Coretalents: who are you really?
Imagine having a compass that guides you to your true self, to your deepest core. One that shows you what makes you happy, what energises you, and where you can truly excel—without any fluff or vagueness.
A Coretalents analysis does exactly that: it reveals who you are, fully and precisely. Your Coretalents show which dreams are within your reach. Your unique profile is a lifelong and indispensable guide to making them a reality.
Shall we dive into the world of Coretalents together? What are they, what do they mean for you, how are they the key to a life of fulfilment, and how were they discovered?
What are coretalents?
Coretalents are your unique fingerprint at the personality level. They consist of three key elements:
- Your nature – Who you are by character and disposition, largely shaped by your DNA and early development.
- Your potential – What you can become if given the right opportunities, influenced by your environment, life events, and circumstances.
- Your intrinsic motivation – What you truly enjoy doing, naturally and effortlessly, and what drives you into action.
Each coretalent contains all three aspects.
There are 23 coretalents, and you have them all—strong, half, or small.
The stronger a coretalent, the more energy and motivation you gain from engaging in activities that build upon it—and the more naturally you excel at them!
The smaller a coretalent, the more effort and energy it requires to use it, which can be draining. A half coretalent is energy-neutral: it neither drains you nor gives you energy.
When you know your strong, half, and small coretalents, you understand what suits you, what fits you less, and what doesn’t align with you at all—even before trying it.
Your profile is completely unique—one in 94 billion (3²³). You are not a "type" or a fixed category! All 23 coretalents work together as a team: they strengthen each other, complement one another, and sometimes even clash.
But together, they provide you with a nuanced and complete picture of who you are and who you want to become.
We don’t just focus on a "top 3" or "top 5" coretalents—because we believe that selecting only 3/23 or 5/23 of your personality is too limited and superficial for making important life decisions. That’s why we always provide your complete profile.
Since there are many different paths to success—depending on how your unique mix of coretalents manifests in different situations—your life journey is never set in stone.
Coretalents give you choices and, more importantly, freedom of choice! So you can truly do what you genuinely love and find meaningful.
How does a Coretalents analysis work?
A Coretalents analysis is an in-depth yet enjoyable private conversation with a certified Coretalents analyst. You’ll talk about the activities and games you loved as a child, before puberty, after which your analyst will reveal and explain all 23 of your coretalents—both individually and in combination.
There are three mandatory steps that every analyst follows, plus three optional extras that you can choose to include. These additional parts are usually agreed upon in advance, but you can also book them later or even consult a different analyst—perhaps one more specialised in your professional field.
- The questionnaire – You begin by completing an online questionnaire at home, at your own pace. This will take you back to your childhood, asking you to indicate how much you enjoyed around 130 examples of childhood games and activities before puberty. You can also add any toys or activities that fascinated you and kept you engaged for hours. The key here is that only your own memories count! Do not ask your parents, childhood friends, or siblings—what they remember is about their perspective, not yours. We want to focus solely on you. Moreover, others’ memories could unintentionally influence yours, making the results less reliable.
- Discussing the questionnaire – In a one-on-one session, you’ll have the opportunity to talk freely about the things you loved to do as a child. You can also add details—anything you genuinely enjoyed and engaged in is included! This phase typically lasts 1 to 1.5 hours, depending on how much you’d like to share.
- Feedback session – Your Coretalents profile is now fully mapped out. Your analyst will explain in detail which of the 23 universal coretalents are strong, half, or small in your profile—for life. You’ll gain a clear understanding of your character, talents, and motivation. You’ll see what energises you and what drains you, what excites you or extinguishes your inner spark, where your potential lies, and how you can leverage it—all to help you create a fulfilling and meaningful life in your own unique way.
- Optional: in-depth interview – Which coretalents have you already unconsciously developed, and which remain latent? What knowledge and skills have you acquired, and where does your untapped potential lie? In what socio-cultural environment did you grow up? What life events have shaped you? What studies have you pursued, and what jobs have you held? In short, what external influences have contributed to your development so far? This phase helps connect even more dots, giving you a deeper self-understanding.
- Optional: report – From a basic summary to a fully detailed 80-page report, you choose what best suits your needs. Either way, you will receive a lifelong written overview of your 23 coretalents, exactly as they apply to you. The specific contents of your Coretalents-analysis report are discussed with your analyst, who will provide a tailored proposal.
