3 Steps To Find Your Edge in the Job Market: On The Ontology of Value® Model.
July 10th, 2021
Last Updated on July 10th, 2021
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SUMMARY / KEY TAKEAWAYS
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Value rather than many is the primary currency flowing around the job market, which is why a career development framework for value alignment and how to measure career value alignment both matter.
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To be competitive in the job market, you should start your professional development process from finding your core competencies, using career development tools for self-assessment and self-assessment tools for career planning.
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Next, you also need to find your optimal role to play in a team, guided by value-based archetypes for career planning.
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Lastly you need to find an optimal working environment that will appreciate your value as a professional and let you grow, the final piece of how to build a career development plan.
What Are the Primary and Secondary Currencies in the Job Market?
Do you feel that managing your career is a challenge? Do you believe you haven’t yet developed your full potential as a professional? Despite giving your best every single day, do you find that you can’t spread your wings?
And regardless of the heart and effort you invest in your work, do you still feel undervalued in the job market? Are others getting promoted faster and receiving more responsibilities than you?
Well, if you experience this type of resistance in the job market, there is a plausible explanation for it. Namely, you might have low self-awareness regarding what type of value-builder you are — a good career development framework for value alignment can help clarify this. You may also have low awareness of what to do for your professional development.
When we look for jobs, we often think, “How can I improve my situation? How can I find a job that will pay me more (per hour of my time)?” Although this common career management dilemma sounds rational, it can lead to checkmating yourself as a professional. Here’s why.
There are, in fact, two currencies floating in the job market: value and money. The market for knowledge jobs is a complex ecosystem in which value flows through society like water across the globe.
Money follows this stream of value. In this landscape, we have value sources, basins of value, and pumps (Figure 1).
According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report, the skills required across the labor market are projected to change substantially over the next several years. This underscores how quickly the ground shifts beneath professionals who fail to actively manage their value proposition, which is exactly what how to measure career value alignment is for.
How Does Value Flow In Society?
First, let’s identify the value sources: private companies (B), public institutions (P), and freelance professionals (F). Companies, by design, gather the value created by their employees (E), process it, and distribute it to their clients (C).
The whole company concept started with a clever observation. When a group of people with compatible skills collaborates, the value produced by the group supersedes the value produced by each member separately, a dynamic explored through value-based archetypes for career planning.
Specifically, one plus one results in more than two. The combined value generated by the company for its clients (C) can exceed the value provided by its employees (E).
When that happens, the company achieves profit and remains operational. Likewise, freelancers (F) are small value sources that deliver value directly to their clients (C).
In this system, value is the primary currency, while money serves as the secondary currency. In other words, money follows value—not the other way around, a principle worth revisiting with self-assessment tools for career planning.
Why Understanding Your Value Comes Before Chasing Money
This distinction may sound philosophical at first, but it has very practical consequences for everyday career decisions. Many people try to optimize for the secondary currency—higher salaries, prestigious titles, or trendy industries.
They do this without first understanding where and how they naturally create value, which is exactly where career development tools for self-assessment come in. When this happens, they often end up in roles that look impressive on paper but feel draining in practice.
This lines up with research published on PubMed Central, which found that intrinsically motivated employees — those driven by meaning and fit rather than pay alone — consistently perform and report higher job satisfaction than those chasing extrinsic rewards.
Over time, the market tends to correct these mismatches. People who create strong, authentic value gain momentum, while those who chase external rewards without a value fit struggle to grow.
That is why the most reliable strategy is to reverse the order. First, understand your value, and only then look for the money that naturally follows it — the core logic behind how to build a career development plan.
Figure 1 The circulation of value (and money) in the society. Both value and money flow in the society like a river. Value always comes first, money follows. The government’s role is redistributing funds from prolific value sources to the areas of the job market that need financial supply (non-profits and individuals who do not create profitable value at the moment). G: the government. P: public institutions. B: businesses. D: the disabled. R: retirees. U: the unemployed. F: freelancers. E: employees. C: clients. Green: value. Red: money.
Step 1: How Do You Find Your Core Competencies?
Well, this question should be self-explanatory by now! To enhance your career management, you need to find the sweet spot in the job market where you can best develop yourself. This means determining where and how you can create the most value while also focusing on your professional development.
