Career
A 12-item assessment measuring what matters most to you in a job, across four dimensions: Intrinsic motivation, Extrinsic rewards, Learning orientation, and Work-life balance.
For you personally, rate how important each of the following job features is. There are no right or wrong answers - answer based on what genuinely matters to you.
A job orientation describes what you want from work, as distinct from what you are interested in or good at. Two people can be drawn to the same field yet want very different things from it: one chasing the work itself, another the pay and security, a third the chance to keep learning, a fourth the room a job leaves for the rest of life. This test measures those underlying work values - the priorities that shape which roles will feel right and which will quietly wear you down.
The 12 items take about 4 minutes. You rate how important each of a set of job features is to you personally, and your results across four work-value dimensions are compared with the results of other people. There are no right or wrong answers; the point is to surface what genuinely matters to you so you can weigh roles, offers, and career moves against your own priorities rather than someone else's.
The test reports your relative emphasis across four work values. Because everyone cares about all four to some degree, the score that matters is the shape of your profile - which values you rate clearly above the others. A profile dominated by intrinsic motivation reads very differently from one led by extrinsic rewards or work-life balance, and that contrast is what makes the result useful for decisions.
Work values complement, rather than duplicate, an interest inventory like the Holland Code. Interests tell you what kind of activity you would enjoy; orientations tell you what you need a job to provide. A strong career fit usually requires both - work you are drawn to, in a package that honors what you value. Reading the two together is more informative than either alone.
Work values are one of the oldest and most useful constructs in vocational psychology. They are conceptually separate from vocational interests, which John Holland organized into the RIASEC types, and the two add up to a more complete account of person-environment fit than either provides on its own. Research syntheses by James Rounds, Rong Su, and colleagues show that interests and the priorities people bring to work are stable over time and predict the careers people enter, their satisfaction, and how long they stay.
The four-value framing here - intrinsic, extrinsic, learning, and work-life balance - aligns with long-standing distinctions in the literature, particularly the intrinsic-versus-extrinsic contrast that runs through motivation research. Two honest limits apply. First, this is a brief self-report of stated priorities, so it captures what you say you value, which can differ from how you actually trade values off when a real choice is in front of you. Second, it is an educational tool for reflection and career exploration, not a selection instrument or a clinical measure, and it does not tell you which jobs you would be good at - only what you want them to provide.
Read more about our standards: How our tests are built and validated.
Yes. Taking the 12-item test is free, with no account required to start, and your free result shows your strongest work value and its band, while the other dimensions are named and covered in the report. The full report, free with an account, adds the exact percentiles, an in-depth interpretation of your dominant values, and how to apply them to real decisions about roles and offers.
They measure different things. An interest test such as the Holland Code (RIASEC) tells you what kinds of work activity you would enjoy. This test tells you what you want a job to provide - meaning, pay and security, growth, or balance. The two are complementary: the strongest career fit comes from work you are drawn to in a package that honors what you value, so many people take both.
They show your relative emphasis across four work values and where each places you against other people. The useful signal is the shape of your profile - which values clearly stand out - because that is what helps you compare jobs, offers, and career moves against your own priorities rather than generic advice.
No. It clarifies what you want from work, which is one important input into a good decision. It does not measure your skills or aptitude, and it cannot account for the realities of a specific role, employer, or market. Use it as a structured way to surface your priorities, then weigh them alongside your interests, abilities, and real opportunities.
Yes. Work values are reasonably stable but shift with life stage and circumstance - early-career priorities often differ from those of someone managing family commitments or approaching a career change. Retaking the test at a transition point can be a helpful way to check whether your priorities have moved.
The scoring and report were built and reviewed by Dr. Milos Kankaras, PhD psychometrician, whose background includes large-scale skills and career-related assessment work for the OECD, the EU, and UNESCO.
Created and reviewed to professional scientific standards. See how our tests are built and validated.