A significant number of professionals find themselves in roles that, while perfectly aligned with their skills on paper, leave them feeling unfulfilled and on the verge of burnout. Core Factors has officially launched “Career Signals,” a new work motivation assessment tool designed to address this pervasive issue by moving beyond traditional metrics of aptitude and interest. Now accessible to career coaches, human resources professionals, and talent development practitioners through the Core Factors Pro Account, the tool generates a comprehensive work motivation profile for individuals. Its primary objective is to empower practitioners to guide their clients in making sustainable, values-aligned career decisions, uncovering the fundamental values and motivational skills that shape how people engage with their work and ultimately find lasting professional satisfaction.
Addressing a Critical Gap in Career Guidance
The development and introduction of Career Signals directly confront a persistent gap within the field of career guidance. Historically, conventional career assessments have relied heavily on personality labels or simple interest checklists. While these instruments offer some value, they predominantly answer the question of what an individual could do based on their skills, often failing to address the more crucial question of what kind of work will truly sustain and energize that person over the long term. This shortcoming frequently leads to a problematic disconnect, where individuals accept roles that appear to be a perfect match on the surface but prove to be emotionally and psychologically depleting in practice. This fundamental misalignment between a person’s core sources of motivation and the day-to-day realities of their job is a direct contributor to increased employee turnover, stalled professional development, and widespread disengagement in the modern workforce.
Career Signals is presented as a sophisticated solution engineered to bridge this gap by focusing on the internal drivers behind engagement and satisfaction. Kris Kiler, President at Core Factors, emphasizes that the tool was created for the precise conversations practitioners are having with clients who seek clarity on what truly matters to them in their work and why certain experiences are either motivating or draining. Unlike tools that match individuals to specific job titles or dictate a single career path, Career Signals provides a structured framework to connect personal motivation to concrete action. Its core objective is not to label people but to empower them with a clear understanding of their motivational drivers—an insight that remains relevant and useful as they navigate career changes and transitions. When individuals can articulate what gives their work meaning and sustains their energy, they become better equipped to make informed decisions and maintain engagement in roles that are a genuinely good fit for them.
A Two Part Framework for Deeper Insight
The assessment’s methodology is built upon a two-part, practitioner-ready profile that synthesizes two critical perspectives into a single, actionable report. The first component, Career Values, identifies and clarifies what an individual wants their work to represent on a deeper level. It moves beyond surface-level job preferences to pinpoint core priorities such as the pursuit of personal growth, the need for autonomy, the desire for a profound sense of purpose, the importance of stability, or the opportunity to make a meaningful contribution to a cause they believe in. By systematically understanding these foundational values, practitioners can help their clients identify the essential, non-negotiable conditions required for their long-term satisfaction and engagement. This forms the bedrock of a career strategy that is not only successful by external measures but also deeply fulfilling on a personal level, ensuring that career choices align with what an individual finds intrinsically meaningful.
The second component, Motivational Skills, delves into the specific activities where an individual feels both highly capable and genuinely energized. This part of the profile uniquely combines a sense of effectiveness with personal enjoyment, providing a nuanced view of where a person truly thrives. The results are systematically organized into four distinct skill zones to offer precise insights. Motivated Skills highlights activities where high competence and high energy align, representing areas of peak performance and sustained enthusiasm. Development Opportunities pinpoints activities where energy is high but competence may be less developed, signaling clear areas for growth. Critically, the Burnout Skills zone identifies tasks where an individual is competent but finds the work draining, often revealing the hidden sources of career dissatisfaction. Finally, Avoid Skills includes activities where both energy and competence are low. Together, these zones provide a robust framework for identifying where a client feels most effective and where a misalignment could lead to disengagement.
Paving a Path Toward Meaningful Work
The Career Signals assessment was intentionally designed to function within a broader ecosystem of Core Factors tools, serving as a powerful complement to the company’s existing “Career Path” assessment. While Career Path helped answer the question of “what kind of work fits?” by mapping preferences across occupational groupings, Career Signals was introduced to answer the crucial follow-up question, “what will keep you engaged in that work over time?”. When used in tandem, these two assessments allowed practitioners to guide clients through a comprehensive journey, moving from broad exploration to the selection of sustainable, deeply values-aligned career choices. At an organizational level, when combined with tools for emotional intelligence and social interaction styles, Career Signals contributed to creating work environments where individual purpose and organizational performance were mutually reinforcing, fostering a culture of engagement.
For individual practitioners, the tool offered an efficient path from assessment to insight, providing clear and accessible language for discussing complex topics like motivation, values, and energy management. For HR and organizational development professionals, Career Signals proved to be scalable for integration into larger talent mobility and employee development programs. It helped align people with roles that reflected not only organizational needs but also their individual motivational drivers, which fostered stronger engagement and sustained job satisfaction. Managers also leveraged these insights to support employee growth with greater focus and precision. The immediate accessibility of the tool, which required no formal certification, allowed for rapid implementation, enriching feedback conversations, workshops, and development initiatives from the moment it was released.