Bob Dylan's Results

Strategic Insights

Specialization means that one values becoming very good at something. Every crime procedural (Bones), heist movie (Oceans 11), or superhero story (Avengers), features a team of highly-specialized individuals. These teams work because the group is made up of people who are incredibly good at their individual specialties. That is their calling card. To them, it’s exciting, satisfying, and meaningful to be the resident ‘expert’ on something. The fact that specialization is in their top means that this is something that will be particularly enjoyable to them.

Scholars often delineate between ‘generalists’ and ‘specialists.’ These workers want to be (or become) a specialist. They thrive in situations where they can focus on hard skills that are easy to quantify. That doesn’t mean they have to be a coder, but they excel in positions where they can measure, and show, their progress in some skill or area.

Perhaps surprising to some, specialization often dovetails nicely with ‘low-variety’ jobs. This does NOT mean boring jobs. It means jobs where the employee is given the time and opportunity to become excellent. Sometimes high-specialization/low-variety jobs can be extremely competitive (think: professional video gamer). Most areas of specialization, however, are not so crowded, and so it doesn’t take the same high levels of expertise for them to become the best in the room or the best in the company. Feeling like they are the resident expert in _____ will be very meaningful to them.

Becoming a specialist also helps these employees recognize how important their work is, because they are often the only one who can perform a particular task. This also comes with some social status. Expertise can be achieved in any job or at any education level. Master’s degrees and trade certifications are, by definition, paths to mastery in some specific area, and a great way to show expertise. Even if they don’t have the specification yet, people who are scoring high on this list are more likely to thrive in positions where they need to teach themselves skills and are heavily relied on for things that only they can do, or do well. In these positions, people scoring high on specialization are excellent at learning on the job.

Things to Consider for Fit with a Position

• What hard skills are vital for this job, and how do they feel about spending a lot of time getting good at those things?
• Are there any company-sponsored trainings/certifications that are part of this job?
• Does your organization offer any educational programs to help employees gain more skills? Share if you do as this will be particularly valuable to them.

Evaluation Questions

This section provides a series of questions, tailored to the tested attributes, that will help you as you recruit top talent, work to retain valued team members, and develop a more effective work culture.

What do you do best

When someone values specialization they are either already experts or would derive great self-worth from becoming an expert in a task or skill. A good indication of how this desire can serve your organization is to ask about their self-assessed areas of greatest strength, and the areas where they would like to build that strength (see below).

Describe a time when you were asked to do something that you feel you do poorly? How did you approach the task knowing you weren’t ideally suited to it?

No one is good at everything. Specialists often prefer to delegate or outsource that which they do not do well. That might be an excellent option in your organization, or it might not. Regardless, asking this question will help you start a discussion on options for meeting expectations that fall outside of a member of your team's core competencies.

What would you like to become known as an expert in?

Often, we don’t know our employees’ aspirations. For someone who correlates highly with Specialization, their skills-based ambitions drive them. Understanding their goals and working with them to develop the desired skills will help you retain them and make them more valuable members of the team.

Strategic Insights

With purpose high in a person’s results, they are likely to do well in positions that connect their efforts with their employer's mission, or even to a deeper purpose. They will likely find the greatest satisfaction in their work if they are part of a cause or have a clear sense of who they are serving and are not just collecting a paycheck or working up the corporate ladder. They want to focus on what they feel matters most and they are looking to connect with organizations that share their passions. That doesn’t mean that purpose must come at the organizational level. They can find purpose in many different areas, including in their contribution to clients, their co-workers/team, or the overarching goal/mission of the organization.

The trend over the last decades has been for people to come into the workforce hoping to receive more purpose from their jobs than previous generations did. This is tricky because satisfaction is based on expectations, and high, but unmet, expectations can lead to disillusionment, which is devastating to intrinsic motivation. Some people feel that their labor and their life is intrinsically valuable, so they want their hours of effort each day to contribute to making a difference to something they care about. They can achieve this by using their resources to support their relationships and hobbies outside of work. But if they scored high in purpose, it means that at this time in their life they want to also feel that the work they are doing is also making a difference.

Many accountants, for instance, find high levels of meaning in their work. An in-depth study discovered more than 14 different ways that they found that meaning. Some felt meaning in their role as the referee for the financial marketplace, others found great meaning in helping their companies organize their resources, while others loved being a vital part of their team.

Not everyone is looking for this from their work. Many people won't feel deeply connected an organization’s mission or will simply consider it a nice side benefit to the job. That approach is also just fine. A perk of employees who do find purpose in their work is that their intrinsic motivation goes through the roof.

In the end, there are more ways to find meaning in one’s work than most realize. However, it’s important that everyone understand that virtually no job will feel meaningful all of the time. Doctors spend a lot of time doing paperwork, firefighters spend a lot of time on false alarms and waiting in the station. Do your best to help employees connect with the meaningful parts of their work, but be realistic upfront about the parts that are not as sexy. Help employees create those moments and savor them. Traditions, celebrations, time spent with the end user all have been shown to increase meaning of work.

