Get that Job in 7 simple steps. Peter Storr

values, we get a ‘pricking’ of our conscience. Psychologists call this ‘cognitive dissonance’. It’s an unpleasant feeling and it’s unpleasant for a reason: it’s there in order to prompt us to change either the belief/attitude or the behaviour, to make the tension go away. If you were vegetarian and got a job in a butcher’s shop, for example, the tension between your values and your behaviour would make it harder to perform well because you wouldn’t enjoy it. It’s always worth listening to this tension – this inner voice – because when we behave in accordance with our values, we become more fulfilled by what we’re doing.

       Rokeach’s list of personal values

      A well-known model of values was developed in the 1970s by Milton Rokeach, a Polish-American social psychologist. He suggested that the following values have an impact on our behaviour and we will each have our particular favourites – the ones that guide us the most. Read the following list and choose the five that say the most about how you prefer to behave in order to achieve what you want in life.

Value
Cheerfulness
Ambition
Love
Cleanliness
Self-control
Capability
Courage
Politeness
Honesty
Imagination
Independence
Intellect
Broad-mindedness
Logic
Obedience
Helpfulness
Responsibility
Forgiveness

      If you can, think about the order of importance for you of your five values. How do they help you when things get tough? What do they say about how you can conduct your job search? And how do they help you determine or have an influence on the line of work you are most suited to?

       Determining what motivates you

      Motivation has been studied for close to 100 years. Initially, the research seemed to be saying that people are primarily motivated by money; if we want people to work harder, we pay them more. If we had enough money, we wouldn’t work.

      We now know that this is far too simplistic. Of course, money can be a motivator to us, and when you are out of work it may be a key driver towards getting employment. This, of course, is entirely natural and understandable. But it’s important to realise that once we are in work, and our basic survival needs are met, then for most of us money ceases to be the powerful motivator it was to start with.

      There are other things that cause us to be satisfied with work apart from a good salary: like-minded colleagues or a nice corner office, for example. However, research over the last 50 years or so has tended to concentrate on money as being the one thing. So, if money and the other trappings of employment are limited as to the effect they have on our motivation, what does have a motivational effect? This is an important question for one very good reason: we are all different.

       What makes us different?

      We differ from each other in many ways. Psychologists have tended to separate the ways we differ at a psychological level into four main categories which are largely distinct from each other.