"I hate going to work every day"

Debra's Story

© 2007 - Marilyn Havner Walker, MS

During the question / answer period of a Career Transition Workshop led by Success Performance Solutions Debra asked a good question:

“If I loved studying psychology in college, why do I hate working as a counselor now?  You would think I would enjoy it because I enjoyed learning about it and the career assessments I took said it would be a good fit.  But I hate going to work every day.”

Good question.  And it didn’t take long to find the answer. 

We gave Debra the Business Values & Motivators assessment to help her identify where her passion was.  This assessment evaluates six primary motivators:

• Conceptual (learning)
• Aesthetic (appreciation for beauty, the arts, nature, balance)
• Economic (making money)
• Power & Authority (status and prestige associated with positions of responsibility)
• Social (making a difference in others’ lives)
• Doctrine (living life by a strong set of values or beliefs)

 As it turns out Debra’s highest value was making money.  Any counselor will tell you it is not a career where people make a lot of money.  Her second motivator was having a position of status or prestige.  It would take a long time to find that as a counselor.  A close third motivator was learning, and that is why Debra loved studying psychology: Psychology students analyze and figure things out.

Her lowest motivator?  One that might actually serve as a de-motivator to Debra?  Helping others.  It is not that she didn’t care about others, but she prefers to help those people that are part of her life and not just anybody. 

Debra had three empty buckets that she took to work every day: making money, having status, and figuring things out.  She really didn’t care about helping people so her job made her fill a bucket that was very small.  By the end of the day that bucket was spilling over and her other buckets were empty.

No wonder she hated going to work!

Once Debra learned this about herself she changed jobs and started working as a restaurant manager: she made more money, it was a position of authority, and she still had the opportunity to solve problems.  It was definitely a better fit.  But after several months there she began to have problems with her co-workers and people who reported to her.  Debra decided to take the other career assessments through the Right Turn on Red Career Assessment Center. 

• The Prevue personality assessment indicated that she was highly competitive and more assertive than 98% of the population.  It also showed that she really didn’t care what other people thought about her and on top of that she handled stress extremely well so she didn’t notice when others were upset.
• The DISC assessment disclosed that she communicated in a very direct and straightforward manner – one that many people would find intimidating.
• The WOWI (World of Work Inventory) revealed that she had a faster learning curve than most people, thought on her feet quickly, and had above average ability working with numbers, words and abstract thoughts.  It also indicated that psychology might be a good fit for her abilities and some of her interests (remember the interest in analyzing?). 

Fortunately the WOWI also recommended about 50 other careers as well.  Taking everything into consideration – her strong personality coupled with her potentially intimidating behavior style plus her passion to make money, have status and solve problems – she was able to narrow down the recommended career fields and focus on two that met her passion, abilities, personality and behavior style.  Those two fields were law and business ownership, both of which she had previously considered and rejected. 

Traditional career assessments provide excellent input to help people narrow down their career choices.  But these assessments (including the WOWI) typically focus on abilities and enjoyment, rather than passion.  As with Debra if you love to work with people all day (enjoyment) but your passion is to make money then working as a counselor would not be satisfying.  Career assessments also typically fail to take into consideration strengths and challenges presented by personality or behavior traits.  Whether Debra becomes a lawyer or owns her own business she needs to be aware that many people will be put off and intimidated by her.  With that knowledge she can make appropriate adaptations so that doesn’t happen.

Taking out the passion, personality or behavior pieces of career selection can result in preparing for and finding careers that end up being dissatisfying.  Utilizing the information from all the career assessments – Business Values & Motivators, WOWI, DISC and Prevue – enable job seekers to narrow down their choices even more by taking the whole person into consideration.

And that is the best way to find a satisfying career.