What the Scores Mean
These scores are calculated as a percentage of the possible points your employee could have scored for each attribute. This can help you understand how strong their leanings are towards a specific trait. As you might guess, a higher score means they identify with an attribute more. This isn't a right-or-wrong type of score- just an extra indicator of their preferences!
What is the Domain Breakdown?
This is a snapshot of what form of compensation matters most to your employee and the balance between them. The report is intentionally broad and should be used only as a guide as assess their fit with an opportunity. The three domains (Approach, Environment, and Outcomes) are presented as a diagram proportionally divided to correlate with their responses. We find it helps to see the forest before we focus on the trees.
Testing This's Results
Your employee's results have been compiled below! You will see their High-low Report, which includes breakdowns of their top 3 and bottom 3 key indicators, as well as their Mid Report, which shows which attributes fall in the center of their workplace preferences.
Check out our guide on How to Read Your Results.
Domain Breakdown
What's this?The strength of the Domain scores indicates what class of compensation an individual values most. While not as specific as the individual results that follow, these results help us better understand the priorities and enable more productive conversations. Consider focusing negotiations and team-building discussions around the Domains that are strongest, even if you need to give a little on the side of the chart that is least represented. (For more tips on developing Domain-based strategies, contact our team of consultants.)
Attribute Results
High
The results of the assessment have resulted in a tie between one or more key indicator. When this happens in the High-Low Report, we provide you with the results for all results that tied. For this reason, you see more than three results in the High Report.
High Report
The following results represent the Attributes that contribute most to your employee or candidate's fit with employment opportunities. With the insights shared below, you should be able to develop a strategy that will effectively support evaluating a candidate, contract negotiation, performance evaluation, and aid with their self-discovery.
The results of the assessment have resulted in a tie between one or more key indicator. When this happens in the High-Low Report, we provide you with the results for all results that tied. For this reason, you see more than three results in the High Report.
Remuneration Highest Attribute
80%
What's this?Strategic Insights
How much money we make impacts practically every aspect of our lives. It determines what we can buy, where we live, and when we can retire. Someone with remuneration high on their list is likely aware of the power of money, and to some degree, their self-worth is tied to how much they make. Accordingly, their employment relationship needs to be aligned with their life and financial goals. Their pay also might be the measuring stick by which they gauge how valuable their work for the organization is. If what they are paid and how they value themself is out of balance, they will likely be dissatisfied at work. If they see their compensation as an accurate reflection of their worth, they are willing to work hard.
Pay transparency can be critical to those who value remuneration highly. Don’t be sneaky here. A common source of conflict between individuals who have remuneration high in their results and their employers is the differences in pay between employees, particularly if the employee's contribution is viewed as inconsistent with their financial compensation. These issues are exacerbated when that information is discovered rather than disclosed. Be aware of these tensions as you make decisions.
Valuing remuneration does not mean that they don’t care about having a terrible job. A large study of current employees found that across all income levels, pay is not the top predictor of workplace satisfaction. Instead, it is the culture and values of the organization, followed closely by the quality of senior leadership and career opportunities within the organization. These are the hallmarks of good employers. Making a lot of money can help someone achieve certain goals in their life, but it does not make a miserable job less miserable, nor does research find that it makes up for relationship casualties that can come from an unbalanced life. There is absolutely nothing wrong with placing a high value on remuneration. Money creates opportunities and can enable a very balanced, fulfilling life.
Things to Consider for Fit with a Position
- Have very honest conversations about them up front about the possible salary and how they feel about it. You might need to spend some time convincing them that this is not a negotiation tactic and that you truly care.
- Explain very clearly how raises work, and to the extent possible give them benchmarks to achieve them. This will be very motivating to them (and they will feel betrayed if they achieve those and then no raise materializes).
- Are there opportunities to earn additional commissions or bonus pay? Be clear about those, but don’t promise what isn’t there.
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 are your retirement goals?
