Latest / Career Coaching with Fexingo: Professional Coaches, Career Counselors, and Guidance for Workers / How to Use a Career Values Audit to Make Better Decisions
Transcript
- Lucas: You know how sometimes you're staring at a career decision — should I take this promotion, should I switch industries, should I go back to school — and every option looks good on paper, but you still feel stuck? Luna: Yeah, that's the worst. It's like your brain can't decide because your gut hasn't spoken yet. Lucas: Exactly. And I think the reason so many of us get stuck isn't that we lack information — it's that we haven't done the underlying work of clarifying what we actually value in a career. Not what we think we should value, but what we genuinely prioritise. Luna: So you're talking about a career values audit — like, a structured way to figure that out. Lucas: Precisely. And it's something I've been using with clients for years. The concept is simple: you list out all the things you might want from work — autonomy, stability, impact, creativity, money, prestige, flexibility, learning, community — and then you force-rank them. Luna: Okay, but I feel like everyone I know would say 'all of the above' if you just asked them to rank. Lucas: Right, that's the trap. So the audit has a trick: you can't just rank a list. You have to do a forced trade-off exercise. You pair values against each other and ask, 'If I could only have this one, which would I pick?' I'll walk through it. Luna: Please. Give me the method. Lucas: Step one: brainstorm a list of about a dozen values. Don't edit yourself, just write down whatever comes to mind. Common ones: financial security, work-life balance, intellectual challenge, leadership, helping others, creativity, prestige, location flexibility, job security, and autonomy. Luna: That's already a useful list. I'd probably add 'camaraderie' or 'team culture' too. Lucas: Great add. So step two: go through the list and separate them into two columns — must-haves versus nice to haves. This is where most people realise they've been treating nice to haves as deal-breakers. Luna: Oh, that's a good point. I've definitely convinced myself something was essential when really it was just a perk. Lucas: Exactly. Step three: from the must-haves column, pick your top five. That's your core values set. But then step four is the real kicker — you assign each of those five a weight out of 100 total points, so one might get 30, another 25, and so on. Luna: So now you have a weighted scorecard for any decision. Lucas: Exactly. And then step five: you take a specific decision — say, the job offer you're considering — and score each option against those five weighted values on a 1-to-10 scale. Multiply the score by the weight, sum it up, and you get a single number per option. Luna: That's so concrete. Can we run through an example? I think our listeners would love to see how it plays out. Lucas: Sure. Let's take a mid-level marketing manager, we'll call her Sarah. She's got two offers. One is a promotion at a large CPG company — think Procter & Gamble or Unilever. The other is a senior role at a mission-driven startup in the sustainability space. Luna: Classic dilemma. Big stability versus purpose and flexibility. Lucas: Right. So first, Sarah does the values audit. Her top five, weighted: financial security gets 30 points, work-life balance gets 25, intellectual challenge gets 20, helping others gets 15, and autonomy gets 10 — total 100. Luna: That already tells us something. Financial security is her biggest driver, and autonomy is lowest. Lucas: Exactly. Now she scores each job. The CPG promotion: financial security scores a 9 out of 10 — it's a big company with a clear ladder. Work-life balance maybe a 6 — those companies can be demanding. Intellectual challenge a 7 — solid projects but structured. Helping others a 3 — it's a consumer goods company, not a nonprofit. Autonomy a 5 — she's in a defined role. Luna: So the weighted total for CPG would be: 30 times 9 is 270, plus 25 times 6 is 150, plus 20 times 7 is 140, plus 15 times 3 is 45, plus 10 times 5 is 50. That's 655. Lucas: You did the math faster than I can. But let's keep going. The startup: financial security maybe a 5 — startups are riskier. Work-life balance an 8 — they emphasise flexibility. Intellectual challenge a 9 — everything's new. Helping others a 9 — mission-driven. Autonomy a 9 — she'd own her projects. Luna: That gives us: 30 times 5 is 150, 25 times 8 is 200, 20 times 9 is 180, 15 times 9 is 135, 10 times 9 is 90. Total 755. So the startup wins on her values. Lucas: But here's the thing — the numbers aren't the final answer. They're a conversation starter. When Sarah sees that the startup scores higher despite financial security being her top value, she has to ask herself: am I okay with that trade-off? The audit doesn't make the decision for you, but it surfaces the tension honestly. Luna: I love that. It's not a magic bullet, it's a mirror. And I think the act of assigning weights is the most powerful part — because it forces you to admit what you actually care about most. Lucas: Right. And you can do this for any decision, not just job offers. Should I relocate? Should I go back to school? Should I take on a side project? The same five-step framework applies. Luna: Let me ask you — what's the biggest mistake people make when they try this? Lucas: They try to rank values they've never actually examined. They pick 'impact' because it sounds good, but if you dig deeper, they really mean 'recognition.' So I always tell clients: before you rank, define what each value means to you with a specific example. For instance, 'intellectual challenge' might mean 'I need to learn a new skill every quarter.' Luna: That specificity changes everything. Because then when you score a job against it, you're not guessing — you're measuring against a concrete criterion. Lucas: Exactly. And one more thing — revisit your values every six to twelve months. They shift. What mattered at 25 might not matter at 35, and that's okay. The audit is a living document. Luna: Good advice. Hey, speaking of resources — if listeners want a template to do this themselves, we've got one on the show page. And if you find these episodes helpful in making career decisions, one way to keep the show ad-free and independent is to support us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's a small gesture that goes a long way. Lucas: Yeah, we really appreciate that. And it helps us keep bringing you practical frameworks like this one. So back to the audit — I'd encourage everyone to try it this week. Even if you're not making a big decision, just the exercise of clarifying your values is valuable. Luna: Absolutely. Until next time, keep asking the hard questions.