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The career you have had The career you would prefer
The parts of your career you were sure about are the hardest to change. Where you weren't sure, look at the types that differ from yours on just that letter. Each one is a career very much like yours, different in one way, and could be a path worth exploring.
You were sure about every part of your career, so no type one letter away is an easy step from the career you have.
Very different roles, similar environments, towards mastery in at least one, one at a time.
Varied instead of Focused The Steward moves between very different roles. Your roles so far have been fairly similar, but that can change: a role that asks for different know-how would be a start.
Similar roles, very different environments, towards mastery, one at a time.
Widespread instead of Rooted The Pilgrim moves across very different environments. Your career so far has been somewhat rooted, but that doesn't mean it has to stay that way. You could look for a new sector, a different culture or another country, for instance.
Similar roles, similar environments, competent, one at a time.
Competence instead of Mastery The Perennial gets competent at many things instead of expert at one. You mostly keep going towards expert. Letting one area rest at competent, and spending that time on something new, is another way to go.
Similar roles, similar environments, towards mastery, several at once.
Parallel instead of Serial The Banyan holds several commitments at once. You mostly hold commitments one at a time, but maybe a part-time role or a side project next to your main work would suit you.
Very different roles, similar environments, towards mastery in at least one, one at a time.
Varied instead of Focused The Steward moves between very different roles. Your roles so far have been fairly similar, but that can change: a role that asks for different know-how would be a start.
Similar roles, very different environments, towards mastery, one at a time.
Widespread instead of Rooted The Pilgrim moves across very different environments. Your career so far has been somewhat rooted, but that doesn't mean it has to stay that way. You could look for a new sector, a different culture or another country, for instance.
Similar roles, similar environments, competent, one at a time.
Competence instead of Mastery The Perennial gets competent at many things instead of expert at one. You mostly keep going towards expert. Letting one area rest at competent, and spending that time on something new, is another way to go.
Similar roles, similar environments, towards mastery, several at once.
Parallel instead of Serial The Banyan holds several commitments at once. You mostly hold commitments one at a time, but maybe a part-time role or a side project next to your main work would suit you.
Similar roles, similar environments, towards mastery, one at a time.
Self-Led instead of Guided A Self-Led Diver's moves mostly start from their own search. Most of your moves came to you through offers. Going out and finding the next one yourself could take your career somewhere new.
Similar roles, similar environments, towards mastery, one at a time.
Guided instead of Self-Led A Guided Diver's moves mostly come from offers and assignments. Most of your moves started from your own search, but saying yes to an offer you didn't go looking for can open doors too.
Your result:
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Your type in full: The Diver
One of the Specialists, the family of careers that do one kind of work in similar environments
One kind of work, in one world, one post at a time, with a drive for mastery. (FRMS)
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In everyday English, a diver is someone who goes below the surface of the water to mend a pier, survey a wreck or study a reef. A diver goes down at one spot, one dive at a time, rather than travelling across, and deeper diving asks for more training. In a Diver career the spot is one trade in one world, each dive is one post, and the depth is what the years add to the craft.
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A Diver (FRMS) takes one kind of work deeper year by year, in one world and in one post at a time.
Neither the kind of work nor the Diver’s world, their work environment, changes when a Diver moves on. Only the post changes, from junior to senior, from someone else’s bench to a bench of the Diver’s own, to another employer in the same trade or to a new set of clients, and each new post puts all of the Diver’s know-how to work again.
A violin maker trained in one town’s workshops, made instruments under a master there for twelve years and then opened her own workshop two streets away. Through three posts and two employers the work stayed violin making, and the world stayed the town’s workshops, its dealers and the players who bring instruments in. The same shape fits a judge, a surgeon or a tax adviser, and this page uses the word trade for any such line of work, professions included.
Each year of a Diver career turns up finer points of the craft to get right, and a Diver goes after those points even where no customer would notice the difference.
The people in a Diver’s world know the craft well enough to tell good work from the best, and those people are the ones who hire, refer and promote within that world. However, every year spent deepening one craft in one post is a year in which no second kind of work and no second post is tried, so a Diver knows one craft far better than the trades around it.
