As you embark on your job search, we recommend you create your Career and Life Criteria
early in the process. Career and Life Criteria are single clear concepts that hold
meaning and can be a pillar for moving your life and work forward. They are important
aspects of work or life that need to be attended to, in order to feel fulfilled and
truly successful.
Career criteria create focus and clarity. When you have an explicit awareness of your
own career criteria, you know what to look for in multiple alternative career paths.
You can evaluate any job offer against this list of essential career identity elements.
Check out some Career and Life Criteria examples.
As you read them, you might begin to reflect on what your own criteria may be. You
may want to begin filling out your own Career and Life Criteria worksheet. It might be helpful to have some stimuli that generate ideas for your criteria.
We recommend using the archetypes introduced in Dr. Timothy Butler’s The Four Elements which are Identity, Community, Necessity, and Horizon and are always active in our
lives and must be addressed during times of significant change. We recommend reviewing
your Career and Life Criteria with a HBS career coach.
The Four Elements:
- Identity: Complete the Work Role and Signature Skills exercises. These exercises will help you identify the actual work roles that will
allow you to realize, on a daily basis, your deeply embedded life interests and the
native talents that will allow you to make your best contributions.
- Community: Complete the Community exercise. This exercise will help you identify the type of organizational culture, team, and
individuals that allow you to thrive at work.
- Necessity: Complete the Necessity exercise. It will allow you to identify the non-negotiable obligations and constraints that
shape your work and life choices.
- Horizon: Complete the Horizon exercise. This is an exercise that will allow you to understand and move closer to what it
means for you, uniquely, to live life to its fullest, both at work and more broadly.
Writing Your Career Criteria: This exercise will allow you to take the results from each of the Four Element exercises and use
them to write your career criteria sentences.
