Step Seven: YOUR JOB FIT
Discover a calling that makes you happy.
If you are looking for a new job or considering leaving your current job, you are about to make a major life choice that can impact your happiness.
Don’t make the choice on a whim.
If you want bad jobs, bad bosses, or toxic organizational culture to be a thing of the past, then you have come to the right place.
Many of us struggle to find the right job:
About 1 in 3 people is engaged at work, according to a survey conducted by BlessingWhite Inc.
Only 45 percent of workers are even just “satisfied,” according to Conference Board research.
Thirty-two percent of workers hope to find a new job in the year ahead, according to Mercer data.
To find the right job, the right boss, and the right organization, you have to understand who you are and who they are.
Doing so prevents you from enduring the same old, same old just in a different location.
To complete this step, you will need your values from Step 1 and your Talent DNA Worksheet from Step 5.
There are 6 sections to this Guide:
Overview: What Is Job Fit?
And how do you even find a job that fits?
Set your intention for a job that fits!
Values Fit Analysis: Make sure your values align with the values of the organization
Talent DNA Fit Analysis: Make sure your strengths align with the role
Boss Fit Analysis: Make sure your boss will be a good fit
Score your Fit!
Use the scoring guidelines to determine if the job you are interviewing for is a high fit, moderate fit, or low fit.
This step contains a Job Fit Worksheet that can be used as a template for finding a job that is a great fit for you.
There are multiple parts to the Job Fit Worksheet.
The first part requires you to analyze your values and the organizational values to determine fit.
The second part requires you to analyze your talent DNA and the role’s responsibilities to determine fit.
The third part requires you to analyze the leadership style of your current boss or your new boss.
These different elements are brought together to determine your fit score which reveals whether the job is the right fit for you.
Finally, the last part of the worksheet provides interview questions that allow you to discover the organizational values, job responsibilities, and boss’s leadership style so you can make an informed decision.
Additional guidance on the worksheet is available in the video that accompanies this step.
Let’s get started!
Table of Contents
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What Is Job Fit?
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Set your intention for a job that fits!
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Values Fit Analysis
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Talent DNA Fit Analysis
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Conduct a Fit Analysis on the Boss
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Score The Fit!
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The Job Fit Worksheet
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Your Job Fit Video
1. What is job fit?
Job fit includes a job that plays to your talents, a boss who has the skills of high emotional intelligence, and an organization that aligns with your values.
It looks at job fit through the lenses of culture fit, role fit, and boss fit.
Finding a high fit job is pretty straight forward and oh-so-hard to accomplish if you don’t know what to look for.
The three primary elements that contribute to a low job fit are:
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✔️ Culture fit:
The organization doesn’t value what you value.
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✔️ Role fit:
The job doesn’t play to your strengths.
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✔️ Boss fit:
The boss doesn’t have high emotional intelligence.
A job with high fit engages the mind and delights the heart. On the flip side, a job that is a poor fit can crush the soul.
That’s why the Job Fit Worksheet is so important.
If you want the job of your dreams, the boss of your dreams, and the organization of your dreams, you have to know how to align with your desires and then chart a course to get there.
The Job Fit Worksheet lets you do just that.
If you don’t understand job fit, you could very easily end up in a dead-end job or worse yet, a toxic one.
Completing the job fit worksheet is important because it keeps you from working in a place that may zap the life right out of you each workday.
Apple co-founder Steven Jobs said:
“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.
If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking, and don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it.”
The heart is part of job fit but it isn’t the only thing.
If you don’t know what satisfies you, you might get distracted by the shiny bells and whistles of a new job that don’t align with the deepest and truest parts of who you are.
When a job doesn’t align with the deepest and truest parts of who you are, then it’s not a good fit.
It’s just, “meh,” or possibly worse.
And who wants that for the rest of their lives? Not me and I sure don’t want that for you.
Lots of people are worried about making the same mistake with a new job as they did with the last job, so instead of pursuing their dream job, they settle.
With the Job Fit Worksheet, you can take this big, possibly scary, dream and break down the process into bite-size steps.
Having a plan to ensure job fit makes it easier and more possible to find a job you love.
2. Set your intention for a job that fits!
It’s not enough to want a job that fits. You have to actively set an intention for it.
One of the powerful things about completing a Job Fit Worksheet is setting that intention.