A Focused career stays with one kind of work, such as nursing, carpentry or tax law. The know-how carries over from one role to the next, so each new role builds on the last.
At the other end, a Varied career takes on kinds of work that have little in common.
A Rooted career stays in one recognisable world, such as one sector, one profession or one city's cultural life. The people, the rules and the habits of that world stay familiar from role to role.
At the other end, a Widespread career moves between very different worlds.
A Mastery career keeps pushing past good enough, in at least one area and often in several, whether or not anyone asks for it.
At the other end, a Competence career gets good enough and spends its energy elsewhere.
At the other end, a Parallel career holds several commitments at once.
The first two letters of a code shape a working life more than the other two. How varied the roles are and how different their environments decide what a career is like from one year to the next, so the sixteen career types are grouped by those two letters into four families.
The method behind the types. Every career type here comes from one typology, built on five aspects of a career, each running between two ends. A type is the end a career sits nearest on each.
One kind of work, in similar environments
Very different work, in similar environments
One kind of work, across very different environments
Very different work, across very different environments
One commitment at a time, with a push for mastery
A glassblower starts at a glass factory at sixteen, sweeping the floor and gathering molten glass for the masters. Within ten years the glassblower makes the factory’s tableware without help, and later leads the team that blows the factory’s finest pieces. Every commission the factory takes from a museum or a cathedral now goes to the glassblower’s team.
A cutter, the tailor who cuts the cloth, spends fifteen years at one of the street’s old tailoring firms learning to cut suits for every kind of body, then rents a workroom three doors down and opens a business under his own name. The cutter’s customers follow, and so does work from the firm he left, for the bodies the firm’s own cutters find hardest to fit. Five years on, the waiting list for a suit from the cutter’s workroom runs to six months.
A young lawyer starts as a family court judge’s assistant, becomes a family judge, then a senior family judge, and later sits on the family bench of the appeal court. Family judges across the country now cite the former assistant’s rulings from the appeal court on how separated parents share their children’s time.
Every career type suits some people more than others, and part of the reason lies in their traits. The test measures the traits behind each letter of the code, and these four draw people to a Diver career.
Experiences radically different from the ones they know are not what they go looking for.
Being known for a diverse set of connections matters little to them.
They seek out feedback that helps them master new skills.
They are not comfortable when interruptions break their flow of work.
Every Diver career sits somewhere between Self-Led and Guided, depending on where its roles came from. Most careers hold some of each, and the variant follows the moves that shaped the career most. Self-Led or Guided
FRMSO, O for owned
A Self-Led Diver finds each next post. A Self-Led Diver applies for the position, the bench or the commission that would take the work deeper, or sets up in business and builds a list of customers. Customers and colleagues come to know the work by the Diver’s own name, as players know a violin by its maker, and the name stays with the Diver through every change of post.
A Self-Led Diver hunts for every post without help, through the trade’s grapevine, applications and chance meetings, and a post that disappoints means a second hunt soon after. The best judges of a craft are few, so word of an opening often passes among those judges first, and a Self-Led Diver who keeps showing those judges the work hears of the opening early.
Abigail Mendoza Ruiz, a Self-Led DiverAbigail Mendoza Ruiz learned Zapotec cooking from her family as a small child in Teotitlán del Valle, a village in Oaxaca, Mexico. Mendoza later opened Tlamanalli, a restaurant in the same village, where she still grinds on a metate, a traditional grinding stone. Within a few years a food magazine and the New York Times had written about the restaurant, and Mexico later gave Mendoza its National Prize for Arts, for popular arts and traditions. A Self-Led Diver (FRMS-O).
FRMSG, G for guided
A Guided Diver climbs a ladder that an employer or a profession has already built, from apprentice to master, or from junior to senior to head of the department. Each rung comes with its own training, and the senior people of the craft who decide each step can judge the Diver’s work at close range and vouch for it elsewhere. The ladder can end in the institution’s top post for the craft, such as chief forecaster or master of the works.