In the end, purpose comes from relationships and service. People scoring high on meaning will do best in positions that resonate with contributions that they want to make, and that don’t force them to forsake their life and relationships outside of work. Research shows that longer-term purpose and life satisfaction comes to workers who are better able to balance their work and non-work lives. Research also shows that’s better for their companies too.

Things to Consider for Fit with a Position

• What aspects of the work do they think they will find the most meaningful? This is a good insight into what they’re hoping the job will be like, and a good chance for you to know if they are likely to be satisfied or disappointed, or if perhaps they can be shown other ways of meaning.
• Why did the founders start the organization? A good (true) origin story can help people see how they are part of something.
• Share how you feel about the mission of the organization, and what you find most meaningful about the job.
• If you have an employee who finds a lot of meaning in their job and whose position is the same or similar to the position you are considering for someone else, it might be well worth it to set up a time for the two to meet and talk away from the watchful eyes and ears of others.

Evaluation Questions

This section provides a series of questions, tailored to the tested attributes, that will help you as you recruit top talent, work to retain valued team members, and develop a more effective work culture.

What matters most to you?

Exploring what a person values most will help you determine how to best motivate them. Their purpose might be social, familial, personal, environmental, religious, or other. To best assess fit you need to make sure that you can align their tasks and other forms of compensation to help them live a more satisfying work life.

What excites you about working with us?

This is a question designed to flip the script. If purpose is important to the person you are interviewing, one of the best ways to improve or assess “fit” is to see how strongly they align with your core mission or culture.

If you had all the money, you would ever need, how would you spend your time?

If you remove social and financial constraints, you can learn about a person's interests and values. At the end of the day, a person who is motivated by purpose can only thrive when they are supporting that purpose. Allowing them to talk about themselves and their dreams will help you see what motives them and how that might fit with the role you are considering.

Autonomy is an APPROACH

Employee satisfaction in careers depends on how work gets done, not just the nature of the work performed. The same job at different organizations or in different situations can lead to drastically different levels of productivity and worker satisfaction. Understanding how employees want to do their work is key to maximizing productivity, satisfaction, and retention.

Two people can fill a role effectively but can approach their work very differently. Their success and happiness depend largely on their ability to work in the most effective way for them. As an employer, you are looking for a good fit between how potential employees like to approach their work, and how the job at your organization actually gets done, or how much room (or responsibility) the employee has in shaping how their work gets done.

Strategic Insights

Someone with autonomy high in their results values being trusted and appreciates having room to figure out their own way of getting things done. Autonomy can lead to a virtuous cycle with intrinsic motivation – intrinsically motivated employees respond most positively to autonomy, and when given that autonomy they then become more motivated.

Autonomy is deeply intertwined with ownership and trust. Autonomy is the level of discretion employees have over their work and how they do it. The higher the skill level needed for a job, the more autonomy the employee has. Being an expert at something has many perks, and one of them is higher levels of autonomy. Studies show that workers who have high levels of autonomy in their job tend to have better job performance and satisfaction, organizational commitment, lower work-related stress, less fatigue, and more intrinsic motivation.

Autonomy is largely decided by three things: what position an employee occupies within the organization, what type of work they do (surgeon, firefighter, customer service rep, etc.), and who their manager is. Some jobs and positions tend to naturally allow more autonomy, but even in the seemingly best of positions, a micromanaging manager can destroy an employee’s sense of autonomy.

Workers who have autonomy very high in their wants are likely to succeed in jobs where their performance is outcome-based, and their work processes don’t rely on high levels of constant coordination. It’s also worth noting that autonomy doesn’t necessarily mean working alone (though it can). High functioning and close-knit teams can still have high levels of individual, and team, autonomy. Employees who desire autonomy are looking for a role where their tasks are relatively self-contained, and levels of trust are high.

Things to Consider for Fit with a Position

• How is success measured in this role?
• Who else would the worker in this role need to work with to be successful?
• Who else in the organization can do this role? (Often roles that cannot be done by others have higher levels of autonomy—whether that’s being the organization data-wizard, tax accountant, or courier. If nobody else can/will do it, it’s harder to micromanage them.)

Evaluation Questions

This section provides a series of questions, tailored to the tested attributes, that will help you as you recruit top talent, work to retain valued team members, and develop a more effective work culture.

Tell me about your ideal boss?

Candidates who value autonomy highly often recognize the need for leadership, but it is worth understanding how they see themselves interacting with management. Their answer will help you assess their fit within your organization.

How would you (insert task here)?

People who value autonomy need the latitude to do things their way but that doesn’t always mean that everyone understands how to do things well. Gaining insight into how they would approach their job and problem-solve will help you evaluate their ability to be productively self-directed.

Can you describe a situation when you realized that you needed support or direction from a supervisor, and how did you recognize the need for help? How did you get it?

It is imperative for workers who prize autonomy to be able to recognize when they are in over their heads. Probing to see if a candidate possesses that ability will help you make better hiring decisions.

Strategic Insights

A person with collaboration high in their results is often an excellent match for roles where they get to be part of a team. In the sports world, they are more basketball than cross-country. They would rather be part of a band than a solo singer-songwriter. It is useful to find those who value high levels of collaboration because some of the jobs that people assume are the most mundane receive some of the highest levels of job satisfaction. Why? It’s often because the people in those jobs get to work closely with others as part of a team, and that’s what they end up enjoying the most.

