Two traits to assess to match with the best work fit
Posted on July 11, 2022 by K P, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.
If you're experiencing a mismatch in the position or the company you're with then evaluate these two traits to help find a better match.
Have you started a new position only to find in the first thirty days that the work is not a good match for you? Maybe the pace required is slow and steady and you are far more fast-paced. Or maybe it requires complete compliance to existing policies with little flexibility and you prefer to think outside the box.
Other times, it’s the culture of the company or your department that is not a good fit. You may thrive in a culture that rewards quality over quantity but the company you work for values volume.
Or the culture at your company may encourage a strict hierarchy of communication such as you are unable to speak with other departments without going through a specific chain of command. And really you just want to be able to speak to and learn freely from anyone within the company.
If your work strengths and culture style are a good match for your position and your company, then your well-being will be supported by your work. It is crucial to your health, happiness, and satisfaction that you are in a good job match and good company culture match.
So, how can you know if a job and company are going to be a good match?
Employers are consistently focused on identifying the right talent match for their company and their position. In fact, employers spend a tremendous amount of time, money, and resources on matching talent with open positions. Many require sophisticated behavioral assessments, multiple interviews, and demonstrations of work quality.
All this effort and expense is the company’s attempt to puzzle together whether you and your behaviors, tendencies, and preferences will be a match for the position. They’re decoding you on the little information they have access to – what you say during each interaction, the results of any assessments taken, and what others say about you such as references or referrals.
If companies go to such lengths to figure you out during the interview process, shouldn’t you be spending as much, if not more, time and effort to figure out what you want in a position and a company?
How much time are you spending on knowing yourself, your work preferences, and identifying the right company and position match for you?
You can level the playing field. It just requires you to be assertive, confident, and empowered. And you can be all those things by investing time into learning what exactly does a good company and position match look like in reality.
I’ve interviewed and managed hundreds of candidates and team members over the ten years I have managed teams using evidence-based assessments deployed by some of the top companies around the globe. Two key traits need to be aligned with the employer and position when identifying a great work match.
When considering these traits, keep in mind what your tendencies are professionally, not personally. The way we contribute, interact, and behave at work is not always in alignment with how we act in our personal lives.
Each of these behavioral traits is measured on the ProfileXT Select Assessment, a Wiley brand, that is grounded in rigorous research. The following list is not comprehensive but, in my experience, these four have an outsized influence on satisfaction when aligned with the position.
Independence:
Independence in this context measures how little or how much feedback and input you prefer on a day-to-day basis from your supervisor and your team. If you like frequent check-ins to ensure you are on the right track, then you want to seek out a work match in which the supervisor has the right amount of time and attention to provide. You probably wouldn’t thrive as well in an environment in which you only talk to your supervisor once a month or once a quarter and they don’t provide a lot of insight on your work.
The reverse is true as well. If you prefer little interaction and to work more independently without insight or feedback, then you would find a supervisor who checks in on you daily to be too overbearing.
Pace:
This is such an important characteristic to evaluate when considering your work match. If you prefer a fast pace in which you are producing work at a quick clip and then moving on to the next assignment and you thrive under pressure, then you want to seek out an environment that fosters that pace.
You would be miserable in an accounting type role in which you must move slowly to ensure that every line item is accurate. People who naturally operate at a fast pace are likely big picture people less interested in granular details.
On the flip side, you may become overwhelmed when asked to do multiple tasks in quick succession. You may thrive in the weeds of a project. Your ideal work match is one that rewards and recognizes the benefit of attention to detail and quality over quantity.
It is so important to know that there is no right or wrong answer – it’s simply a match or it’s not. Too often we focus solely on title and compensation when choosing a position. If we go just one layer deeper in evaluating ourselves and our work, we can achieve much better alignment and that leads to a happier and healthier life.
