What would make work feel worth doing to me?

What does the values dimension measure?

CareerMatch's values dimension measures which of eight career anchors hold you: stability and security, independence, technical mastery, leading and managing, building and creating, serving and helping, challenge and achievement, and lifestyle balance. The framework draws on the career anchors tradition in organisational psychology, profiling how strongly each anchor shows up in you rather than assigning a single label.

Every career in the library carries researched work values mapped to the same eight anchors, built from what the role actually offers and demands rather than from how it markets itself. Matching compares your anchor profile against a career's on identical terms.

Why do values predict whether a career fits?

Values carry 20 per cent of the fit score, and this is the dimension that most often explains why a person succeeded in a career and still left it. Interests and strengths can point a person towards a role they perform well and even enjoy day to day, and the role can still fail them on what it gives back, whether that is security, autonomy, or the sense of building something that lasts.

How does the assessment measure my values?

The assessment infers which of the eight anchors hold you from your answers about what you want work to give back, rather than asking you to rank abstract values directly. Most people carry a genuine primary anchor and a secondary one rather than valuing all eight equally.

How is every career scored on this dimension?

Each of the over 3,500 careers in the library carries researched work values scored against the same eight anchors, covering what the role realistically offers on security, autonomy, and the rest rather than what a job advertisement promises. Matching compares your anchor profile against the career's using the same vector method every dimension uses.

How does this dimension combine with the other four?

Values carry 20 per cent of the overall score, ahead of environment fit at 18 per cent and personality at 10 per cent, and behind interests and strengths. It sits in the middle of the five dimensions by weight, close enough to environment fit that the two are treated as near neighbours in how strongly they shape a result.

A worked example

Consider someone whose profile anchors strongly on independence and technical mastery but only weakly on leading and managing, despite years spent climbing towards a management title because that seemed like the only form of career progress on offer. The values dimension would rank senior individual-contributor and specialist roles as strong matches, because what the person actually wants from work is depth and autonomy rather than authority over others.

Frequently asked questions