealth

Wisdom

Wonder

Work ethic

Worthiness

Please also add your own if you feel like some are missing.