I recently watched the documentary film Happy People; A Year in the Taiga, and this was proof positive that happy people are better at what they do and more productive.

You can also say from watching this film that the reverse is true, people who are good at and love what they do are happier.

The people featured in Happy People; A Year in the Taiga live in the Siberian taiga. It focuses on Russian trappers who live off hunting for fur animals such as the prized sable.

The conditions where they live, and hunt are brutal with temperatures in winter falling below minus 50 degrees. But this does not deter them from doing their work with minimal modern equipment, such as a chain saw and at times a snowmobile.

My living conditions compared to the Happy People is luxurious as is my colleagues and friends. Yet are never heard the people in the film complain, whereas every day I find something to holler about.

I realized that even though the conditions are so harsh in this part of Siberia the people love their lives and what they do. They obviously love nature and working physically. They enjoy being challenged and finding solutions. They relish in being self-sufficient.

A good part of the work I do is helping clients make better decisions when selecting new employees. I do this using a psychometric assessment tool, the PXT Select. This assessment has a section on occupational interests that are based on John Holland’s RIASEC classification for occupational interests.

The PXT Select defines these as Enterprising, Creative, People, Technical, Financial/Administrative and Mechanical. It then measures the person’s top three interests and matches them to a performance model for the job. Each performance model prioritizes three top interests that are essential for job satisfaction.

The people profiled in the film obviously must have mechanical as their top interest, perhaps followed by creative and enterprising. I say this because they need to enjoy being creative in the face of danger, harsh conditions, and unpredictable situations. They also need to be enterprising to be able to run their business of trapping animals and then selling them for the most money they can get.

I know my top three interests are creative, people and enterprising and that is why I enjoy making videos as part of my business endeavours to help people with my expertise. I also know that financial/administrative is probably my lowest interest area and I tend to avoid related tasks, which can sometimes cause me problems.

I once read that over 40% of people hold jobs in fields they did not study for. They probably discovered they enjoyed something else and found a way to learn what they needed to.

The key point here is to make sure you hire and promote people who not only are skilled at the job but are passionate about the work. The best way to find out their key interests quickly is to use an assessment like the PXT Select. Otherwise, there is a good chance you are leaving it up to guesswork.