Bringing up their ultimate career goals, even early in the relationship, shows that you care about their career and are a partner in helping them strategize to achieve their dreams. Listen carefully and think about how you can help them achieve it (even if they are brave enough to admit they don’t necessarily expect to retire working at your organization). This helps you take a more developmental approach with your employees, increases loyalty, and decreases turnover.
What are your five-year professional goals?
Goals are important. They help us know if we are on track for the life we’ve planned to lead. Helping your team meet their goals will improve loyalty and performance. Bonus points if you follow up one these goals with them in the future. They’ll likely feel very cared for and a bit stunned.
How does an employer demonstrate how much they value their employees?
Benchmarks, particularly financial benchmarks, are sometimes a score card for employees. If someone values remuneration highly they may equate their paycheck with their worth. It will be important to what meaning they put behind their pay.
Variety
67%
What's this?Strategic Insights
A person with variety in their top attributes is ripe for jobs that don’t necessarily look the same from one month to the next, or even from day to day. One option for them could be jobs that are project-based. They may also enjoy working on a team where everyone needs to wear multiple hats from time to time (for instance, most startups). Variety comes with unpredictability, which might be a perk for these employees. They get to solve problems, and often thrive being thrown into situations in which they are not yet an expert. Variety creates opportunities to gain competency and experience in many different areas. This person will enjoy situations where others might be stressed.
Variety doesn’t necessarily mean a chaotic or unpredictable workplace (though it can in some fields and may be what some want). Some jobs, such as K-12 teaching, coaching, and construction, have variety built into them because of the different topics, lessons, projects, and people these professionals interact with every day.
This person is well suited for positions that have structural reasons for why their work varies. Does the position entail working for a variety of different clients on their various needs? From consulting to accounting to home remodeling, working with clients is one way that variety can be built in. Another often overlooked source of variety is working on a small team or in a small organization. As part of a smaller firm, day-to-day tasks and problems must be addressed by relatively few people, so an individual must pitch in across multiple areas for the venture to succeed.
Things to Consider for Fit with a Position
- Is this a position where they are working with different clients at any given time, and how different might the jobs be for various clients?
- What will their day-to-day work look like? (Often, in positions with high variety this will be a hard question to answer well, and that can actually be a good thing.)
- How big is the team that they will be working on and how do job assignments get handed out?
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 steps would you take if you felt that your job was getting too monotonous?
Repetition is a comfort to some and agony for others. When a person craves variety the most important thing you can do to keep them engaged is to honor that need and build their work profile accordingly. Start a conversation that fuels a conversation around workload balance.
How do you keep yourself challenged at work?
Helping your team feel a sense of ownership for their own progress is important. A need for variety highlights the importance of constantly creating personal benchmarks. Helping your team members challenge themselves will help you keep them engaged.
Describe the project that you most enjoyed working on in the past ten years (not the project that was the most meaningful, but the most enjoyable) Why was it your favorite?
A happy employee is a productive employee, and a productive employee is more likely to be a happy employee. It’s a virtuous circle. Starting a conversation around a good memory will help you learn how to structure their list of tasks in a more compelling way to maximize enjoyment and performance.
Specialization
67%
What's this?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.
Collaboration
67%
What's this?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.
Low Report
These Attributes are the least correlated with “fit" for your employee or candidate. In any relationship or negotiation, it is helpful to know what each side might be able to give in exchange for what you need. Where a low need from an employee or candidate aligns with a high need on your part, a mutually beneficial arrangement can likely be made.
Flexibility
47%
What's this?Strategic Insights
Scoring low on flexibility often is coupled with having a relatively high score on predictability. An excellent example here is many government jobs. Virtually all federal/state/local government positions have firm start and end times, combined with good vacation/sick policies, healthcare, and retirement, which allows employees to plan. The very same positions in the private sector may come with more flexibility, but also have a way of taking over people’s lives, keeping them late at work, and providing them less time for other things. Many lawyers, for instance, opt for jobs with the government because they can have a good income and still be home at a reasonable and predictable time every day. These types of positions can be something of a template for successful positions for those few people scoring low on flexibility.