- Optional: follow-up trajectory – Depending on your specific question, you and your analyst may design a customised pathway. If your analyst is not the right expert for your request, they will gladly refer you to a fellow Coretalents analyst who specialises in that particular field. That analyst will then continue working with you, using the results of your Coretalents-analysis as a solid foundation—since your coretalents remain valid for life.
Who is a Coretalents-analyst and what do they do?
A Coretalents-analyst is your personal guide through the landscape of your 23 unique coretalents.
They have completed a ten-day, highly in-depth training in the Coretalents-method and passed three examinations. They continue their education annually to ensure the quality of their work and can therefore conduct an objective Coretalents-analysis without bias and without trying to fit you into a box. A true Coretalents-analyst is completely neutral: it does not matter which coretalents you have as strong, half, or small! They have only one goal: to analyse you correctly and map out your coretalents clearly, so you can make choices that you will still be happy with 25 years from now.
After completing our validated questionnaire and having an enjoyable and in-depth analysis conversation, your analyst will know your strong, half, and small coretalents.
This interconnected mix provides a complete and nuanced picture of who you are, who you want to be, and who you can become - without the limitations of stereotypes or fixed roles.
A Coretalents-analyst does not just look at what you enjoyed doing, using the hidden rationales (what makes a particular toy, game, hobby, activity, or interest lead to one coretalent rather than another?), but also explains which coretalents you have as strong, half, and small and how they interact. What this means for you now and in the future - and how you can use this knowledge to achieve lasting happiness!
It is not enough to define just one coretalent or a top-3 or 5. That would mean working with only 3 or 5 / 23 of who you are. Ridiculous. No, what matters is how all 23 coretalents together create a complete picture of your character, possibilities, and drive. This interconnected approach is what makes the Coretalents-analysis so powerful and unique.
Coretalents has now trained over 500 Coretalents-analysts, and they all have one thing in common: a passion for people. The passion to empower you. The passion to help you discover who you are, and who you can and want to become.
All Coretalents-analysts who maintain their qualifications can be found here:
You can filter by 'location', 'services', and/or 'field of expertise' to find the analyst who best fits you and your unique situation.
Would you like to become an analyst yourself and apply this powerful and complete method? Learn more about our training:
When and why should you know your coretalents?
Coretalents help you better understand yourself, better understand others, and make informed choices at different moments and in various areas of your life. A few examples:
Choosing a study
A crucial moment in life, yet often a source of great uncertainty and stress, as so many young people do not truly know their talents—let alone their 23 coretalents.
The traditional approach to choosing a study path often starts with questions like: What do you enjoy doing? What are you good at?
But at 14, 16, or 18 years old, there are still far more things you haven’t tried than those you have experienced. So how can you possibly know if a specific study or career path will suit you and if you will enjoy it? This trial-and-error approach can be costly in terms of time, energy, disappointment, self-confidence, and money.
A Coretalents-analysis provides a complete and detailed insight into the deeper layer beneath what you enjoy doing or are good at. It uncovers your true essence. Your character, your potential—what you will be able to do well with training and/or practice—and your intrinsic motivation all come to light.
This also naturally reveals your underlying drivers, as well as the values and principles that are important to you.
By discovering and putting words to what you naturally want and can excel in, it becomes much easier to immediately choose the right study—one that you will still be happy with in 25 years.
Specifically for young people at this turning point in their lives, Coretalents offers the Studiekeuzevoucher, a unique and valuable gift providing warm, personalized study choice guidance.
Only experienced analysts—who have not only completed our 10-day coretalents analyst training but also a 5-day in-depth Coretalents study choice expert training—are authorized to work with this. Choosing a study path is no small matter, and we do not take young people’s futures lightly.
We firmly believe that every young person deserves to be guided by an expert with profound knowledge of the subject to help them find the ideal study path.
Career development
Your professional career is a journey full of choices. In the past, things were simple: you got a job and stayed in it until retirement.
That’s no longer the case today—lifelong learning and development are the new normal.
Unfortunately, too many people still end up in jobs that bring them little or no satisfaction. Was it because they followed what was expected of them?
Or because someone told them it was a good choice?
Or because they assumed it would suit them?
Or because there were no other options?
