Career Potential: What Are My Values?

What Are My Core Career Values?

I am reading a book that I should have read years ago. But then years ago we were not in the recession that we are coming out of. The book is "Get the Job You Want, Even When No One's Hiring."

Instead of following the trail of hot job areas, the book walks you through a career soul search.

I am currently working on the values clarification section and this is what I've learned about myself. This is what I value in order of most to least important. Some of this I knew already but it is time to use this information to look to my career future.

Career Values: I feel strongly about

1. Logic/Analysis/ Challenge/Overcoming Obstacles: research, look at data, solve challenging problems, experiment, figure out how things work
2. Collaboration/Teamwork: social, collaborate, integrate in to a team, nice personality, like to help people
3. Adventure/Discovery/Creativity/Innovation: create, explore, go on an adventure
4. Management/ Leadership: leadership, take responsibility, dedicated
5. Education and Knowledge: learning, teaching
6. Communication: good at presenting
7. Technical Competency: worked in technical jobs
8. Money/Wealth/Power/Influence: sales
9. Control People/ Projects: develop a project

This tells me that my main motivator is analysis, discovery and learning in a collaborative environment. I should seek a job that allows me to use both my analytical and social skills. These are typically two skills might be viewed as opposites. If I remember correctly, my Myers Briggs is ENTJ (extraversion, intuition, thinking, judgment).

One of the inconsistencies with working as a scientist is that it can be a solitary job. Being that I am a social teamwork oriented person I would like to find a career that involves more interaction with people.