The ladder also sets the pace. A rung opens only when someone above retires or moves, so a gifted Guided Diver can spend years one step below the post the work deserves. Outside the institution, a Guided Diver’s depth is often known only by a job title, which tells a stranger the rank and little about the craft.
Susan Fisher Sterling, a Guided DiverSusan Fisher Sterling took a doctorate in art history at Princeton and joined the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington as associate curator in the year after the museum opened. The museum made Sterling its curator of modern and contemporary art, then chief curator, then deputy director, and twenty years after she arrived, its director. Under Sterling the collection grew to more than six thousand works by more than fifteen hundred artists. A Guided Diver (FRMS-G).
Taiichi Ohno joined a Toyoda family textile company after technical school and moved to the Toyota Motor Company, working in engine manufacturing. Ohno went on to build a new way to run production on the shop floor, borrowing the way a supermarket restocks its shelves, and Toyota promoted him step by step until he was one of the company’s executives. Ohno became known as the father of the Toyota Production System, which inspired lean manufacturing. A Guided Diver (FRMS-G).
Sandrine Logette-Jardin studied oenology, the science of winemaking, and joined the Champagne house Duval-Leroy straight from her studies. The house soon put Logette-Jardin in charge of quality control, and she oversaw the house’s certification under an international quality standard, a first for a champagne house. The house then made Logette-Jardin its chef de cave, the winemaker who decides how each champagne is made, and she changed how the house makes its wine and uses oak barrels. A Guided Diver (FRMS-G).
Philippe Dufour trained at the watchmaking school of the Vallée de Joux in Switzerland and was hired by Jaeger-LeCoultre in the same valley. After eleven years with watch firms, Dufour bought a workshop and became an independent watchmaker, restoring antique watches. Dufour made five grande sonnerie pocket watches, which chime by themselves, for Audemars Piguet, then his first grande sonnerie wristwatch, shown at the Basel fair, then the Duality and the Simplicity, finishing each by hand. A Self-Led Diver (FRMS-O).
Antoni Gaudí qualified as an architect in Barcelona and began taking commissions the same year. At the Paris World’s Fair Gaudí’s work caught the eye of the industrialist Eusebi Güell, who became his chief patron, and Gaudí designed Palau Güell and Park Güell for Güell. At thirty-one Gaudí took over the Sagrada Família and redesigned it, and in his last years Gaudí took on no other commission and worked only on the Sagrada Família. A Self-Led Diver (FRMS-O).
Abigail Mendoza Ruiz learned Zapotec cooking from her family as a small child in Teotitlán del Valle, a village in Oaxaca, Mexico. Mendoza later opened Tlamanalli, a restaurant in the same village, where she still grinds on a metate, a traditional grinding stone. Within a few years a food magazine and the New York Times had written about the restaurant, and Mexico later gave Mendoza its National Prize for Arts, for popular arts and traditions. A Self-Led Diver (FRMS-O).
Susan Fisher Sterling took a doctorate in art history at Princeton and joined the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington as associate curator in the year after the museum opened. The museum made Sterling its curator of modern and contemporary art, then chief curator, then deputy director, and twenty years after she arrived, its director. Under Sterling the collection grew to more than six thousand works by more than fifteen hundred artists. A Guided Diver (FRMS-G).
At work, a Diver is the colleague who knows both the craft and the people who practise the craft in the Diver’s world.
They know who to ask, and who to go to when something needs doing.
In their speciality they go after the difficult problems that others would rather pass on.
A useful contact, idea or chance they come across goes to their one commitment, with nothing else competing for it.
Among people of their trade they share the language and are trusted as a peer.
A Diver tends to judge a problem first by the standards of the Diver’s own trade. The accountant’s figures, the engineer’s limits or the client’s budget can then weigh less with the Diver than with everyone else at the table. The blind spot is plainest when a job needs several trades at once, or when an outsider asks why the work is done the way it is.
