John Doe's Results

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.

Strategic Insights

Someone with clarity high in their results is looking for positions that have clearly defined processes, outcomes, and expectations. Many of the most satisfied employees are so happy because they can see that they have become very good, even expert, at something. The feeling of mastery, and making progress toward mastery, is one of the greatest gifts work can offer.

This doesn’t mean that this person needs their hands held to succeed, far from it. It simply means that success must be clearly defined. Through hard work and ingenuity, with clear benchmarks and expectations, they can become more successful in their role every day. They will do best in jobs where there is little mystery to how success is measured or achieved. They want to spend their time becoming great instead of guessing what they’re supposed to do.

One great way to add some clarity to their role is to provide clear benchmarks of success and failure, and especially, benchmarks for promotion. This helps them and others keep track of what they are capable of doing. Clarity in what these employees need to know lends itself to clarity in what they need to do, which is something they appreciate, and for good reason.

Also remember that, as with predictability, many times you can increase the clarity of a position by encouraging management to set clear, realistic expectations for success up front. Nearly all will benefit from moves in that direction, whatever the case.

Things to Consider for Fit with a Position

• What would their typical day at work look like, and how will they know if they’ve done well that day?
• What would your dream employee for this position eventually become excellent at? Is this a match with what the applicant wants? Be open about this in the interview process.
• How clear are the expectations for how success is measured in this role?

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 questions do you have about the job description or this role?

The job description frames the job to be done but also sets the employee's expectations for performance review. Benchmarking is important for a person who values clarity highly. Unfortunately, most job descriptions are poorly written or only capture the minimum standard. A conversation about the job will help you and your candidates get on the same page.

Tell me about a time when you were asked to do a job but weren’t given directions on how to do it?

Perfect clarity is impossible. But those who value clarity are often good at self-direction, particularly when they know the parameters of the task to be done and their latitude for discussion making. This question will help you assess their judgment.

What are the responsibilities of the manager and the employee in clarifying how a job should be done or a problem solved?

Employment is a relationship. Learning a candidate's views on the roles you and they will play in that relationship is important – particularly if the candidate values clearly defined roles.

Strategic Insights

Sociability relates to the importance of one’s relationship with coworkers, clients, vendors, or customers. The people that we work with are often those with whom we spend the most time. Someone with sociability high in their results is particularly attuned to these relationships, whether positive or negative. Therefore, they do their best in environments that fulfill their social needs, on the clock and maybe even off.

Every workplace has an organizational culture. Even within the same industry, one firm might be very professional and another more laid back. An employee’s ability to fit in and be a valuable part of the team may depend on their innate connection to the organization’s culture and the team. Sociable employees avoid negative social situations, and for good reason! Studies have estimated that between turnover, loss of productivity, loss of commitment to the company, and decreased creativity, having one major jerk on staff can cost a company over $100,000 annually.

There are situations, such as highly competitive jobs/cultures, where being intimidating or putting others down can appear to help people gain power. The effectiveness of the organization and team, however, will suffer as those same individuals have built no goodwill or trust, yet they will continue thinking that their cutthroat ways are the key to their success. Numerous studies show that this is false, but they still believe it, and so will others which is likely a big turnoff to those scoring high in sociability. Everyone experiences some amount of competitiveness in their workplace, and that’s ok! For those who score high on sociability, it’s a red flag if the entire organizational culture is competition-based.

They’re also looking for something beyond just, ‘people don’t fight.’ These employees want good connections at work that allow people to socially bond as well as professionally. Being high in sociability does NOT mean that they are emotionally dependent; it means that they appreciate the relationships they have with people at work. It also doesn’t mean that they can’t handle having a jerk around, especially if there are others that they bond with, and the jerk is not in a position of power over them or constantly making their life miserable.

These employees aren’t necessarily doomed because of less than ideal social situations at work, they’re just more aware of them, and hoping for something better. They can also gain great satisfaction from being a force for goodwill, forgiveness, and service in a previously less-functional group. No one is ever going to find a job with perfect people who are always perfect to each other.

Things to Consider for Fit with a Position

• Let them meet so people that they will be working closest with, or even let them spend a day shadowing the team. Ask both them and the team how it worked out. You need honest feedback, but if it looks promising, and the worker is excited by it, that’s great. Those connections, if good, can also become a large part of why they will choose this job over others.
• As them about their favorite people they ever worked with, and why. Use this as some insight into what sort of work and connections really resonated with them and analyze how likely it is that they might be able to find in this position.

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.

Can you tell me about your favorite coworker?

This can be about their current company or their past. Probe into why they enjoyed working with them so much. Companies have a culture or “vibe” and knowing who people like to work and why with will help you know if they’ll fit in with yours.

How important to you is making friends at work?

Some people want friends at work, others just want coworkers. Both are great! You know what you have to offer. Assessing fit is important. If you can’t meet an employee’s social expectations then odds are they won’t be happy at work.

What is the right balance between “getting work done” and socializing with your coworkers?

This will seem like a trick question, (and you might want to say, “this is not a trick question.”) but leading research suggests that productivity requires a balance of socializing and production. The proper balance varies from person to person.

Strategic Insights

Often in early careers, as well as when we are changing industries or job functions, training can be one of the most valuable forms of compensation. Training is an investment. It can be valuable both monetarily and for long-term progress. Professional training is, on some level, why we go to university and accept apprenticeships or internships. With training high in their results, an employee might be at a time in their career where gaining access to expertise is valuable to them. They will appreciate positions where they will get quality mentorship and have access to learning "insiders' tricks," even if this training comes at the cost of a larger starting salary, an impressive title, or other desirable outcomes. (See their other highs and lows to figure out what their optimum tradeoffs are).