Having collaboration in their top three means that this person wants to be part of a larger process and contributing to a team is a large part of what motivates them. They can get beyond some of the more mundane tasks if they feel connected to the larger team and process. Managers should make sure these employees are actually working on team projects rather than working alongside a bunch of people doing their own thing with very little interaction. We’re social creatures, and we love to achieve things together. This is especially true for those scoring high on collaboration.

Things to Consider for Fit with a Position

• Will the person in this position primarily work alone or will they work closely with others on a team?
• Find other people who have this position and ask them what they like most about their job. See if anything related to “the people they work with” shows up. If so, that’s an excellent clue that this is might be a good position for someone scoring high on collaboration.
• What do you know about the team they would be working on? How often do they see each other and work together? How socially functional is it?

Evaluation Questions

This section provides a series of questions, tailored to the tested attributes, that will help you as you recruit top talent, work to retain valued team members, and develop a more effective work culture.

Describe your ideal workflow?

Collaboration can signal a high degree of value in the “process.” Often those who value collaboration describe their job as a series of tasks and responsibilities and how they interact with the overall operation of the business. They tend to be less focused on the outcome (that is not to say the outcome isn’t important to them). To ensure a candidate is a good fit with your team you need to learn how they like to work. This question can help with that.

When working on a team, who is ultimately responsible for the outcome? Who should receive credit or blame for the results of a project?

Ownership of an idea and its outcome is important. Those who value collaboration are often good contributors to group conversations. Their willingness to accept responsibility or share praise for coauthored work varies. Understanding these motivators will help you manage them more effectively.

If you were given a solo project that you did not know how to do, how would you get it done?

Sometimes those who value collaboration struggle to work solo. If you are looking for someone to perform tasks on their own, you need to understand how they’ll go about accomplishing the task at hand. Collaboration signals a propensity to work with others, but it is also a common attribute of great networkers. Asking this question will help you strategize with the employee and understand how their skill set can be used to bring others together to solve a problem.

Strategic Insights

A person scoring low in sociability is not necessarily bad at socializing. This score does not give you secret insight into who might be a jerk. Nor does it mean that this person works best alone. What it means is that they do not require as much social interaction to be fulfilled at work. With sociability low in their rankings this person might not be greatly impacted by relationships with their co-workers or is ok working more independently. Office politics are likely to have less impact on their life unless it makes getting the job done more difficult. They can be considered for employment that is remote, or independent, with more confidence than most.

Sociability is one of the rarest attributes to find in the bottom of someone’s results. Interacting with others helps us achieve a degree of personal satisfaction. This person is likely getting their social connections elsewhere. That said, there may be some benefit to occasionally going out of your way to help them feel welcomed and valued as a member of the team. Even those who aren’t looking for a lot of sociability at work want to feel respected and valued. This is particularly true if they are in a leadership position.

Strategic Insights

A person with location low in their results can confidently pursue the best opportunities regardless of their location. They are highly adaptable and can adjust to life in the big city, small town, near family, or far from it. This does not mean that they don't have preferences, just that those preferences do not strongly determine their level of satisfaction at work.

Location agility can be a very powerful advantage when job hunting. (Note: Location preference is a domain that often changes over the course of a career. It may be in their top three at one stage of their career and in the bottom at another. Don't assume because it’s at the bottom now, which suggests that they can be happy working anywhere, that they will always be so locationally versatile).

Strategic Insights

Someone with clarity in their bottom three is ok with relatively high levels of uncertainty. High tolerance for uncertainty, even a little chaos, allows them to thrive where others falter. Still, beware if your managers simply communicate unnecessarily vague expectations.

High tolerance for uncertainty is inherently entrepreneurial and makes an employee well suited for being on the cutting edge of new initiatives. They are a good fit for spearheading the creation of new projects within companies or even creating new companies. Also, those who score low in valuing predictability can often thrive in startups. While managers should always try to provide as much clarity as possible for employees, it is often difficult to do that upfront. People who score very high on clarity can have a hard time in some creative fields and may burn out. People who score lower in desires for clarity are more likely to thrive in fields such as arts and entertainment where outcomes tend to be subjective and success is very hard to define upfront, but easier to recognize after the fact.

Strategic Insights

When someone has predictability toward the bottom of their test results, it means that structure and clarity are less necessary for them to succeed. While most jobs offer a job description, some of the most exciting opportunities with the greatest upside are more fluid. People with low predictability demands thrive in startups or relatively new and fast-growing companies. They can handle a little more chaos than most. In these situations, everyone comes into work every day prepared to help pitch in on just about anything. Done right, this can be very exciting.

Even if someone has predictability low in their values, it does not mean that they can fully thrive in a situation with terrible communication and vague expectations. For instance, being a writer often comes with very low levels of predictability—it’s built into the job. Imagine, however, that their editor simply gives feedback to “make this better.” This is unhelpful and can even be counterproductive, even for the most chaos-loving employees. So whatever situation these employees are in, work with their managers to make sure they have a good sense of what to expect.