Do You Shape Your Job, or Does It Shape You?
The quiet changes people make to a job nobody asked them to change
Two people with the same job title can end up doing quite different jobs. One learns new skills, seeks out a mentor and volunteers for the interesting project; the other does exactly what the description says. Researchers call the difference job crafting: the self-initiated changes people make to their own work. This test looks at the four kinds that have been measured, and at which of them you lean on.
Before you start There are no right answers. Pick what is usually true for you, not what sounds best.
Answer about your current job, or your most recent one. If you study, think of your course as your job.
What it measures
The four dimensions of the Job Crafting Scale: building your skills and autonomy, seeking support and feedback, seeking extra challenge, and reducing the demands that drain you. Unlike tests of career interests or workplace fit, it does not ask which job suits you - it asks what you do to reshape the job you already have.
Based on: Job Crafting Scale (Tims, Bakker & Derks, 2012); job crafting (Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001)
Possible results
Skills and autonomy
Whether you work at learning more and gaining more say over how you work.
Support and feedback
Whether you go looking for advice, coaching and feedback at work.
Seeking challenge
Whether you add new projects and stretch tasks to your job.
Reducing the drain
Whether you rearrange your work to cut down what exhausts you.
Common questions
What is job crafting?
The term comes from Wrzesniewski and Dutton, who described how people change the tasks, relationships and meaning of their work without anyone asking them to. Tims, Bakker and Derks later measured it as four kinds of behaviour: building resources, seeking support, seeking challenge and reducing draining demands. It is something employees do, not a programme a company runs.
Is job crafting the same as asking for a new job description?
No. It is informal and bottom-up: small, self-initiated changes within the role you already have. Some of it eventually becomes official, but most of it lives in how you arrange your day, whom you work with and how you think about what you do.
Does job crafting actually help?
On average, yes: a 2017 meta-analysis linked job crafting with higher engagement, satisfaction and performance. The effects are modest and most studies are correlational, so part of the link probably runs the other way - engaged people craft more. Cutting back on draining demands is the form whose benefits look least consistent.
Sources
- Wrzesniewski, A., & Dutton, J. E. (2001). Crafting a job: Revisioning employees as active crafters of their work. Academy of Management Review. doi:10.2307/259118
- Tims, M., Bakker, A. B., & Derks, D. (2012). Development and validation of the job crafting scale. Journal of Vocational Behavior. doi:10.1016/j.jvb.2011.05.009
- Rudolph, C. W., Katz, I. M., Lavigne, K. N., & Zacher, H. (2017). Job crafting: A meta-analysis of relationships with individual differences, job characteristics, and work outcomes. Journal of Vocational Behavior. doi:10.1016/j.jvb.2017.05.008
An honest note The Job Crafting Scale was developed in three Dutch studies, and most research comes from Western workplaces where employees have some room to change their jobs; in tightly scripted roles, a low score may describe the job rather than you. The items are Quinthea's own wording adapted from the published scale, so scores are not comparable to its norms. Most findings are correlational. If exhaustion at work is persistent, talk to a doctor or an occupational health service.