While many focus on the external benefits of their current job, these employees focus more on the internal. Rather than simply giving them things of value, they want a job that will make them more valuable. This can obviously pay great dividends in the future and putting a little more thought as a manager into their developmental process is good practice anyway. Studies show that we are constantly seeing ourselves on a path towards our “ideal self.” Though we may not talk about it a lot, we do care about it, and a job that they feel is clearly helping them to move in that direction is a job where they are happier and less likely to leave.

The extrinsic motivations for training are easy to explain. More skills generally equate to greater monetary reward down the line. It’s not just the external benefits though. When one feels like they are improving in something, they feel better about themselves, and for good reason. They’re succeeding on their path towards a more ideal self! In a sense, when a job is successfully helping them to develop, they are better today than they were yesterday, and this means a lot to them. Training may be formal, through workshops, tuition reimbursement, or certifications, or informal, through challenging but achievable goals that require the employee to learn new things and get better at old things to succeed.

Advice is only as good as the person giving it. Try to be thoughtful about who this person will learn from. The mentor-mentee relationship is one of the most powerful in business. Choosing the right mentor can accelerate their career rapidly. Just as selecting the wrong trainer can set them back.

Things to Consider for Fit with a Position

• Do you offer any (meaningful) training programs for new hires? Who would they be working with and how valuable is that to them?
• Are senior members of the organization available to advise newer employees?
• If they have questions or want feedback on my performance, to whom should they direct their questions? Can you officially put people in positions to always be an open ear to this kind of training and feedback?

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 would make an excellent mentor?

An individual who values training often finds that training through an individual mentor. Asking what attributes make for a good mentor will help you determine how/if you can offer the support they need.

What do you feel is our role in preparing you for (insert job title) and what is your responsibility to prepare yourself?

Receiving support is important but some skills are developed through trial and error. It is important to understand the proper balance within your organization and for those you work with to be well positioned to succeed in that environment. This question helps start a conversation about the organization’s responsibility to train and the individual’s responsibility to learn.

If you feel unprepared for an assignment I give you in the future, how will you let me know that you need more guidance?

Communication is critical, especially when someone is looking for training. This question will facilitate a conversation about how you can communicate needs and expectations as the relationship develops.

Strategic Insights

When someone scores low on excitement, it doesn't mean that they like boring work or, even worse, that they are boring. There are plenty of very boring wilderness firefighters. What it means is that they don't need their work to provide that excitement for them. This is a great asset because it gives you more flexibility with them, whereas others, who really want to find excitement AT WORK, have fewer options.

Because excitement is often the result of some amount of chaos, jobs that focus on making things run smoothly, creating steady growth, and organizing or arranging things/operations tend to be about creating order, and are very fulfilling, even if they are less exciting.

Excitement is a whole-body experience, and day-in-day-out, excitement can be rough on a person. People who desire excitement at work often pay for it in other areas. This person may be aware of that and have plenty of excitement elsewhere. Scoring low on excitement may make them a poor fit for a few jobs, but it makes them a much better fit for far more jobs. In fact, reducing excitement can motivate people in this category. This is exactly what you want from your IT professionals, receptionists, most operations roles, accountants, quality control, and risk management, to name a few. Jobs that focus on making things run smoothly are often especially satisfying for those who score low on excitement, to the benefit everyone.

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.

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

Having remuneration at the bottom of their results table does not mean that this person doesn’t care about money. We all need money. What is suggested by this result is that after meeting their basic needs and personal financial goals, how much money they make takes a backseat to other forms of compensation. They might prefer to be “paid” with more time with family, a friendly work environment, or a prestigious title.

A study from Princeton University found that having a higher income increases happiness only up to about $80,000 per year. Beyond that, higher pay doesn’t influence our happiness very much, and other things start to matter more. This finding has been replicated multiple times. Most people think that being rich will make them happy. Relatedly, most people making $80,000 a year don’t feel rich, but studies show they are just as likely to be happy as people who are making much more money. A person with remuneration low on their list is free to prioritize other values.

Employers often love the idea of having remuneration low in their report, for obvious reasons. But don’t make the mistake of thinking it just means you can pay them less. It primarily means that they care about other things more, so if you’re able to provide the things that are high on their list, enjoy the fact that right now they don’t require as much money to be satisfied.

Strategic Insights

First off, everybody likes a change of pace from time to time. Having variety low in their report doesn’t mean that this person likes boredom or monotony. What it does say is that they want to know what they’re going to do at work, be able to prepare well for it, and become good at it. High variety positions often preclude people from becoming particularly good at any one thing. Positions where they have a good idea of what they will be doing from day to day are more predictable and allow them to become better at specific things and feel confident that they are doing a good job.

Predictable jobs are less likely to cause people to feel anxious, as well. Expected outcomes are generally clearer and so they can look forward to what they’re going to do at work with some surety, and they’re more likely to get quite good at it. There are many benefits to having stability at work.

Low variety positions are where experts are forged. Virtually every single Olympian has a very low variety job. Yet it’s thrilling, they are extremely good at what they do, and they are openly admired by others for it. Low variety overlaps well with specialization. Try to get some sense of what this person wants to be an expert at. Over time the employee will gravitate toward the things they really enjoy and will stick around long enough to become an expert.