Are you bored on the job? Have you ever wondered, “isn’t there more?”  If so you might find one of your core career values is an intellectual challenge.  Hopping job to job seeking out intellectual challenge is not a great long term career strategy. While you may find yourself satisfied for a short time as you ramp up in your new roles, you will quickly find yourself bored and needing a change, and the more you hop the less attractive you are likely to appear to recruiters in your job search.  So how do you find an intellectually challenging job?

Intellectual Challenge is the most frequently chosen career value for ProValues users. In fact, this career value is one of ProValues Top 3 most important values also.  When our users chose intellectual challenge as one of their core career values, it is ranked as being one of the most important to them. The only two values that slightly outweigh “Is intellectual challenging” for our users is “Is Gratifying” and “Has great leadership” but at the end of the day the ProValues team would claim this the most important career value for our users to ensure will be satisfied during their next job.

Firstly, be sure we are clear on what intellectual challenge means.

What does intellectual challenge mean?

To each person, intellectual challenge can mean something different. However, the ProValues team summarized our users’ descriptions of this value and found that our users mentioned four main components to this value:

• Problem solving:

  • Hard questions to solve are presented and expected to be solved

  • New analytical approaches and analysis required

• Creative thinking:

  • Encouraged for creative thinking

  • New solutions expected

• Intellectual environment:

  • Working and learning from smart people

  • Constantly learning and intellectually stimulating

• Diversity in scope:

  • New and diverse challenges/problems/opportunities

  • Working on similar projects and do redundant tasks is not interesting

Now that we know what intellectual challenge can meant to other ProValues users, let’s talk about if you think you too might want to assess your ProValues and see if it is one of the most important values to you.

Signs you might be interested in a role with more intellectual challenge

1. You’ve googled “bored at work”
2. You are playing games or doing other things during work hours and still exceeding expectations
3. You’ve been heard saying to friends or family “My co-workers/bosses” are not so bright
4. You wonder what everyone is doing with their time at work to look so busy
5. You keep taking on work and projects your peers do not have time or energy for
6. Your boss leaves you alone and focuses on your peers
7. Your boss has no vision
8. You don’t see a path or a mentor as guides

How do you stop the cycle of taking jobs that end up boring you?  Ask questions during your job interview that will identify diversity in scope, an intellectual environment, creative thinking is required and rewarded and finally that the problems being solved require new approaches and analysis.

Questions for your interviewer

• Intellectual environment: What are the most important resources you have at your disposal to address the most challenging problems?

• Problem solving:  What is the most challenging problem you have had to solve in your current role?

• Creative thinking: How do you reward creative solutions that are innovative?

• Diversity in scope: In a typical year, how often do you use the same approaches to solve problems?

Sometimes you’ll want to have these answers earlier in the job search cycle, well before you get to an interview. In that case, the ProValues team recommends, going to company sites and looking at employee profiles. Read reviews on GlassDoor and look at the LinkedIn job descriptions of people who are or were in the role (browsing in Private or Semi-Private mode is a great way to do this without being too bold).

We all know there are times when you are bored but the time isn’t now for a change. Here are some tips from the ProValues team.

Need more challenge now, but you can’t change your role?

• Solve problems: Consider new ways to solve a problem that may provide more certainty /clarity. Seek out training to execute that new approach (if required).

• Educate yourself: Find industry / product experts and subscribe to their blogs, twitter feed, etc.

• Find new problems / solutions: Set aside time outside of usual work hours to dig into industry / product information (journals, books, etc).

• Become an expert: Become the person who is an expert and is called upon to push the limits of your current expertise.

Cheers to you and all of your creative, innovative, problem solving solutions that we know will make a difference!