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How to use Character Strengths to Overcome a Career Setback

After my government job was made redundant, workplace personality tests no longer helped. The VIA character strengths gave me a way to rebuild my identity and find new career directions. This post shares how, and answers common questions about strengths and careers.

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Photo by Saad Chaudhry on Unsplash

Why workplace personality tests can fall short

Personality tests and behavioural assessments are popular in recruitment and organisational development. But when self-awareness is framed as a way to become a more productive employee, the usefulness of these assessments becomes limited. Work-sanctioned tests are transactional, and by making the workplace the context for your personality traits, they over-emphasise your work identity at the expense of your other identities. 

What if understanding yourself and your strengths was first and foremost for your own benefit, in whatever context you are in? That is the premise of the VIA character strengths. 

My experience of job redundancy led me to discover the VIA character strengths and to develop a new appreciation of strengths within and beyond the workplace. 

What it feels like to lose your job and professional identity

What happens when your work routine stops, when you no longer have a reason to get up in the morning, get dressed and go to a place of work, and when you realise the things you were once ambitious for are out of reach?

When this happened to me, I dived straight into job hunting mode, flicked through my mental rolodex of contacts, and watched the jobs board more closely than the stock market. None of it seemed to lead anywhere, or worse, it got my hopes up only to let me down. The full-time job of finding a job was the worst kind of work: long hours, zero wages, and daily ambiguity. 

It was the most destabilising career setback I had experienced.

In early 2024, my government job was made redundant along with many others in the wake of the new government’s priorities and new policies. This happened at a time when I had thought I’d firmly established my career in the New Zealand public sector, after working hard to achieve a principal advisor role in a large government agency. Importantly. Achieving this as a female ethnic minority migrant, in an environment that was largely Pākehā (white), was significant. 

Not only did I have to grapple with job loss alongside daily expenses and a mortgage, but my sense of identity was also thrown into question. With more public sector job cuts expected for the rest of the year, there were fewer jobs available and even fewer in my area of expertise. Even with a strong network and personal recommendations, few openings and conservative hiring practices meant a prolonged job search.

At the same time, I had to seriously consider alternative careers. If there was little demand in the public sector, where else could I work? This forced pause made me think more deeply about why I wanted to work in the public sector in the first place and what I wanted to do. 

All my roles had been related to education and workforce capability development. I wanted to contribute to policy and programmes that helped people access education and training so they could find meaningful work and careers, and that supported industries and sectors to keep up with the rest of the world. I enjoyed leading projects, coaching people through challenges, and facilitating discussions that helped teams solve problems and achieve their goals.

I knew I could transfer these skills and knowledge to other sectors, such as education and training, which was the field I had worked in when I was in Singapore. I had also done my PhD with a view to becoming an academic. But all of that felt like the past, long forgotten after investing my identity in being a public sector professional.

I honestly didn’t know who I was anymore.

I kept applying for government roles even though I knew the chances were slim. I leaned on my networks, set up coffee chats and refreshed the jobs board daily in the hope that the perfect role would appear, even after receiving lukewarm responses. I put together applications with as much enthusiasm as I could muster depending on the day’s weather and my energy levels, and tried to accept rejection as a natural part of the job search process. It was a full-time job being busy, feeling tired, and carrying a sneaky sense of guilt when I lay down in surrender after a week of nothing.

Chasing jobs I knew to be in short supply was surely cruel optimism: when something you desire becomes an obstacle to your flourishing.

It was the feeling of being emptied out that led me to look for validation of who I was. I had done a range of personality tests in past jobs, most notably the Gallup StrengthsFinder. But they all reminded me too much of who I was supposed to be in the office, in the world of teams and goals, managers and bosses. 

How the VIA Character Strengths helped me rediscover who I was

Then I found the VIA Character Strengths Survey, which promised greater self-awareness, confidence, and well-being. I did a 10-minute survey and got a ranked list of my 24 strengths. My top strengths were not surprising but the way each one was described was simple yet thought-provoking.

What are character strengths?

Character strengths are the positive parts of your personality that shape how you think, feel and act. The VIA Survey grew out of the positive psychology movement, which gathered pace around 2000 and turned attention to what is good in people, not only what is wrong with them. The classification behind the survey was led by Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman. Their team reviewed the writings of philosophical and religious traditions across China, South Asia and the West, and found six virtues that recur across them. The 24 character strengths are the ways people display those virtues. Later surveys across dozens of nations support the idea that the strengths are widely shared, though people show them in different degrees.

