The Career Anchor

download information on Career Anchor
start questionnaire

What is the Career Anchor?

The Career Anchor was designed by Edgar Schein of MIT Boston and is based on decades of research about the careers of several individuals. What is it that determines one’s “inner career?” What are the underlying motives, values and abilities that determine the direction of one’s career? Schein found that the hidden patterns for careers could be ascribed to eight basic orientations, which he called Career Anchor.

The anchor symbolizes one’s goals, the way one develops professionally and the destination one finally reaches. When we reach crucial points in our career, it can be extremely helpful to deal with the personal “anchors” in order to make the right decisions. The career anchor is an orientation for a professional career. Frequently, we orient ourselves on the outside aspects of a career and forget about what is inside a profession. The Career Anchor can check the agreement between a planned career and the inner acceptance of it.

How does the Career Anchor work?

The tool offers three approaches to personal career patterns. The first is a questionnaire; the second is a longer interview about the development of one’s career with another person; and the third is a self-evaluation. These three sources of information can usually help create an accurate overview of the test subject’s career possibilities.

Possible Fields of Application

The Career Anchor complements other tools in processes of the evaluation of potential, both in individual and group assessments. This tool is particularly useful when it comes to career planning, as well as for the internal processes of personnel development, coaching and consulting.

start questionnaire