Many people prefer jobs with rigid time-in/time-out requirements because it gives them a reliable schedule. The right non-flexible job can provide a wonderful work-life balance for certain people. Structure allows them to compartmentalize and give more to each aspect of their life.
Clarity
40%
What's this?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.
Excitement Lowest Attribute
40%
What's this?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.
Mid Report
These key-indicators, while not as relevant to negotiation strategies or culture building, but should be studied and understood because, over the course of an employee’s career, it is likely that one or more of these results will increase in importance. There also might be an insight or question that will be of value, particularly as you compare this employee to others.
Leadership
60%
What's this?Strategic Insights
Someone who values leadership does not necessarily want to be the boss (though it may indicate that they are well suited to taking a leadership role eventually). Valuing leadership suggests that who is in charge matters to them, and there’s good reason for that. Believing in the organization’s leadership and their vision will play a large factor in if these employees succeed and increase their satisfaction at work.
It is also useful to be aware that a direct manager and top leadership are two distinct things. Surprisingly, evidence suggests that organizational leadership is generally more responsible for people quitting than their direct managers are. In situations with great managers, but poor top leadership, only 38% of employees intend to stay with the company. However, in situations with poor managers, but great top leaders, 60% intend to stay! In situations with great management AND leaders, a full 89% intend to stay. So, leadership matters a lot and people can, and often do, overlook flaws in middle management when the organization’s leadership is great.
Studies also show that in “good” companies managers make a big difference in whether or not people leave their jobs, but in “bad” companies, having good or bad managers makes little difference in a person’s decision to leave (they just leave). This is magnified with those who desire positive leadership.
Also, people scoring high in leadership are often ripe for eventual training into leadership positions. This is not necessarily because they are inherently skilled at leadership. Rather, because they see the value and importance of good leadership, they are often intrinsically motivated to become good leaders and are open to taking developmental opportunities when they arise. On the flip side, a crisis in leadership will often create especially low levels of job satisfaction among those who are particularly attuned to it.
Things to Consider for Fit with a Position
- Ask them what a good leader is to them at various levels of the organization. See if that matches well with what you feel your organization offers.
- What organizational leaders have they most looked up to, either from personal experience or from a distance, and why?
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 working relationship with an employer?
Our perceptions determine our reality. Knowing what your team thinks is good leadership will help you tailor your approach so that they see you as a good leader.
Who is a public figure you admire? Why?
Analogies are powerful. Even more so when they are accompanied by analysis. Learning what and whom your team admires will help you emulate similar behaviors and more effectively manage your staff. This is likely to be beneficial for many people.
What makes a person a good leader?
This is a bit on the nose but just asking what they need, particularly more experienced employees, is a sign of respect and denotes confidence.
Location
60%
What's this?Strategic Insights
With location high in a person’s report, it is important to them that they consider not only who their employer is but also where they are working. The physical environment we work in can have a tremendous impact on our creativity, productivity, and even our mental health. Some people want to work in big cities, others small towns. Maybe living near family for the time being, or having some physical distance, is critical to their professional success. A commute to work may help them focus, or it may be a burden. All of this can change over time. If this is something they have scored high on, then have very open and honest conversations upfront about what they’re looking for and about what you can offer.
Another key, but often overlooked, aspect of our work lives is the aesthetic of our work environment. For individuals with location high in their results, things like how their workspace is decorated, the temperature of the office, or even the "style" or "vibe" might have a profound impact on their ability to thrive at work. Having some leeway to decorate their own space can also be a big boon. This may seem frivolous to some managers, but it’s actually very reasonable. People who are working full-time spend more of their waking life at work than they do in their own homes. It can make a big difference.
Covid-19 is changing the calculus of work and location. A 2021 Harvard study found that of those working remotely, only 12% wanted to go back to working in the office every day as they did before. The rest (88%) want to either stay fully remote or end up in a hybrid situation where they work remotely a few days a week and in the office a few days a week.
