How to use a decision-making matrix
Updated 2024-12-17. Originally published 2015-10-12 on VocationVillage.com
A decision-making matrix is a useful tool whether you are choosing between career paths, job offers, cities to which to move, or vacation spots.
Here are instructions for how to use the matrix to choose a career path:
Go to my public example of a decision-making matrix. For this article, let’s call the decision-maker Vicky. First read steps 2 through 7 to learn to use the matrix. In step 8, you will make a copy of the matrix so that you can change the data to your own.
Using my list of work values to guide decision-making, Vicky chose 10-20 values that are most important to her. Then she ranked them from most important to least important, assigning a different value to each one. These values go in Column A. Vicky gave the most important value, Health, the highest number, 10. She told me she meant both physical and emotional health.
In Columns C, E, G, and I, Vicky rated the careers she was considering by scoring each value using a range of -5 (scores horribly on the value) through 0 (neutral on the value) to 5 (scores very well on the value). You can see that in Column C, Vicky evaluated a Data Analyst career. Based on her research, she rated this career a 3 on Health, a 5 on Ethics, a 4 on Stability, etc.
Vicky’s next step to evaluate the Data Analyst career was to multiply the values in Column B by the ratings in Column C to get the scores for Column D. After she summed the scores for Column D, you can see that Data Analyst scored 209.
Next, Vicky analyzed a second career, Info Security Specialist. For this analysis, she kept Column B the same as she will use the same Values to analyze this second career option. In Column E, she scored each value using the range from -5 to 5. You can see she did research about this career and scored Info Security Specialist as a 0 for Health, a 4 for Ethics, a 5 for Stability, etc.
The next step to evaluate the Info Security Specialist career was to multiply the values in Column B by the ratings in Column E to get the scores for Column F. After Vicky summed the scores for Column F, you can see that Info Security Specialist scored 95, which is about half the score for Data Analyst. Based on this matrix, Vicky’s values are a better fit to become a Data Analyst than an Info Security Specialist.
Vicky used the same process to evaluate two more careers, Psychology Professor and Salesperson. These careers scored -8 and -93. Vicky said this matches her predictions about whether she would like these careers because she intentionally chose careers she thinks she would dislike to see if the matrix evaluation proved it.
Copy the matrix and replace Vicky’s data with your own.
If you have questions, please reach out, and I will help you.