(Further reading: Seligman, M. E. P., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2000). Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2004); Dahlsgaard, K., Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2005); Niemiec, R. M. (2013); McGrath, R. E. (2015); Niemiec and Pearce (2021))

Jump to the FAQs

My top five signature strengths

My signature strengths were Spirituality, Creativity, Zest, Love of Learning and Judgment. Reading the descriptions of the strengths felt like looking into a mirror and noticing details of my outfit that I had taken for granted or forgotten altogether.

Dr Sherrie Lee – My Top Five Character Strengths (YouTube)

Spirituality: Having coherent beliefs about the higher purpose and meaning of the universe; knowing where one fits within the larger scheme; having beliefs about the meaning of life that shape conduct and provide comfort.

Creativity: Thinking of novel and productive ways to conceptualise and do things; includes artistic achievement but is not limited to it.

Zest: Approaching life with excitement and energy; not doing things halfway or half-heartedly; living life as an adventure; feeling alive and activated.

Love of Learning: Mastering new skills, topics, and bodies of knowledge, whether on one’s own or formally; related to the strength of curiosity but goes beyond it to describe the tendency to add systematically to what one knows.

Judgment: Thinking things through and examining them from all sides; not jumping to conclusions; being able to change one’s mind in light of evidence; weighing all evidence fairly.

(Source: Strength definitions from VIA Character Strengths) 

Why my top strength felt missing

My top strength of Spirituality was true in all areas of my life, and yet, jobless and often hopeless, it felt conspicuously absent. It was as if the demands of job hunting, the stress of financial planning and the utter unknown of what the next day would bring had worked together to knock Spirituality off the top spot.

Reading more about the optimal use of character strengths, however, reminded me that it had not disappeared, just been underused. When I think back to the “normal” days of having a job and going about my usual routines, Spirituality was in full force. I was doing meaningful work, I understood obstacles as a necessary means to an end, and I was a person of no regrets: whatever I did had a purpose, even if I didn’t know it at the time.

But with the redundancy and a discomfiting reckoning of who I was and my place in what now felt like a foreign land despite having friends and living here for a decade, it was no wonder the flickering light of Spirituality got snuffed out each time the wind of doubt came through the cracks.

How to use your signature strengths to move forward after job loss

Once I understood how my number one strength was under threat, what was happening to the rest of my signature strengths started to make sense. I was using Creativity to experiment with career ideas, but my Zest was affected by putting in so much effort and seeing little gain. I was using my Love of Learning to investigate alternative careers but Judgment worked overtime asking whether I was sure about turning my back on the public sector.

Then I asked myself a different question: what have I done in the past that allowed me to naturally activate my signature strengths? Put simply, what did my best days at work look like?

Reflecting helped me appreciate how my signature strengths showed up. They were expressed most easily when I was helping people bring out their best, but were hardly activated during tasks with a high level of compliance or little alignment with my values. Getting through those kinds of tasks took extra effort in finding meaning and purpose, and reframing how inflexible structures and difficult situations could be an opportunity to develop other skills and personal resilience. It was probably a combination of Spirituality (seeing purpose) and Love of Learning (mastering new skills) that helped me navigate them.

Now that I was out of the workplace, I had a chance to start over and choose what kind of work I wanted. After my PhD, not finding an academic or research role in my field had left me disappointed but it also pushed me to consider alternative careers, which was how I landed in the public sector. Now I faced a similar situation: one door closed in my face, and I was forced to look for the doors that were open to me.

Recognising who I was through my signature strengths gave me the confidence to set my public sector identity aside. I felt free, and it felt good to focus on things that energised me and explore what opportunities there were in education and training. In my previous roles, I had taken up facilitation and coaching opportunities whenever I could, and I had been considering a move into capability development roles. Having this time to design my own career gave me the chance to explore fully what that could look like.

To be clear, it wasn’t merely doing the VIA survey that led to self-awareness and increased confidence. Instead, it was reading the results and deeply considering what they meant for me at that point in my life that created the conditions for self-reflection. Journaling my thoughts and ideas for exploration helped me articulate my identity more clearly and feel positive about possible pathways.

“Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens.” (Carl Jung)

How I use character strengths in career coaching

Today, as a career coach and educator, I use the VIA character strengths with my clients to help them gain deeper self-awareness and articulate their values in action. Our signature strengths are a natural source of motivation, and reflecting on how we overuse and underuse strengths provide us with opportunities to take on challenges and explore more authentic ways of working and being. 

