There are several activities that you can complete which will help you discover what your career anchors are. You can read more about these activities in Edgar Schein’s book, “Career Anchors“.

Ultimately, under this framework, there are eight different career anchor categories that can be important for people. We consider each of them below

Technical and Functional Competence

People with high scores here like to be good at specific things, to be experts and have specialist knowledge. They derive satisfaction from facing challenges related to their skills, doing things others can’t do and being seen as a specialist. They’re not usually interested in managing others, particularly outside of their specialist areas.

General Managerial Competence

People with high scores here want to manage and lead others. They seek responsibility and accountability and the challenge of solving problems and working through others. They seek career steps that help them progress to more senior roles where they can have broader responsibility and more generalist, less technical accountabilities. Ideally, they seek to manage cross-functional teams.

Autonomy and Independence

People with high scores here value having control and freedom over how they work. They value making their own decisions and doing things their own way. These people seek flexibility and freedom in their careers and may turn down the opportunity to progress if they feel these core requirements are at risk. They often like to work alone and may seek to run their own business to ensure autonomy.

Security and Stability

People with high scores here value certainty and seek to avoid risk in relation to their careers. They often value security over the longevity of their role and their salary and associated benefits such as pensions. They may also seek stability over their job’s demands, hours, and broader team structures. Individuals who value security and stability may turn down risky promotions for certainty in a current role.

Entrepreneurial Creativity

People with high scores here seek the cut and thrust, creativity and ownership of running their own business. They often value pace, variety and challenge and can get bored easily. While they want to run their own business, they often differ from those seeking autonomy and independence in that their drivers are different, and they often want to collaborate and share their workloads.

Service and Dedication to a Cause

People with high scores here often value helping others very highly. They often derive more fulfillment from their roles through helping others, than through using their core skills, leading others or being autonomous. Individuals drawn to service or dedication to a cause may wish to work in charitable or public sector organizations, or in “people” focused functions such as Human Resources.

Pure Challenge

People with high scores here may be somewhat agnostic about exactly what they do, if there are big problems to solve and challenges to overcome. They often seek the stimulation that comes with difficult challenges and may get bored easily. They may also have varied careers as they change roles looking for new problems to solve and challenges to overcome. 

Lifestyle

People with high scores here often value their lifestyles more than their careers. They often “work to live” as opposed to “live to work” and their “work-life-balance” is highly important to them. They will often seek flexibility in their work to let them achieve their personal life goals and are often willing to sacrifice career outcomes to retain a better lifestyle (for example turning down a promotion that would mean more hours).