The first activity on the Worksheet is to commit to the goal of finding job that fits. It says:
“My goal in completing this worksheet is to find a job that makes me happy because it plays to my strengths, with a boss who has a high EQ, in an organization that aligns with my values.”
Completing a job fit worksheet accomplishes other powerful things, too. In case you’ve forgotten, or in the event you didn’t complete Step 6, setting a goal and writing it down can be the difference in achieving your goal!
In “The Psychology of Writing Down Goals,” Brett Greene shares,
“There’s a simple trick to make your dreams come true more easily and faster, and it doesn’t cost a lot of time or effort: Writing down goals.”
He cited a Harvard Business study that demonstrated that people who wrote down their goals were three times more likely to succeed than people who just had some plan in mind.
He also offered research that evidenced a 1.4 times higher chance of success by just committing your goals to paper. Greene’s article also shared that writing down your goals does these important things:
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Engages your brain differently so that, unbeknownst to you consciously, your mind is always focusing on ways to help you achieve your goals;
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helps you clarify them;
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leaves no wiggle room;
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are a constant reminder of your commitments.
Thus, be sure to appreciate the reason for completing the worksheet in the first place.
Second, completing the job fit worksheet sends a signal to the universe that you are serious about being happy at work by finding a job that aligns with who you are and what you care about.
Additionally, spending time reflecting on your values and talent DNA allows you to refine what you are looking for. You can confidently narrow the focus of your job search to high fit jobs instead of wasting your precious life force pursuing low fit jobs.
The fit analysis greatly enhances the chances of finding the right fit.
However, no formula is failsafe. You may take a job only to have your employer do a re-org that changes your boss. It is also possible that an organization reassesses its values, changing what the organization cares about.
Things happen, things change.
Knowing that, the fit analysis is still the best method for finding the job of your dreams because it aligns with the deepest and truest parts of who you are.
3. Values Fit Analysis
Part 1 of the Job Fit Worksheet assesses culture fit by revealing how your top 5 values align with the core values of your workplace.
Culture fit means the organization as a whole is seeking to engage in the same behaviors that align with who you are.
When there is poor culture fit, you can hit the zone of intolerance quickly.
Not all companies have 5 core values as some have more and some have less – do the best you can to map your employer’s values.
As you may recall from Step 1, there are values that are similar without being exactly the same.
Usually, these similar values are in service of the same virtue.
For instance, truth, trust, integrity, honesty, and authenticity are in service of the virtue Courage.
Thus, if one of your values is truth and the organization values integrity, you can write this is in the engagement column:
we both are pursuing courage.
Here is another example from a values session I conducted at an organization:
I had a safety manager in the values session who had just been hired. Of course, as the safety manager, one of his top 5 values is safety.
He mentioned that he was frustrated that the organization didn’t value safety. I told him that the organization valued doing the right thing. If it did the right thing, it would honor safety, wouldn’t it?
I saw his face instantly relax.
He said, “Ahh, of course!” So, we can honor different values and yet have the same outcome. They can be different doorways to the same place.
If you are interviewing for a new position at a new company, it can be challenging to know what the organizational values look like in action.
It will be important to ask questions during the interview process that reveal this information.
To obtain these insights, ask questions, as below, of the interviewer:
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“I see that the organization has _____ (fill in the blank with an organizational value) as a value.
Can you share some examples of how that shows up in the organization on a regular basis?”
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I see that the organization values _________ (fill in the blank with an organizational value).
Can you share an example from the last week or two of how this value was honored in the department or by a senior leader?
The point of these questions is for you to understand how a value is actualized in the organization so you can determine if there is alignment or similarity with one of your top 5 values.
Be sure to take notes so you can rely on them when you are completing Part 1 of the Job Fit Worksheet.
When you have completed this section, score the Values Fit:
✓ Assign one point for each box in the center column that contains the word Align or Similar.
✓ Add up the points and write the total in the space provided on the worksheet. This number should be between 0 and 5.
✓ There is no point assigned for an X.
4. Talent DNA Fit Analysis
Part 2 of the Job Fit Worksheet assesses role fit by revealing how your Talent DNA aligns with the core tasks of your job.
Role fit means the job you would do engages your strengths and your social currency regularly.
When there is poor role fit, you are not engaged at work and can quickly become unhappy.