Same strengths, different expressions across cultures

In my career coaching and workshops, I often see the same character strength expressed differently by clients and participants, depending on their sociocultural backgrounds and experiences. For example, reflecting on their top strength of Honesty, one participant described it as being transparent and not hiding their emotions, while another described it as being true to themselves and being selective about committing to relationships and endeavours. When people hear each other’s accounts, their understanding of each strength gets deeper. They notice nuances they hadn’t considered, and the strength becomes richer than its definition on the page.

I invite you to explore the VIA character strengths for yourself. If you’re a career practitioner interested in using the character strengths in your practice, I’d love to hear from you. I hope your journey with character strengths is as fascinating and rich as I have found it.

Related articles on character strengths and careers

I have written several blog articles on using character strengths in career contexts.

Frequently asked questions about character strengths and careers

Can character strengths help after job loss?

They can help you rebuild confidence and direction. In one small study of unemployed job seekers, strengths-based career counselling led to higher self-esteem. At three months, 80.6% were employed, compared with 60% of those who had conventional counselling.

Sources: Littman-Ovadia et al. (2014); VIA Institute (n.d.-e)

Do my character strengths determine which) job I should do?

No, and they shouldn’t. Character strengths are not skills, talents or interests, and one career holds many different jobs. The VIA Institute advises against using the survey to match people to careers or to rule a career out. Your strengths describe how you tend to do your work. You can also build and flex them to meet what a role asks of you.

Sources: Niemiec (2014); Niemiec and Pearce (2021)

Do certain strengths show up in certain kinds of work?

Several studies have linked particular strengths to types of work. A Swiss study found managers and professionals scoring higher on wisdom strengths, though that gap disappeared once education was taken into account. The same paper reports that social workers score higher on teamwork, psychologists on social intelligence, and teachers and supervisors on leadership. Strengths also link to behaviour at work. Perseverance is tied to going the extra mile, and strengths in general to task performance, dedication and helping colleagues. A closer match to an occupation’s typical profile went with higher life satisfaction, but only a weak link to job satisfaction.

Sources: Gander et al., (2020); Littman-Ovadia and Lavy (2016); Harzer and Ruch (2014)

Is using my strengths linked to well-being at work?

Yes, though the evidence shows an association, not proof of cause. In a study of 111 employees, those who applied four to seven of their signature strengths at work reported more positive work experiences and were more likely to see their job as a calling than those who applied fewer than four. A larger study of 1,111 adults found that the more signature strengths people applied at work, the more positive their experiences were. In a representative Swiss sample, most strengths related to job and life satisfaction, with zest, love, hope and gratitude among the most consistent, including a year or two later. Strengths are also linked to how people cope with work stress.

Sources: Gander et al., (2020); Harzer and Ruch (2012); Harzer and Ruch (2013); Harzer and Ruch (2015); VIA Institute (n.d.-a)

Can I develop a strength I don’t use much?

Yes. Strengths are fairly stable but can grow with practice. A meta-analysis of 14 studies found that interventions built around using signature strengths in new ways increased strengths use and gave small to moderate gains in well-being. Most of that evidence is about well-being, not job requirements. Niemiec also describes using a strength you already rely on to support one you want to build.

Sources: Schutte and Malouff (2019); Niemiec (2019)

How can strengths help when things get hard?

Strengths can help you prevent problems, reframe them and recover from them. A strength can also feel absent when it is underused, and the aim is the right amount for the situation, not the maximum. Strengths-spotting, mindfulness and asking what your best days looked like are practical ways to bring an underused strength back.

Sources: Niemiec (2019); Niemiec (2020)

How can I use my strengths in the job I already have?

Pick one signature strength and look for a task where you could use it differently. Reshaping your tasks this way is often called job crafting. VIA describes job-related strengths as patterns in how you do your work, not just what you do.

Sources: Niemiec (2014); VIA Institute (n.d.-d)

How can teams, managers and leaders use the VIA character strengths?

Start by naming your own signature strengths, then help team members spot theirs. Teams that know their shared and individual strengths can see where they are strong together and pair up with colleagues whose strengths complement theirs. Strengths-spotting, which means noticing and naming a strength in action, is a simple habit for managers and works with remote teams too. VIA reports that strengths-based leadership is linked to higher engagement and better task performance. Use the results to start conversations, not to rank or compare people. The VIA Survey wasn’t designed for comparing individuals, or for hiring and promotion decisions.

