How to identify your strengths and values

Before diving into your career or perfecting your resume, let’s first address the cornerstone of it all: who are you? Many people struggle to answer this vital question or they simplify themselves as ‘just a person that needs a job’. It’s a pity, because digging a little deeper into self-knowledge really pays off. By knowing your values, skills, quirks, and ambition, you choose your career path consciously. You will not just find a job, but you will find the right job for you. And by knowing why this is the right job for you, you will have an upper hand over other candidates. This article offers several tools and exercises to discover the brilliant, complex and perhaps occasionally messy person that you are.

Why knowing yourself matters for your career

Here’s the thing: employers want the real you. Not some polished mannequin version, but the dynamic, interesting, utterly unique person you are. If you don’t know who that is, how can you expect anyone else to?

Knowing yourself isn’t just fluffy self-help talk, it’s grounded in research. A study by Judge, Bono & Poton (2001) found that self-awareness is strongly linked to job satisfaction and career success. People who understand their strengths and values are better at setting meaningful goals success. and making decisions that align with their true priorities.

Knowing yourself helps you to:

1. Identify what makes you tick.
   Do you thrive in chaotic and adventurous environments, or does the idea of “team-building karaoke” make you shudder?
2. Articulate your value.
   When you know what you’re good at, you can convince employers with full confidence why they should pick you instead of the other 327 applicants.
3. Build a career, not just a job.
   Who wants to spend 40 hours a week doing something that doesn’t align with their value or interests?

Taking control of your career through self-awareness

Many job seekers and career builders forget to see these activities as a perfect opportunity to take control and autonomy over your (work) life. It is your career and these are the very moments in your life that you can take control over your future.

Many applicants hope to get a job, but you must realize that companies likewise hope to find the right employee! This means that you are way more empowered than you think. You may feel dependent on the right boss, corporation or employer, but they are very dependent on you (their next best employee) as well.

To take control and autonomy over your career, it is important to show leadership. In this case we mean leadership in the broadest sense of the word. Even if you don’t see yourself as a manager and you’re not eyeing a CEO role, developing self-awareness is critical for leadership at any level.

Research from Harvard Business School (2007) highlights self-awareness as one of the key traits of effective leaders. Employees who understand their strengths, emotional triggers, and decision-making processes are more likely to build strong relationships with colleagues and adapt to challenges. Here are some examples of job seekers that took perfect control over their career and thereby elevated their job satisfaction.

Discover your strengths and values to understand yourself better

Exercise 1: The big (and maybe slightly awkward) questions to create your personal profile

For this exercise it’s best if you take a notebook and a pen. You could type but handwriting makes this exercise more profound and authentic. Answer the following questions in the most honest, personal and specific way. This is where the seeds of your career are planted, so make sure you take the questions seriously and think carefully about the answers. Invite people around you to brainstorm with you, if necessary.

1. What are your values?
   What matters most to you? Is this honesty and integrity? Is this adventure? Is it stability or rather freedom? Do you want to earn money to buy a home or do you rather travel the world? Write down five things that highly matter to you.

2. What are your strengths?
   A lot of people find this question hard to answer. If you have struggles finding your strengths, ask the people around you. Be as specific as possible. So not just ‘social’, but rather ‘I’m good at making people feel at ease when I’m around’.

3. What are your weaknesses?
   Along with the strengths come the weaknesses. It’s totally fine to have weak spots, it would be implausible if you didn’t. Be specific here as well. It is a sign of strength if you know the areas where you could improve. Do you tend be a little chaotic? Do you procrastinate sometimes? Are you always too polite? Write it down!

4. What makes you happy?
   This is a very important question. If you put your energy into work that makes you happy and fulfilled, you’ll have a much higher sense of satisfaction in the end of the day. Think further than ‘going on holidays’. Think more in the lines of ‘when a job gets done in a very quick time’ or ‘when we can finish a task as a team’ or ‘when I feel a deep connection with my clients’.

5. What is your absolute no-go?
   This could have to do with your work-life balance but also with a location, salary or the setting with coworkers. If you like stability, you may not like a job where you last-minute hear where to travel. Or the opposite: you may refuse any job that has the same routine every day again. Think thoroughly about this, because it will save you a lot of future disappointments!

Exercise 2: Collect your milestones

Now that you’ve done some deep thinking, let’s go ahead for some more. Write down five moments in your life that made you feel proud, accomplished, or just downright chuffed with yourself. These don’t have to be work-related; in fact, they’ll be more interesting if they aren’t. Under each moment, answer what skill or trait you used and how it made you feel. Hereby some examples for inspiration:

Once you’ve listed your moments and answered the questions, look for recurring themes. Perhaps your proudest moments all involve helping others, or maybe they highlight a passion for solving tricky problems. These are your signature strengths Signature strengths are the character strengths that are most essential to who you are. They tend to feel natural and energizing to use and reflect what is most central to your identity. .