Start by placing the top 5 most important tasks or expectations of the job in the boxes of the first column on the worksheet.
The analysis is conducted by asking yourself this question for each strength or social currency in light of the job description:
“What part of my Talent DNA aligns with this task or expectation?”
Write down your thoughts in the space provided on the worksheet for each of the role’s top 5 tasks or expectations.
If you are interviewing for a new position at a new company, it can be challenging to know what the most important tasks or expectations of the role are, since job descriptions these days usually have a laundry list of primary responsibilities.
Thus, it can be difficult to discern from the description what truly is important to successfully doing the job.
To help you determine the most important tasks, it will be important to ask questions during the interview process that reveal this information:
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・ I see that the role description includes a variety of tasks. In your opinion, what are the top 3 tasks of this role?
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・What 3 traits will the person who fills this role need to have to be successful?
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・What did the last person who filled this role specifically do that created success for them?
These questions are asked so you can obtain information that will help you understand the most important traits for job success and ensure those traits align with your talent DNA. Be sure to take notes so you can rely on them when you are completing Part 2 of the Job Fit Worksheet.
When you have completed this section, score your Talent DNA Fit:
✓ Assign one point for each box in the right column that contains a strength description or a social currency.
✓ When you have completed this section, score your Talent DNA Fit.
✓ Total the points and write them in the space provided. This number should be between 0 and 5.
✓ There is no point assigned if the box is blank.
5. Conduct a Fit Analysis on the Boss
Part 3 of the Job Fit Worksheet assesses boss fit by revealing how effective your boss is as a leader.
When there is poor boss fit, you can feel stressed, have low morale, and experience general feelings of unhappiness.
This analysis can only be conducted during the interview process. Your task during an interview is to ask questions that allow you to determine whether your potential new boss has a high EQ.
EQ is a measurement of emotional intelligence. High emotional intelligence, and thus, high EQ, occurs when a person is able to favorably respond to life’s ups and downs to optimize performance as opposed to reacting from a place of past pain and hurt.
A person with a high EQ is going to be an effective leader.
The skills associated with high emotional intelligence have a significant impact for the person who has the high emotional intelligence, for those who are in relationship with that person, and the organization that employs that person.
You want a boss who exhibits the skills of high emotional intelligence. It will make a huge difference in your happiness in the job.
There are two sets of questions to use during the interview, including one for your potential new boss and one for the other interview participants.
If you are not interviewing for a new job, you can answer these questions to assess your current boss's level of emotional intelligence.
Here are some sample questions for your potential new boss during a job interview:
How would you describe your communication style?
What type of communication patterns do you have with your direct reports?
How would you describe your overall leadership style?
What is your process for aligning your people with the right job so that they are working in their sweet spot?
Here are some sample questions for the other people participating in the job interview:
(for ease, the term "the boss" is being used and please insert the person's name during an interview):
How would you describe the boss’s communication style?
What type of communication patterns have you seen the boss use with direct reports?
How would you describe the boss’s overall leadership style?
Do you perceive the boss as an inspirational leader? Do you mind sharing examples of their inspirational leadership style?
Is the boss an empathetic leader? Do you mind sharing examples of their empathetic style?
How involved in the day-to-day tasks of their direct reports is the boss?
Do you feel like your opinion matters to the boss? Do you mind sharing examples of when your opinion was heard by the boss?
Do you think the boss is invested in the development and the success of their direct reports?
Do you think the boss has a good process for aligning people with the right job so that they are working in their sweet spot?
Are there any other leadership qualities the boss has that are important to share with me?
Is there something about the boss as a boss that I should know that I didn’t ask about?
Be sure to take notes so that you can complete the Boss Fit analysis on the worksheet.
Post interview, with the new information you’ve gathered, conduct your analysis of your potential new boss (or your current boss), checking off the qualities that the boss exhibits.
To score the Boss Fit Analysis:
✓ Assign one point for each check.
✓ Total the points and write that number in the space provided on the worksheet.
✓ This number should be between 0 and 8.
The higher the score, the better the fit!
Also, the more evenly distributed the score is across the three elements of job fit (strengths, values, boss), the better the fit.
The good news is at least now you have a plan for finding that dream job.
Now to make your fit profile work for you, all you have to do is conduct the fit analysis on your next job interview or on your current job to understand why you might be unhappy in your current role.