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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.
Similar roles, very different environments, competent, several at once.
Focused instead of Varied The Amphibian stays in one kind of work and keeps building on it. Your roles so far have varied somewhat. Picking the kind of work you like best and staying with it is an option too.
Very different roles, similar environments, competent, several at once.
Rooted instead of Widespread The Keystone stays in similar environments, where the people and the rules are familiar. Your environments so far have varied somewhat. Choosing one world and putting down roots there could suit you as well.
Very different roles, very different environments, towards mastery in at least one, several at once.
Mastery instead of Competence The Polymath keeps working past competent, towards expert. You mostly stop once you're competent, but you could pick one area that matters to you and take it further.
Very different roles, very different environments, competent, one at a time.
Serial instead of Parallel The Adapter gives one commitment its full attention at a time. You mostly hold several commitments at once. Putting everything into one for a while might be worth trying.
Similar roles, very different environments, competent, several at once.
Focused instead of Varied The Amphibian stays in one kind of work and keeps building on it. Your roles so far have varied somewhat. Picking the kind of work you like best and staying with it is an option too.
Very different roles, similar environments, competent, several at once.
Rooted instead of Widespread The Keystone stays in similar environments, where the people and the rules are familiar. Your environments so far have varied somewhat. Choosing one world and putting down roots there could suit you as well.
Very different roles, very different environments, towards mastery in at least one, several at once.
Mastery instead of Competence The Polymath keeps working past competent, towards expert. You mostly stop once you're competent, but you could pick one area that matters to you and take it further.
Very different roles, very different environments, competent, one at a time.
Serial instead of Parallel The Adapter gives one commitment its full attention at a time. You mostly hold several commitments at once. Putting everything into one for a while might be worth trying.
Very different roles, very different environments, competent, several at once.
Self-Led instead of Guided A Self-Led Mender'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.
Very different roles, very different environments, competent, several at once.
Guided instead of Self-Led A Guided Mender'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 Mender
One of the Generalists, the family of careers that take on very different work in very different environments
Very different roles, in very different worlds, held several at a time, each done well. (VWCP)
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In everyday English, a mender is someone who repairs things so that they can stay in use, such as a torn fishing net, a broken gate or a worn coat. A good mender is trusted by fishermen, farmers and families alike, and the repairs last. A Mender career earns a mender’s kind of trust from several very different worlds at once.
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The MenderThe 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.
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A Mender (VWCP) shares each week among three or four very different jobs, and no two of the jobs belong to the same world. A world, on this site, is a work environment such as a farm, a council or a college, and the people and habits of one seldom turn up in another.
A sheep farmer spends four days a week with the flock, takes the chair at the parish council’s monthly meeting and studies law two evenings a week. The council pays nothing and the law course costs money, and on this site both count as roles.
The farmer can take a question about grazing rights to a councillor and a question about a lease to a law tutor, two people the flock alone would not have brought. The mix also widens what the farmer can do, and every new role gives more practice at being new somewhere.
Competence keeps each of the farmer’s roles at a level that needs no catching up after a week away, so the farmer can turn from lambing to a council agenda without a backlog. However, when one world raises what it asks, such as a council taking on a planning dispute, the extra hours come out of the other two roles.
A Varied career takes on kinds of work that have little in common, such as engineering, managing people and setting strategy. Each role asks for different skills and a different way of approaching the work.
At the other end, a Focused career stays with one kind of work and takes it deeper.
A Widespread career moves between very different worlds, such as a ministry, a startup and a charity, or one country's working life and another's. Each new world brings its own people, rules and habits, learned afresh at every move.
At the other end, a Rooted career stays in one recognisable world.
A Competence career gets solidly good at its work and holds that standard, putting the rest of its energy into more roles, more worlds or life outside work.
At the other end, a Mastery career keeps pushing past good enough, in at least one area and often in several.
A Parallel career holds several commitments at once, such as a job, a practice and a seat on a board. Each keeps running while the others do.
At the other end, a Serial career holds one commitment at a time.