Even before Covid-19, there was research showing that “homeworking” is associated with increases in employee well-being and more balanced work-home relationships, which are associated with happier more productive employees and lower turnover. The good news is that even with these changes, after the first four months of transition, productivity has kept pace with, or exceeded pre-pandemic levels.
When a person scores high on location it does not necessarily mean that they either want to work remotely or would rather not. They might prefer either one and because of the last few years, they are likely to have more options to find a good fit than they did pre-Covid. So now it’s not just whether they like their work location, it may be whether they like a work location at all. This is all pretty new territory. Even if an employee is working from home, they will need to spend some time and effort creating a physical location that helps them achieve their work and personal goals. If this is something that matters to them you can buy a lot of goodwill, and some extra productivity, if you offer some money for furniture or technology to help them better arrange their remote/home work situation.
For many in the youngest generation of workers, those in their teens and early 20s, there seem to be more benefits to at least initially working in person, instead of remotely. A recent Microsoft study found that most (but not all) Gen Z employees are not as well served by remote work as those in the older generations. Networking, mentorship, and training are easier in person. Compounding that is the fact that often workers at this age don’t have enough money to build a good work-from-home location, and many are without families of their own or tight social structures. Remote work, therefore, can rob them of built-in social connections and be incredibly isolating. Everyone’s situation is different, but location is worth more thought than many give it.
Some may love the fast pace of a hectic and creative open office. Some may love the peace of their own office, with a door between them and the world. Others would rather live in a cabin with their family and get their work done over satellite internet. Even post-Covid, all in-person work offices aren’t going to die, workers will just have more choices. Increasingly, employees will have more opportunities to craft not just the career they want, but the location and nature of the life they want to lead. Taking a proactive approach to their location can be central to that.
Things to Consider for Fit with a Position
- If this is in-person work, ask them what they most value about being at work in person and what their ideal office setup would be.
- Where do most of the team live? Does that match what they are looking for?
- What is the commute like (train, walking, biking)?
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 is your favorite thing about (insert city/town)?
Preference for a given location can be based on a myriad of features. Proximity to family, weather, nightlife, culture, recreation, and entertainment to name just a few. Understanding why a person is attached to a certain location can be predictive of likely employment longevity.
Can you describe your ideal workspace?
Our physical environment can have a profound impact on our well-being and mood. Doing the same job in an office rather than in a cubical or where we see others frequently rather than in seclusion can make all the difference to our sense of fulfillment. For someone who tests high in Location, this could be the difference between a great job and a terrible one. If you have some showpiece work locations, show them.
How did you decide you wanted to live here?
Asking someone to relive their decisions helps them put into words what was likely a subconscious process. This allows them to learn about their own preferences and help you determine if they are a good long-term fit for your organization.
Training
57%
What's this?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.
Status
57%
What's this?Strategic Insights
Status is different from power or financial reward. With status high on their list this person likely values respect/admiration, voluntary deference by others, prestige, or having their advice sought by others. Status-seeking is universal and, done right, can lead to considerable long-term benefits for employee and employer alike.
It is important to understand that status-seeking is not necessarily inherently selfish. Rather than calling it status, call it “earned respect.” It’s social feedback that helps measure the success of one’s endeavors. Earned respect distinguishes employees who have exceeded expectations. This means that they are particularly attuned to the value of the evaluations of other humans. Caring about others, and what they think, is a great thing! It can obviously be overdone, and these employees need to be willing to do the right thing even if it won’t help them socially/politically. However, many times, those social signals are helping to point them in the right direction.
They might benefit from a position where they will be able to stand out quickly. One way this often happens is in “big fish, small pond” situations where from the get-go their employer is grateful, and even a little surprised, to have someone like them joining their team. Their title and responsibilities might be a little more prestigious than they would be at a larger organization. This is meaningful to these employees and often drives them to do even better work and take their job even more seriously than others who care less about status.