Or because it was close to home?
Or due to a lack of self-knowledge?
Ideally, a career should be built on your strong coretalents. However, half and small coretalents can also have value, as long as they are not used too frequently or intensively—especially if you have already developed certain skills in those areas.
With a Coretalents-analysis, you will understand in advance which career steps, roles, tasks, colleagues, and company cultures will genuinely fit you—and why.
Moreover, you will shape your career based on your own personality, drive, and potential, rather than what others believe you should do or become.
Did you know that Coretalents is one of Belgium’s largest career centers, recognized by the VDAB?
Since 2014, with nearly 1,000 career coaching sessions per year, we have built an enormous wealth of expertise and knowledge, which we offer free of charge to our own career coaches.
We continuously provide broad and in-depth training on a wide range of useful topics to help our Coretalents career coaches support their clients even better in their professional growth.
Leadership
A great leader first and foremost knows themselves, and then their team.
Your coretalents allow you to understand which leadership style truly suits you and how you can leverage your strengths to inspire others.
Your personal leadership profile is determined by combining 12 coretalents, each of which you possess as strong, half, or small.
By analyzing these 12 coretalents, we can distinguish 531,441 different leadership styles (3 to the power of 12).
Additionally, understanding the coretalents of your team members allows you to motivate and guide them in a way that works for both them and you.
Burnout & boreout prevention and recovery
Burnout and boreout often arise when people do work that does not align with their coretalents.
We follow this key rule: working too often (more than 30%) on small coretalents contributes to burnout, while working too little (less than 70%) on strong coretalents contributes to boreout.
Other factors almost always play a role as well, such as personal circumstances, nutrition, sleep, health, performing above or below one’s IQ level, etc. However, this fundamental understanding is essential in both preventing and addressing burnout and boreout. Did you know that a mix of both is often present?
Exhaustion can be directly linked to a person’s coretalents profile in combination with their specific life and work situation.
A Coretalents-analysis helps you identify which activities energize you and which deplete you, providing clear insight into your ideal energy balance and how to maintain it.
Personal Growth
Understanding your coretalents gives you a strong foundation for self-development with true enthusiasm. Your strong coretalents act as stepping stones in the vast terrain of life.
By knowing and understanding your strong, half, and small coretalents, you grow, develop, and evolve in a way that truly suits you.
You develop yourself sustainably and positively, without having to work against your own nature.
Total Talent Management
Coretalents are not only valuable on a personal level but also essential in a corporate context.
Throughout every phase of Total Talent Management, at every stage of the HR cycle, the results of a Coretalents-analysis can be applied.
From recruitment and onboarding to outplacement and retirement, and from Learning & Development to leadership development, promotion, retention, and reintegration—coretalents are a key element of an effective HR policy and contribute to organizational success.
The coretalents profiles of your (new) employees help you place talent in the right roles, develop and retain employees who align with your strategy, and maximize the potential within your organization.
How Organizations Use the Coretalents-Method
- Assessment: Does a candidate have the personality, potential, and motivation for a specific role, beyond today’s required competencies? What can they contribute in 3, 5, or 10 years?
- Internal Career Coaching: Helps employees grow internally based on their coretalents profile, ensuring a strong and future-proof workforce.
- Jobcrafting: Tailoring job roles to employees' strong coretalents for higher motivation, greater job satisfaction, and continuous growth.
- Career Management: Focusing on long-term career planning to help employees and organizations make informed choices at crucial moments.
- Leadership: Discovering, defining, recognizing, and developing (self-)leadership based on an individual’s unique coretalents profile.
- Wellbeing: Keeping employees healthy and intrinsically motivated by understanding their unique needs and respecting organizational limits.
- Burnout/Boreout Prevention: Preventing energy loss by aligning tasks with employees’ natural talents.
- Learning & Development: Choosing training that matches employees’ strong coretalents, ensuring natural motivation and lasting engagement.
- High Potentials: Identifying and developing high-potential employees early on, ensuring they are motivated and used strategically.
- Retention: Preventing talent loss by recognizing potential, motivation, and personality before employees feel unchallenged or unseen.
- Succession Planning: Identifying future leaders based on their skills, motivation, and long-term potential.
- Teamcrafting: Building complementary teams where each member contributes their strengths, fostering trust and optimal performance.