A Diver career needs a craft that rewards decades of practice, and colleagues who can tell good work from great. In each world below the posts follow one another, and each post asks more of the craft than the post before. A weather service or a forensic laboratory hands out each next post itself, so most Divers there are Guided, while a sushi chef more often opens a counter of the chef’s own and goes on Self-Led.
Apprentice engraver, engraver, senior engraver, chief engraver
Apprentice, chef at the counter, a counter of one’s own
Trainee signaller, signaller, signalling inspector, head of signalling for a region
Technician, examiner, senior examiner, head of the laboratory
Forecaster, senior forecaster, chief forecaster
Apprentice welder, welder, certified pressure welder, welding inspector
Conservation assistant, conservator, senior conservator, head of conservation
Other words people use for this pattern, and how each fits a Diver.
The site uses the word for its family of careers that do one kind of work in similar environments, four types of which the Diver is one. Everyday speech uses the word most for someone who takes one trade as deep as the trade goes, which is a Diver’s whole career. FRThe Specialists
Everyday words for someone who works for one employer from first job to last, which fit a Diver who spends the whole career inside one organisation, as Taiichi Ohno did in the Toyota group and Susan Fisher Sterling at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. A Diver career needs no single employer, and a Diver can change employers several times without leaving the trade.
A Diver’s next step is either a new post inside the same trade or more years in the post already held. Changes of post come seldom, so each change sets the course of many years of deep work, and a wrong choice is slow to put right.
A competition, an exhibition or a professional exam judged by people from beyond the Diver’s world puts the standard of the work on record in terms other worlds understand. A shrinking world then matters less, because judges elsewhere have already seen the work.
Where an employer allows it, a leave of absence from the current post, instead of a resignation, lets a Diver try the next post with a way back. The first few moves gain most from a way back, because a Diver has the least experience of how a move turns out.
The number of people starting out in the trade, and whether the trade’s senior posts still pay as well as before, show a Diver early whether the trade is growing or fading. A fading trade seen early leaves years to carry the craft into a neighbouring trade.
A short course for architects, a talk to engineers or a class at a school puts a Diver among people trained differently, and the questions from those people show the craft from outside.
In a new post, showing the first results to one colleague whose judgement the Diver trusts catches a disappointing result while the result can still be fixed. The same colleague can say when a result the Diver is unhappy with is good enough to stand.
| The skill |  Focused |  Rooted |  Mastery |  Serial |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Deliberate practice Picking one weakness in the craft at a time and working on that weakness with honest feedback, long after the work pleases the customer. M | Serves Mastery | |||
| Asking for feedback Going to the best judges of the craft for a verdict, rather than waiting for one to arrive. M | Serves Mastery | |||
| Attention and focus Guarding the long, unbroken stretches that deep work in one craft needs. MS | Serves Mastery | Serves Serial | ||
| Contextual intelligence Knowing who in the trade judges the work, and which posts lead where, so the next post is the right one. R | Serves Rooted | |||
| Seeing change coming Watching the trade's order books and pay over the years, so a fading trade is seen while the next post can still be chosen. FR | Serves Focused | Serves Rooted | ||
| Small bets Testing a move with a small, cheap trial, so a bad fit costs a few months rather than a career. S | Serves Serial |
A Diver career usually begins as the Perennial (FRCS). Three neighbours lie ahead of a Diver career, each reached by growing one letter, to very different roles, very different worlds or a second commitment held beside the first.
The same trade and the same world, with each post done well. Adding the push for mastery to that career makes a Diver career.
FRMSYears of one craft in one world have taken a Diver further into the work than most practitioners ever go, and every later post, in this world or another, starts at that depth.
The same craft in the same world, once a second commitment is taken on beside the first, and both are kept.
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Coming soon
The DiverThe scan shows the career you've had. The trait test, which I'm building now, shows which of the sixteen types fits who you are, and how far your career is from that type.
You are on the list as . Look in your inbox for the first email.
Our signup is not answering just now. This opens the newsletter's own signup page, with your address filled in.
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