What does this mean in practice? Well, there are three components to it (Figure 2).
Firstly, you need to identify your core competencies. Be aware: these competencies don’t necessarily need to relate directly to the professional activities that you spend the most time on at work!
Core competencies pertain to your greatest strengths, unique capabilities, and the activities that bring you the most joy. They consist of the skills, knowledge, expertise, and talents you have cultivated over time, and they are not easily replicated by your competitors. These skills typically result from your investment in yourself, training, and your professional and personal development, as well as other long-term initiatives.
The U.S. Department of Labor’s Competency Model Clearinghouse encourages exactly this kind of self-mapping, offering structured frameworks that jobseekers and employers alike use to pin down core competencies.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, jobseekers and career counselors increasingly rely on structured skills frameworks to identify core competencies and to guide long-term career planning.
Core competencies can include talents that you wouldn’t typically list on your resume. Examples include “the ability to listen,” “a strong work ethic,” or “the skill to learn something new in every situation, even while waiting in line at the grocery store.” Core competencies will provide you with a competitive advantage in the job market.
It’s not necessarily what you communicate to the hiring manager during the recruitment process. Rather, it’s what you understand about yourself that aids you in making career decisions and shaping your career path.
Step 2: How Do You Find the Right Role to Play?
Secondly, you need to understand your preferred role when interacting with others, or, in other words, your value-building profile. You already know what you enjoy doing at work, but in what capacity?
Are you the type of role model? Or perhaps, a highly specialized problem-solver? Or maybe, a contributor who prefers solving problems in teams and building projects from a supportive position?
In fact, as a hardworking and intelligent individual, you have the freedom to choose which roles to take on. In some of them, however, you will naturally perform better than in others, as they align more closely with your work style, personality, values, and strong work ethic. Please find more information related to this topic in our article “How To Find the Right Role To Play in the Team“.
Additionally, many knowledge jobs will require balancing multiple roles. The main challenge is to cultivate a strong work ethic. You must also find a position where the array of roles you need to excel in aligns with your natural potential.
Please also find more information dedicated to discovering your profile as a value builder in the blog post “How Do We Build Value in the Job Market? Alfred Adler’s Theory and How You Can Profit From It.”
Career Management Step #3: Find Your Flock.
Lastly, you need to identify where individuals who share your mindset are in the job market. In other words, your community. Let’s say you excel in data analysis and prefer to work as a specialist.
Even with this understanding of yourself, your quality of life as a professional may still vary. It depends on whether you choose to work in a corporation, a consulting firm, or a startup.
A classic meta-analysis in Personnel Psychology by Kristof-Brown and colleagues found that this kind of person-organization fit is consistently linked to higher job satisfaction, commitment, and lower turnover — not just a nice-to-have, but a measurable outcome.
Alternatively, you might decide to start your own business. You will be valued only in an environment where others share your values, strong work ethic, and approach to life and work. Please also find more information dedicated to looking for your flock in the blog posts “Finding Your Flock As a PhD” and “Safety vs Freedom: The Landscape of Post-PhD Careers.”
These steps map closely onto what the Ontology of Value® Test is designed to help you discover about your own edge in the job market.
Figure 2 The Ontology of Value® Model for building your professional fingerprint (or, professional ID). To effectively self-navigate in the job market, you need to build your self-knowledge on three pillars: (1) Your profile as a value builder. (2) The knowledge about the working environments where you fit best given your work style, personality, and values. (3) Your core competencies.
Are you planning to upgrade your career to the next level or change your career path? Are you pondering your options? Don’t be alone in the process – join us at our live online Ontology of Value® Career Lab!
At this intensive online training, you will focus on discovering your identity as a professional, and learn effective career development strategies for landing great jobs.
We will help you choose the right career path, assist you in landing your new job, and teach you self-navigation strategies that will guarantee your success in professional development, and serve you for a lifetime!
Please find all the information about our incoming, game-changing program here:
Please cite as:
Ontology of Value (July 10th, 2021). 3 Steps To Find Your Edge in the Job Market: On The Ontology of Value® Model. Retrieved from: https://ontologyofvalue.com/career-management-for-professionals-with-strong-work-ethic-how-to-find-your-edge-in-the-job-market-in-three-steps/
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