What personality tests reveal about you

When it comes to knowing yourself, personality assessments can be incredibly helpful. One of the most popular tools is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). Interesting fact: this test was developed during World War II by Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers. They wanted to help women entering the workforce find roles suited to their personalities. The MBTI categorizes people into 16 personality types based on preferences in four key areas:

1. Introversion (I) versus extraversion (E):
   Recharging alone versus thriving in social settings.

2. Sensing (S) versus intuition (N):
   Concentrating on concrete sensations versus seeking patterns.

3. Thinking (T) versus feeling (F):
   Making decisions based on logic versus based on emotional values.

4. Judging (J) versus perceiving (P):
   Preferring structure and planning versus flexibility and impulsivity.

The test results in a combination of four letters. Each personality seems to have its own preferences and skills, regarding the work floor. For example, someone with an ENFP personality might thrive in careers involving creativity and helping others, such as counselling, writing, or teaching. Meanwhile, an ISTJ might excel in structured environments where they can blossom, like accountancy or computer analytics. Here are some examples:

Exercise 3: Discover your MBTI type

Although MBTI is not considered a hard science, it is still a very popular and renowned test throughout the world. Understanding your type provides useful insights in you preferences and tendencies. It also suggests matching careers or work fields. It can also spark valuable conversations about your personality and work style.

→ Take this free test to find your own MBTI type.

Exercise 4: Make your personal word cloud

Once you know your MBTI type, try the following exercise:

1. Write your MBTI type in the middle of the paper and then add the meaning of the initials. So if your type is ENFP, write down the words ‘extraverted’, ‘intuitive’, ‘feeling’ and ‘perceiving’ on your paper.

   Try to associate and add words that come to mind, like ‘bubbly’, ‘spontaneous’, or ‘adventurous’. If you google your type on the internet, you will come across words and quotes that match your type. If you like to add colors, images, pictures, go ahead. If you prefer your poster to be sterile and structured, go ahead too.

   The fun thing is that this worksheet usually starts to show a lot of your personality too, and that’s exactly what it is supposed to do! People usually find it hard to describe or know themselves, but exercises like this will usually create a flow and get you in a forward mindset.

2. List careers or roles that fit your type. Look for patterns or industries where people with your type thrive. Maybe you realize you’re already working in the branch that’s meant for you. Maybe you realize you let go of a job that actually suited you very well for the sake of a better salary or a shorter travel distance.

3. Creating this worksheets makes you reconsider your focus and choices. Use your mood board to get inspired but also to reflect on your aspirations. If you’re born in a doctor’s family and studying medicines at the moment, you may now realize that you should stick to your passion to become a fashion designer. Maybe your friends convinced you to become a teacher, but you realize that a job as a web designer, working from home, suits you way more.

The science behind self-awareness and success

For those interested in some academic foundation, interest for more insight on this topic, or needing some more convincement of the need of self-knowledge, we serve you a little more.

Self-evaluations and career success

The study concluded that individuals with higher core self-evaluations:

• Experience greater job satisfaction
• Are more likely to achieve career success, measured by promotion and salary increases
• Demonstrated better resilience when facing workplace stressors

→ This shows that understanding and leveraging your inner strength isn’t just helpful. It is truly critical for long-term career growth.

Emotional intelligence and performance

→ What does this mean for you? Developing self-awareness may literally reshape your brain, helping you respond to workplace challenges with more clarity and composure.

Turn self-awareness into your personal story

Understanding yourself is powerful, but it only becomes valuable when you can communicate it clearly. Whether you’re writing a resume, preparing for an interview, or introducing yourself in a professional setting, your ability to translate self-awareness into a compelling story sets you apart.

In this final step, you’ll turn everything you’ve discovered about your strengths, values, and personality into a short, clear personal narrative.

Exercise 5: Write your short but very sharp bio

‘Tell me something about yourself’ is for many people one of the most frightening question. Now that you’ve done all these exercises to get to know yourself, it should be easier. Here’s a quick, low-pressure way to start. Write a two-sentence bio about yourself, but deliberately make it terrible. Use your creativity and sense of humor. It can be something like:

‘I’m Sarah, a recovering stationery addict with a mild obsession with spreadsheets. I once won a pub quiz by correctly identifying all the Spice Girls by their hairstyles alone.’

Then, rewrite this bio and change the weird things into something about your values and strengths. Use the information from the previous exercises.

‘I’m Sarah, a naturally organized problem-solver who thrives on bringing order to chaos (and yes, that includes color-coded spreadsheets). I love helping teams work efficiently while sneaking in the occasional quiz victory.’

Wrap-up: You are the foundation of your career

Now that you’ve reached to the end of this first chapter, you’ve taken the first step to building a career that actually feels like yours. You’ve taken the first step to take control over your work life and your future. By knowing who you are, you can confidently say ‘no’ to the things that don’t fit and ‘yes’ to the things that do. And remember, self-awareness isn’t just about introspection. It’s an ongoing process of reflection, feedback, and growth.

For now, keep your notes or your worksheets handy. They’ll become the foundation of everything from your personal statement to the answers you give in interviews. And remember: the more authentic you are, the more you’ll attract opportunities that genuinely excite you. Until next time, keep being unapologetically you.