5-Step Method For Defining Job Satisfaction
1. Determine What Job Satisfaction Means To You
For some, job satisfaction stems from the challenges in the job or a sense of purpose. For others, it’s more extrinsic and may be measured by the money they make. Or, it may come from the learning that takes place or from knowing their work matters. Finally, for others, simply having a job to go to everyday in order to have other things in life is fine, and it’s from accepting that they derive their satisfaction.
2. Define Factors For Your Job Satisfaction
Defining the factors for your own job satisfaction requires you jumping all the way back to the beginning. This could be your first job as, for example, a life guard in a day camp at 16 or a paper route at 12. However, instead of identifying duties, responsibilities, and job descriptions as you might for a resume, look at your successes and the underpinnings of those successes. Underpinnings such as:
Instinctive skills – the automatic, the intuitive, creative skills that you drew upon at that time
Learned skills – that might be customer service, inventory control, basic accounting or program management
Don’t limit yourself to jobs either. You have successes from other experiences that may be relevant and transferable. An example is leading a youth group or charitable work through a church or synagogue, or writing a newsletter for your bowling league. Maybe even helping a parent or friend put together a website for a business.
3. Consider Other Successes Outside The Workplace
When you take this walk-through, consider the following: alumni associations, community and civic organizations, councils with which you may have been involved, teams on which you played, or Boards on which you served.
4. Identify Success Attributes
Once you have all these successes on the table, you can identify (a) actual skills, (b) personal characteristics, (c) professional characteristics and (d) knowledge areas, inherent or learned that you drew upon to succeed. These are the “underpinnings” or as I refer to them, success attributes, many of which may be derived from core competencies you possess. Don’t stop here!
5. Divide Motivated And Unmotivated Successes
On a piece a paper, set up a “T-Chart” with Motivated and Unmotivated Successes written across the top of your sheet as your left and right headings, respectively. Next, divide and list your “success attributes” defined in step 4 above, into your two groups under the headings.
Motivated successes – those you are interested in perpetuating
Unmotivated success – though they are successes, they are those which you have little or no interest in perpetuating
