Know your motivation video
'Why do you want to do this job/research experience?' is often one of the first questions asked within an application or an interview. It can also be one of the hardest to answer. Understanding what motivates you to do something and what you enjoy helps not only answer this question but also evaluate what sort of career you may want to begin with.
Start with the Careers Snapshot - Reflecting on Motivation video opposite which will help you to adapt your reflections to consider what parts of experiences you enjoy. After that, explore the rest of this page, which gives you some practical tools to help you define what you want.
A simple way to figure what you like is to reflect on things you’ve done before (e.g. a university or school project, a work or volunteering experience). Even if you didn’t enjoy the experience, try to break it down in parts and consider what gave you a feeling of satisfaction or pride. Identifying these specific elements (e.g. solving a problem, working in a small team) can help you build a list of things you can use to evaluate future opportunities.
Understanding your motivation, what you enjoy and what you don't is not something that generative AI can do for you. To find out more about using generative AI within your career planning, visit our Generative AI webpage.
Use the practical tools in the drop down content below along with the downloadable Values and needs worksheet to reflect and focus on what motivates you. Similar to self reflection, there is no right way to do this so we have provided you with different ideas so you can find one the one that works best for you. You can find more ideas on how to do this in the Attributes and Aspirations short course.
Knowing you motivation
- Values and needs worksheet
- Likes and dislikes lists
- Prospects Job Match
- Personality tests/indicators
- Career Path Quiz
The Values and needs worksheet allows you to focus on what you want in a job. Use it in the way that best makes sense to you. It’s designed to help you focus on what is really important to you so if the suggested definition is not what you understand the value to be, rewrite it. There are also extra lines at the bottom of the table for you to add other values or needs you may have in a role. One suggested way is:
- Work through the values, ticking in the first column all that you would like in your future
- Do this again but narrow it down to half of the number you ticked your first time
- Finally, narrow it down to your top five values
Once you have your top values, you can use these as a reference point when you begin exploring your options. You can also use these values to create questions to ask when you are talking to someone who has a role you are interested in. This way you can get information from them to help you evaluate a role in relation to what you know you need.
Your values and needs will change as you move through your life and experience new things. Feel free to revisit this worksheet as you often as you need.
This simple method of listing things you’ve enjoyed or not enjoyed can be a good starting point to helping you figure out what you’d like to do in the future. You can use the self-reflection methods explained in the short video at the top of this page or you can start by asking yourself these two questions:
- Which part of that project/module/experience did I enjoy most?
- Where there any areas I really didn’t enjoy?
Once you have a list, you may wish to do the values and needs worksheet above to further define what motivates you, or you can use this list to help you evaluate roles as you explore your options more.
The Prospects website has a job match quiz that asks you questions about what you enjoy. Based on your answers, it matches you to a variety of roles. Working through the quiz can help you prioritise what you value or need in a role and the roles it suggests can make a good starting point to explore your options further. Learn more about using prospects in the exploring your options webpages.
Prospects is written and maintained by careers professionals, however there is not a lot of research about the how accurate the matching element of this tool is. Use the roles it recommends as a starting point that you can further explore to ensure a suggested role is right for you.
There are a lot of different, often free, personality tests and quizzes that you can take to find out more about yourself. Some people find them useful, some people do not. The more common personality tests are the Myers Briggs Personality Indicator (MBTI) and the free version of this – 16 personalities, CliftonStrenghts and it’s free version High5 strength finder and The Big 5 Personalities test (which is free to begin with).
Taking these tests can help you to reflect on what you want and your priorities. Some will link you to specific careers. These are tools and can be a starting point in understanding yourself but should be used in conjunction with other methods such as self-reflection when helping you to understand your motivation.
The Bright Network have created a short career path quiz to help you consider what motivates you. On completion it gives you your three most important values and your three least important values. It then links through to give you more information on jobs titles and sectors however you will find better information about these elements on the Prospects website.
The quiz is another tool to help you think about what you value but it is very short and should be used in conjunction with other tools on this page.