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
Several commitments at once, each done well
A pharmacist manages the pharmacy in a small village and, every Thursday evening, presents a phone-in health programme on the local radio station in the nearest city. Week after week, callers asked the pharmacist what to do with medicines left over at home. The pharmacist put a returns bin by the pharmacy counter and explained the bin on air, and the following year the county’s health board paid for the same bin in every pharmacy in the county.
A mechanic runs her own bicycle repair shop from spring to autumn and teaches at the ski school through the winter. Parents at the ski school kept asking where their children could ride once the snow had gone. The mechanic started a Saturday-morning bicycle club for children at her shop in May, and thirty families from the ski school joined in the first season.
A shop manager runs the town’s hardware shop four days a week, grows salad leaves in a cooperative market garden, and cares for his father on the other days. The shop had no supplier of seedlings and compost that its customers trusted. The manager arranged to buy seedlings and compost from the market garden’s growers, and the shop’s spring sales of garden goods doubled while the growers gained a buyer for the whole year.
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 Mender career.
They like to explore what they do not know, even when it feels risky.
They like being known for connections across many different backgrounds.
They would rather tackle a problem within easy reach than a hard one.
They are happy to start something new before the last thing is finished.
Every Mender 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
VWCPO, O for owned
A Self-Led Mender opens each world personally, often with a small first step that grows. A weekend market stall turns into a shop, one guest lecture at an evening college turns into a course of the Mender’s own, and a seat on a residents’ committee turns into the chair. A role the Mender started can also take its hours from the gaps the other roles leave, which few offered seats allow.
Several self-made roles also mean several small incomes, each paid at its own rhythm, a stall’s takings weekly and a course’s fees each term. A separate account for each role’s takings shows a Self-Led Mender early which rhythm is running short.
Lotay Tshering, a Self-Led MenderLotay Tshering studied medicine in Bangladesh and urology in the United States, on a fellowship from the World Health Organization, and came home as the only trained urologist in Bhutan. The surgeon gave up a post at the national referral hospital in Thimphu to go into politics, and in time became prime minister. Six months into the premiership, Tshering was still operating at the referral hospital on Saturdays and advising trainee doctors on Thursday mornings. A Self-Led Mender (VWCP-O).
VWCPG, G for guided
Offers bring a Guided Mender into each world, and the offers come from bodies that seldom deal with each other. One offer often leads to the next, as when a shop owner who chairs the town’s traders is asked onto the planning committee and from there to sit as a lay magistrate. Each offered seat comes with a term of a few years, so a Guided Mender’s mix renews itself without anyone having to resign.
Each seat also brings its body’s rules on conflicts of interest, and a seat in one world can rule out a seat in another, such as a magistrate’s bench beside a seat on the council committee that grants the town’s licences.
Oren Lesmeister, a Guided MenderOren Lesmeister is a fourth-generation rancher near Parade, South Dakota, and took over the family ranch at twenty-two. Beside the cattle, Lesmeister taught agriculture at a high school, served as a combat engineer in the state’s National Guard and opened a feed store on the ranch. Asked to run for the state legislature, the rancher served four terms and rose to lead the smaller party in the state House, with the ranch still running beside the seat. A Guided Mender (VWCP-G).
Bernadette Boss qualified as a lawyer in England and then in Australia, and served six years as a legal officer in the Australian Army. As a barrister in Canberra, Boss held a commission in the Army Reserve and became vice-president of the Australian Capital Territory’s Bar Association. When Boss was appointed a magistrate, the Canberra Times noted that the new magistrate was at once a doctor of law, a colonel and, from June, “Your Honour”. A Guided Mender (VWCP-G).
Maggie Kigozi trained in medicine at Makerere University and later moved into business as marketing director of Crown Bottlers, Uganda’s Pepsi bottler. Kigozi went on to become the first woman to head the Uganda Investment Authority, and ran the agency for twelve years. Afterwards Kigozi combined a directorship at Crown Beverages with teaching economics at Makerere, and in later years chaired the Africa Scout Foundation and the Global Fund’s coordinating body for Uganda while running Zuri Model Farm. A Guided Mender (VWCP-G).
