Why Your Best Career Fit Depends on More Than Skill, Talent and Interests

Deciding on a career is a task that often begins by assessing the activities you enjoy.

You might then examine your skills or take into account your personality before determining your ideal job.

This approach, however, presents a problem. It overlooks a key piece of information that substantially improves career or job outcomes – your core motivations.

When your core motivations aren’t satisfied by a career or job, fulfillment, happiness and even success will likely be compromised.

So what do we mean? Well, consider these examples …

Let’s say your Unconscious Motivations involve feeling needed and appreciated, and you’re considering an investment banking position. If your projects don’t make significant contributions or you don’t feel like you’re helping people in a meaningful way, it’s pretty certain you’ll experience some degree of job dissatisfaction.

Now let’s say you’re skilled at painting, want to pursue a career as an artist, and your Unconscious Motivations require feeling safe and secure. Elements of this career choice – such as critiques, self employment and selling yourself to the public – all fly in the face of your core needs.

Again, unless Unconscious Motivations are considered as part of the decision, your satisfaction is at risk. Unsatisfied Unconscious Motivations have a derailing effect on employment success and longevity.

It a proven fact: Job and career fit depend on much more than skill, talent, preferences and interests.

What you think you want in a career often isn’t the same as what you really need to feel most satisfied.

So how do you find out what you really need to be most satisfied in your career, your job, your life? How can you uncover and learn about your own deeply held motivations?

Simple.

Complete our 10-minute online PRINT® survey.

What makes this self-assessment so accurate is no two people take the same survey. Each new question is selected based on the way you answered the previous question.

After you complete the survey, a career counselor guides you through an easy-to-read report that includes:

  1. A description of your Unconscious Motivators. This explanation includes what you look like when your Unconscious Motivators are being satisfied (your Best Self) and what happens to you when they are not being satisfied (your Stressed or Shadow Self).

    Of course, your goal is employment that brings out your Best Self and avoids your Shadow Self.

  2. Your tailored set of Triggers. You discover the environmental factors – the actions of others and situations around you – that feel like an attack on your Unconscious Motivators and, as a result, can bring out your Shadow tendencies.

    You should avoid these Triggers at all cost. But, obviously, you must know what they are to avoid them.

  3. A checklist of Career Requirements unique to your PRINT. These conditions must be satisfied in order for you to feel fulfilled and firing on all cylinders in your chosen career/job.