GlobalChristians

The Work Values Explorer

Find out what you REALLY want to do with your life

by John Edmiston

The Work Values Explorer is not an intelligence test and it is not marked or seen by others. It is a collection of questions that will help you discover what sort of careers might be meaningful for you. The questions are designed for you to express yourself. You will then look back on your questions and figure out what sort of person you are. You will do the marking. No-one else need see the test at all. There are no right and wrong answers and you don't have to impress anyone. The only "answer" is the insight you get into yourself. The test is a lot of fun. Take the time you need to do it well. There is no set time the test must be done in.

Q1. Picture the following, you are attending a funeral, the mourners are weeping, there is quite a large crowd of people gathered and as they gather to talk about the deceased you realize they are talking about you.

What would you like engraved on your tombstone?

What would you like others to say about you when you are gone?

What achievements must be accomplished before you die?

List four things that would be important for you to have become or to have achieved before you die.

1.________________________________________

2.________________________________________

3.________________________________________

4. ________________________________________

Q2. You have become the richest person in the world. You have a huge palace, a thousand servants and every luxury imaginable. People pay you honor. You are famous but you can control your privacy. You are totally free. Under these conditions what would you choose to do? This reveals what you really want to be and do.

Q3. A genie stands before you and grants you three wishes. With one wish you can change anything about yourself that you like. With the second wish you can have anything in the world that you desire and with the third wish you can create one thing in the future for your own benefit - it might be 5 minutes, 5 years or 100 years away. What will you choose?

I would change

I would have

I would have the future hold

Q4. You enter a room that contains a television, a bookcase full of books, a bed, a gun , and a table full of food.

What will you do first?

Make up a story about what will happen in the room.

Q5. You are abducted by aliens who are about to program your whole life but first of all they are giving you six really tough choices. You must choose one or the other. Circle the options you would choose.

1. To suffer in your youth or in your old age.
2. To have money or to have a family.
3. To have a short famous life or a long but little known existence.
4. To be respected or to be loved.
5. To have a happy job with modest success or a successful but conflict-filled career.
6. To write a great novel or to discover a great scientific truth.

Q6. Political tension has risen in the world to fever pitch. You realize that tomorrow the super-powers will probably launch their nuclear missiles and the world as we know it will be blanketed in nuclear radiation. If you take survival precautions now you may survive but the world that is left may not be worth living in. What are a few things you would do in these last 24 hours?

Q7. Comment on the following quotes:

"We will fight on the beaches,...".

"All you need is love"

"Greed is good"

"Life is like a box of chocolates"

Q8. You are doing the weekly banking for your small business when two masked men burst through the doors and proceed to hold up the bank. You overpower them and they are taken away by the police.

What were the masked men like?

How did you overpower them?

What will be your reward?

Q9. A table is set before you of all your favorite foods prepared just the way you like them. It is sumptuous, well decorated and candle-lit. A butler is standing by to serve your slightest whim. It is obviously a special dinner in your honor. What have you done to earn it? Tell us the story.

Q10. If God gave you all the abilities you desired and the means to develop them what are the five careers you would most like to pursue? List the careers in order of priority, number one being the one you would like most to pursue.

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Q11. You are about to be shipwrecked on a desert island and you are forced to make some difficult choices about what you will take in the lifeboat. Its a peculiar ship and these are peculiar choices but you must make them rapidly for your survival.

To take a friend or to take extra supplies.
To take a Bible or to take a small transistor radio
To take fishing gear or to take an axe
To take a bag of fertilizer or to take a gun
To take vegetables or to take meat
What would be the first thing you would do when you got there?

Q12. Choose between the following careers. Circle one choice from the three given on each line:

How To Mark Your Test

In tests like this, part of the trick is to mix the questions around to stop people guessing ahead too much. Unfortunately that makes them a bit tricky to mark. But it isn't too hard, just follow the instructions

A1. First go to the careers questions - questions 2, 10 and 12. What sort of career options did you choose?

A2. Question 12 can be easily marked. The first column is a list of occupations that deal with data, the second is a list of occupations that tend to deal with people, and the third column is a list of occupations that deal primarily with things. Does one column have a lot more circles in it than the others? Do you seem to prefer to work with data, people or things?

A3. Now go back to the "lifeboat" question - question 11. If you have chosen things mainly on the left you may have a tendency to enjoy growing and nurturing things. If you have ticked things mainly on the right then you may have a more aggressive, outgoing and "conquering" type personality.

What column got the most ticks ?
What do you think of your "lifeboat choices"?

Now go back to question 1. Look at your life goals. Which career choices do you think will best help you achieve these goals?

Now for questions 3-9. These questions were aimed at getting you to express your motivations, fears and desires. We will not mark them one by one. Rather we will look for patterns in your choices across questions 3-9. Look at the way you answered questions 3-9 and ask yourself the following questions.(If you have difficulty answering them e-mail me and I will help you work out some of these answers).

A4. What do I seem to want to strive for?

A5. How do I desire to be rewarded ?

A6. What sort of things do I want to be rewarded for?

A7. Are there some personal values I keep expressing strongly ?

Now try and pull all your answers into one short paragraph that says what you want out of a career. Here is a sample of such a paragraph. Again if you get stuck, e-mail me.

example only: "I want a career where I can (a) work with data (b)that involves being bold and adventurous and (c) where I can strive for recognition, and where (d) I am rewarded by praise and some financial reward and (e) where I can express my sense of justice."

I want a career where:

OK, go over your short paragraph and ask yourself if it makes sense to you and "feels right to you". If it does, good, you have a start to exploring some career paths that will be meaningful to you in life and which will be consistent with your own personal values.

Some careers I might like to explore are:

Note: You might want to talk your conclusions over with a small group of family or friends who will be positive and encourage you toward your goals.

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This article may be freely reproduced for non-profit ministry purposes but may not be sold in any way. For permission to use articles in your ministry, e-mail the editor, John Edmiston at [email protected].