With Coretalents Total Talent Management, organizations streamline and optimize the full employee lifecycle.
This not only enhances employees' professional experiences but also helps organizations become more productive, efficient, and successful by leveraging each person’s unique talents for sustainable growth.
The lifelong influence of your coretalents
Your coretalents are not just a snapshot in time—they are permanent. They remain valid throughout your entire life. One single analysis is enough to serve you forever.
From childhood to your final phase of life, your coretalents form the essence of who you are and never change. Just like the color of your eyes. Skeptical? It might sound too simple to be true, but it is pure logic...
Children love activities that align with their natural inclinations. Conversely, they dislike activities that do not suit them.
"A child does not BECOME creative by playing with creative toys; they play with them because they ARE already creative."
You can force a child to play with a particular toy, but you cannot make them enjoy it. A child's nature, potential, and intrinsic motivation reveal themselves through their favorite toys and games. What you did or did not enjoy as a child speaks volumes about your deepest core: your personality, talents, and natural drive.
What is inside will always come out. The span of about eight years (roughly between ages 4 and 12, and certainly before puberty) is long enough for a child to exhibit behaviors that clearly indicate their natural strengths.
Your childhood is behind you—it will not change. That is why your coretalents remain valid for life. Our extensive empirical research, conducted across all age groups of people who have undergone a Coretalents-analysis, strongly confirms this.
Thus, knowing your coretalents will guide you at every turning point or key moment in your life—whether in your career, relationships, family, or decision-making processes.
Your childhood not only offers you clarity today but also serves as a compass for the future.
Of course, you continue to grow: you evolve as a person, gain new experiences and skills, continuously learn, and develop new expertise. You expand your knowledge and become a little wiser every day (at least, that’s what we hope 😉).
And what do we see? People naturally prefer to spend their valuable lifetime developing and applying their strong coretalents. They engage in activities that bring them joy, things they enjoy improving at over time.
A Coretalents-analysis is truly a gift! At any moment in your life, you can return to your coretalents profile to make choices that align with who you truly are.
How were the coretalents discovered?
The 23 universal coretalents are the result of many years of empirical research.
What started as simple interviews with engineers at the master’s and PhD levels has evolved into a methodology that is now transforming lives worldwide.
It all began in 1989 when Danielle Krekels observed something remarkable. At the time, she ran both an engineering firm and a recruitment agency specializing in engineers, allowing her to interview them daily.
As she was also interested in the person behind the engineer, she asked why they had chosen their career and what they enjoyed doing—long before concepts like competence management, let alone talent management, became widely known.
She soon noticed a recurring response: "Oh, Danielle, I’ve always been like this! I loved playing with Lego!" or "I was always playing with Meccano," or "I loved climbing trees," or "I was crazy about Monopoly," or "I was always playing football," and so on.
After hearing the same responses hundreds of times, she recognized a pattern: engineers from the same field spontaneously mentioned the same favorite childhood games.
That’s when she had a breakthrough: "What if a child does not BECOME creative by playing with Lego, but rather, a child plays with Lego because they ARE already creative?"
She decided to test this hypothesis with the engineers she interviewed. To understand what it might mean, she stepped into the mindset of a child at play: "What exactly does a child DO when building a robot with Lego?" She did not start from existing concepts or assumptions like "the child is creative because they have an eye for shape and color," or "the child is sociable because they let another child play," or "the child is aggressive because they hit another child with a toy."
Instead, she purely described the factual actions, thoughts, and emotions of a child when they build a robot, climb trees, play chess, read, or play football.
She then tested these insights with over 10,000 engineers and scientists worldwide. As the Belgian National Contact Point for coordinating R&D in ICT within the European Commission’s major framework programs (such as the development of Bluetooth), she regularly attended international symposiums where she interacted with top researchers from Norway, China, Brazil, Italy, South Africa, and beyond. These professionals were open to exploring this connection, allowing her to validate her hypothesis with experienced, mature individuals.
It was essential that this validation was not conducted on young people, who often do not yet fully understand themselves, but rather on adults with significant life experience. After all, truly knowing who you are typically requires 45 to 50 years of trial and error in life.
And indeed, after 15 years of validation and verification, analyzing childhood games confirmed that a child who enjoys playing with Lego before puberty does so because they are already creative—not the other way around.