Being the expert of something on a team is also a great way to enjoy earned respect. Getting to utilize valuable skills that they may hold (or develop) on a team where their contributions are vital can be very rewarding to them, even without a title. And if they enjoy a little more competition, find them a job that focuses largely on individual contributions and recognizes them.
Things to Consider for Fit with a Position
- Is there a clear path to promotion? What does that look like? Be very clear on this upfront and stand by your word.
- Tell them a little bit about some of their top performers and what makes them stand out.
- If you are hoping to woo them over, tell them a little about what stands out to you in their application. (NOTE: this isn’t just for ego-boosting, this is to give them a sense of how much you value/are impressed by them from the get-go.)
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.
In one sentence describe how you want people to see you professionally?
Status or influence can be a powerful motivator. From the answers to this question, you can gain insight into whether you can help the interviewee reach their goals
If you are looking back over your career in 5 years from now, how will you know if you have been successful?
Success looks different to each of us. Having a personalized definition from a team member will help you with your review process.
Five years from now what does your ideal job look like? What title do you have?
The ability to forecast a career path is critical to motivating a person who is seeking influence. Answers to this question will help you determine the likelihood of satisfaction (and longevity) for an individual within your organization.
Autonomy
53%
What's this?Strategic Insights
When someone scores low on their desire for autonomy, it does not mean that they aren’t self-motivated or independent. The opposite of autonomy is coordination. This indicates that this person likes being part of a team. They enjoy the interactions and the feeling of being an important part of a multi-faceted team or process. Many high-profile careers are relatively low autonomy (acting, professional sports, politics, etc) because their outcome and processes are deeply intertwined with the work of others. Low autonomy is not a negative, and it doesn’t mean that these employees need their hands held more than others. Not at all.
That said, nobody likes to be micromanaged. Even in the most interdependent positions, how the managers oversee and correct their employees matters a lot. Micromanaging drives everyone crazy and makes it harder to do great work. Low autonomy demands mean this person is happy working with others, not that they want to be micromanaged and nitpicked. Also, people who score low on autonomy can make incredible managers because they enjoy the processes of coordination and negotiation and take more care on this front than others. They may need a little training early on, and some occasional reminders that giving people as much discretion as they can within the needs of the project has vastly better outcomes than micromanaging. For all their strengths, they may do well with some occasional reminders that others still want their autonomy. What feels to the manager like high involvement and giving frequent helpful input (which they love) can to their subordinates feel more like a lack of trust and micromanaging. Reducing the autonomy of others unnecessarily can obliterate intrinsic motivation.
Predictability
53%
What's this?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.
Sociability
50%
What's this?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.
Purpose
50%
What's this?Strategic Insights
If someone has purpose at the bottom of their list, it does not mean that they don’t care about meaning, nor does it mean that they aren't passionate. It means that they do not rely on their employment to satisfy their need for life purpose. In fact, for those who find purpose in supporting their family, just having a job can be very purposeful. This group of people are also more likely to score low on needing purpose from what they do at work. This often means that they use the resources provided by their job to facilitate the things that give them a sense of purpose. Despite all the “follow their passion” rhetoric they were taught about their future career growing up, they are more clear-eyed about using their work to allow them to find purpose elsewhere and facilitate their other passions. This is very healthy, and more likely to lead to a happy/fulfilled life than trying to find all or most of their purpose from their job.
This doesn’t mean that a job devoid of purpose will be delightful to them, and it often does mean that they will find extra value in things like flexibility, which allow them to better contribute to the things that are giving them purpose.
Some people are willing to compromise on other outcomes in favor of working somewhere purposeful. These employees can find a position that maximizes their other career goals, even if it means they aren't working for an organization with a mission about which they have deeply held feelings. They can still enjoy the satisfaction of contributing to the efforts of their fellow employees. Flexibility, free time, and even money are great tradeoffs for them.