Motives
Motives say something about your motivation, attitude, preference and values. Your motives can change over time or due to experience or other things. The more your motives crop up in your studies or your work, the better you’ll feel in your position.
Motives are about what actually sets people in motion. For example, are you more interested in autonomy and individual freedom or is it power and status that drive you? The following motives are commonly distinguished:
- Financial reward: importance one attaches to high income, materialism;
- Power and influence: desire to be able to lead or influence other people and events;
- Altruism: contributing to the bigger picture and making one’s own financial interests or other interests secondary to this;
- Self-development: work in which there’s room to develop yourself further;
- Creativity: coming up with new ideas or products, being actively involved in creation;
- Social contacts: conviviality and friendship;
- Autonomy: independence and being able to make decisions oneself;
- Security: holding long-term security in high regard, e.g. pension, permanent income and one’s own house in which one can continue to live for a long time;
- Status and prestige: impression or appearance is the more important motive, e.g. through money or a specialisation;
- Variety: plenty of different types of work;
- Structure: work that consists in set routines and tasks;
- Influence: being able to determine what other people have to do and influencing decisions;
- Work-life balance: work that fits in well with your personal life and ties in favourably with your free time;
- Working conditions: nice workplace, nice building, nice location, favourable working conditions.
The professional work values test from 123test will give you an understanding of no less than 14 work-related motives summarised above. Thus enabling you to make a more informed decision on the type of working culture that would appeal to you most and the type of job that would best suit you.