Sources: Pearce (n.d.); VIA Institute (n.d.-b); Niemiec and Pearce (2021); Niemiec (2014)

References

Dahlsgaard, K., Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2005). Shared virtue: The convergence of valued human strengths across culture and history. Review of General Psychology, 9(3), 203–213. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.9.3.203

Gander, F., Hofmann, J., & Ruch, W. (2020). Character strengths: Person–environment fit and relationships with job and life satisfaction. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, Article 1582. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01582

Harzer, C., & Ruch, W. (2012). When the job is a calling: The role of applying one’s signature strengths at work. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 7(5), 362–371. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2012.702784

Harzer, C., & Ruch, W. (2013). The application of signature character strengths and positive experiences at work. Journal of Happiness Studies, 14(3), 965–983. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-012-9364-0

Harzer, C., & Ruch, W. (2014). The role of character strengths for task performance, job dedication, interpersonal facilitation, and organizational support. Human Performance, 27(3), 183–205. https://doi.org/10.1080/08959285.2014.913592

Harzer, C., & Ruch, W. (2015). The relationships of character strengths with coping, work-related stress, and job satisfaction. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, Article 165. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00165

Littman-Ovadia, H., & Lavy, S. (2016). Going the extra mile: Perseverance as a key character strength at work. Journal of Career Assessment, 24(2), 240–252. https://doi.org/10.1177/1069072715580322

Littman-Ovadia, H., Lazar-Butbul, V., & Benjamin, B. A. (2014). Strengths-based career counseling: Overview and initial evaluation. Journal of Career Assessment, 22(3), 403–419. https://doi.org/10.1177/1069072713498483

McGrath, R. E. (2015). Character strengths in 75 nations: An update. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 10(1), 41–52. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2014.888580

Niemiec, R. M. (2013). VIA character strengths: Research and practice (The first 10 years). In H. H. Knoop & A. Delle Fave (Eds.), Well-being and cultures: Perspectives from positive psychology (pp. 11–29). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4611-4_2

Niemiec, R. M. (2014, September 30). Character strengths and your career: The opportunities and limitations of an underexplored area. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/what-matters-most/201409/character-strengths-and-your-career

Niemiec, R. M. (2019). Finding the golden mean: The overuse, underuse, and optimal use of character strengths. Counselling Psychology Quarterly. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515070.2019.1617674

Niemiec, R. M. (2020). Six functions of character strengths for thriving at times of adversity and opportunity: A theoretical perspective. Applied Research in Quality of Life, 15(2), 551–572. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-018-9692-2

Niemiec, R. M., & Pearce, R. (2021). The practice of character strengths: Unifying definitions, principles, and exploration of what’s soaring, emerging, and ripe with potential in science and in practice. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, Article 590220. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.590220

Pearce, R. (n.d.). 3 ways successful organizations apply their strengths. VIA Institute on Character. https://www.viacharacter.org/topics/articles/3-ways-successful-organizations-apply-their-strengths

Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2004). Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification. Oxford University Press; American Psychological Association.

Schutte, N. S., & Malouff, J. M. (2019). The impact of signature character strengths interventions: A meta-analysis. Journal of Happiness Studies, 20(4), 1179–1196. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-018-9990-2

Seligman, M. E. P., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2000). Positive psychology: An introduction. American Psychologist, 55(1), 5–14. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.5

VIA Institute on Character. (n.d.-a). Career building. https://www.viacharacter.org/topics/career-building

VIA Institute on Character. (n.d.-b). Strengths-based leadership: How to lead with character and strengths at work. https://www.viacharacter.org/topics/articles/strengths-based-leadership

VIA Institute on Character. (n.d.-c). The 24 character strengths. https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths

VIA Institute on Character. (n.d.-d). What are my strengths at work? https://www.viacharacter.org/topics/articles/what-are-my-strengths-at-work

VIA Institute on Character. (n.d.-e). What’s missing in your career? https://www.viacharacter.org/topics/articles/what%27s-missing-in-your-career

About Dr Sherrie Lee

I’m a career coach and educator for international professionals and migrants navigating cross-cultural career transitions. Having made that transition myself, I understand what it feels like when your experience and value get lost in translation.

Drawing on positive psychology, strengths-based coaching and VIA Character Strengths, I help clients build clarity, confidence and strategy to navigate new work cultures and build careers that reflect who they are. I’m an ICF Associate Certified Coach (ACC), trained in positive psychology coaching, and a Professional Member of CDANZ. I write and speak on international careers, character strengths, and cross-cultural identity and belonging.

Learn more at thediasporicacademic.com. Wondering if career coaching is right for you? Book a free 20-minute discovery call.

Connect with me on LinkedIn and subscribe to my monthly newsletter, International Career Journey on Substack.

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