A child does not become more creative simply by drawing frequently; they become more skilled at it. Practice makes perfect, but the intrinsic motivation and natural inclination are already present. The same applies to adults: the more they practice something, the better they become at it.
However, a Coretalents-analysis does not focus primarily on what someone is good at, but rather on what they love doing. It is only in the third stage of the analysis that factors like opportunities, socio-cultural environment, life events, education, acquired competencies, and even intelligence level (if known) are considered—especially for career and study choices, where these elements also play a crucial role.
For example, a child who loves drawing figures already possesses the early foundation for the coretalent of aesthetic creativity (a combination of nature, potential, and intrinsic motivation). Passionately drawing figures before puberty reveals a part of their character and personality, as well as their potential to develop this skill through education and practice. Their inner drive will later manifest in aspects of this coretalent, such as thinking outside the box, attention to color and form, a hands-on approach to creating beautiful things, or making things aesthetically pleasing.
This insight was—and still is—revolutionary. Danielle also observed that the connection between childhood activities and adult coretalents remains consistent worldwide, regardless of gender, language, culture, or background.
Whether a child is from Brazil, China, or the Netherlands, those who love building will use whatever materials are available. The toys themselves are irrelevant—you don’t need brand-name toys to build a crane. A child who enjoys building will construct one with sticks and string if necessary. To the child, it is simply a crane—the materials don’t matter.
After 15 years of intensive global research, the Coretalents-method was born. Danielle Krekels published her first book on the subject in December 2004, followed by a second in 2012 and a third in 2018, which included a glowing foreword by Professor Dick Swaab. He stated: "With the knowledge of your coretalents, you can make choices that will still make you happy in 25 years."
Danielle is currently working on her fourth book, focusing on gender differences in coretalents and the brain, with the support of Dick Swaab for the neuroscientific aspects.
In 2006, she began training the first Coretalents-analysts, making it her mission to help people truly understand themselves so they can make choices that genuinely suit them and become who they are meant to be.
Today, there are more than 500 certified Coretalents-analysts, and the Coretalents-analysis is available in Dutch, French, English, and German.
In 2015, the online Coretalents-questionnaire was validated for reliability at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB).
In 2017, the method gained further recognition through the endorsement of Professor Dick Swaab, renowned neuroscientist and founder of the Netherlands Brain Bank. He confirmed that talent development originates in DNA and early childhood and that coretalents remain imprinted in the brain for life.
Various research projects and a strict empirical foundation have established the Coretalents-method as a truly evidence-based tool.
This is why a Coretalents-analysis is a reliable and scientifically validated instrument that helps people—whether for themselves or others—gain deep self-awareness. It enables individuals to grow, evolve, and develop in a way that aligns naturally with who they truly are.
How much does a Coretalents analysis cost?
Coretalents does not apply a standard rate and does not impose any pricing on certified Coretalents-analysts. The main reason is that, in addition to their certified training, each Coretalents-analyst brings their own unique skills, additional training, expertise, experience, and specialized knowledge.
This is why our analysts have the full freedom to decide whether to offer additional guidance after a Coretalents-analysis, to include follow-up sessions or an in-depth structured interview, and to determine the type of report they provide. They also decide which types of client requests they handle and which cases they prefer to refer to another specialist.
NB: Coretalents-analysts do not pay any fees to Coretalents for conducting analyses or sending out online questionnaires.
Coretalents is happy to direct you to the analyst that best suits your needs – or you can easily find one yourself using our filter system in the find your analyst section
Conclusion: become who you are!
Your 23 coretalents, unique and personal, are the key to a fulfilling life—in alignment with yourself, by you, and for you.
Your coretalents guide you throughout your life, supporting your development and enabling positive, sustainable growth—simply by staying true to yourself.
Find answers to essential questions: Who am I? What do I want? Where do I draw my energy from? What truly makes me happy? What am I good at that also aligns with who I am and who I want to become?
By knowing your own coretalents, you make choices that align with your natural strengths—and that changes everything!
Discover your coretalents. Schedule an appointment today with the analyst of your choice. Let the unique constellation of your coretalents be your guide toward a life where you can fully be yourself.
Whether for your studies, career, personal growth, or relationships, your coretalents will show you the way to a life of fulfillment and success.