Anna Mokgokong began as a community doctor in South Africa, with her own clinic at Hebron. In the early nineteen-nineties the doctor moved into business and co-founded Community Investment Holdings, a group with interests including healthcare, information technology, mining and power, which Mokgokong chairs. Beside chairing the group, Mokgokong joined Shoprite’s board as its first woman, served on two government commissions, acted as Iceland’s honorary consul general and was installed as North-West University’s first woman chancellor. A Self-Led Mender (VWCP-O).
Paul Revere took over his father’s silversmith’s shop in Boston and, when trade slowed in the seventeen-sixties, also took up dentistry beside the silver work. Before the American Revolution the silversmith engraved prints for the patriot cause and rode as a courier for Boston’s Committee of Public Safety. After the War of Independence Revere opened an iron foundry that cast bells and cannon, and around eighteen hundred the first copper rolling mill in North America. A Self-Led Mender (VWCP-O).
Lotay Tshering studied medicine in Bangladesh and urology in the United States, on a fellowship from the World Health Organization, and came home as the only trained urologist in Bhutan. The surgeon gave up a post at the national referral hospital in Thimphu to go into politics, and in time became prime minister. Six months into the premiership, Tshering was still operating at the referral hospital on Saturdays and advising trainee doctors on Thursday mornings. A Self-Led Mender (VWCP-O).
Oren Lesmeister is a fourth-generation rancher near Parade, South Dakota, and took over the family ranch at twenty-two. Beside the cattle, Lesmeister taught agriculture at a high school, served as a combat engineer in the state’s National Guard and opened a feed store on the ranch. Asked to run for the state legislature, the rancher served four terms and rose to lead the smaller party in the state House, with the ranch still running beside the seat. A Guided Mender (VWCP-G).
At work, a Mender is the colleague who arrives with news from other worlds, such as a supplier the parish council uses or the price lambs fetched at the week’s market.
Having moved between very different kinds of work, they can point a colleague toward work that might suit them better.
They can introduce people who would otherwise not meet.
They do everything to a solid standard, with few weak spots.
A club, a board and a business can each rely on them every week, without any needing all of their time.
A seat on a committee in one of a Mender’s worlds, a newsletter in a second and an extra Saturday in a third can each look small to the world that asks the Mender, and the three together fill the Mender’s spare evenings. No world sees what the other worlds have already handed over.
Small towns and remote valleys reward a Mender, because their few people share the posts of several worlds.
Seats on boards and councils come by election or appointment, the Guided way, and a stall or an evening class comes by the Mender’s own asking.
Head of quality, elected member, leader of the sea scouts
Tax inspector, charity trustee, Arabic teacher
Plant manager, treasurer of the mosque, junior cricket coach
Patent examiner, puppeteer, riding instructor
Mining engineer, director of the land trust, captain of the bell ringers
Machine operator, costume maker for the carnival, karate instructor
Saw operator, dance teacher, secretary of the allotment society
Other words people use for this pattern, and how each fits a Mender.
A Mender’s breadth runs two ways, across kinds of work and across worlds, which is what the site’s Generalists (VW) family shares, while ordinary talk gives the word to anyone with broad skills. VWThe Generalists
A Mender’s mix of a salaried post, a business, an elected seat or a course of study, each in a world of its own, is what most people mean by the term, and on this site the term points to the Mender first. The Keystone (VRCP) gathers a similar mix from a single town, trade or community. VRCPThe Keystone
Meant kindly, as for a farmer who also chairs the parish council and studies law.
An international career, for a Mender, often means moving abroad and building a new mix of roles there, one role at a time, and expat fits for as long as the Mender’s home is abroad.
A Mender career is tested in the week a new commitment joins the others, when every role already held still expects its usual hours. What is settled that week, which hours move and which role yields, tends to set the pattern for the year.
A member of a regional development board can say, over coffee after a public meeting, which worlds the board’s seats are short of, such as farming or small business. Taking the next role in farming or small business gives the board a reason to call the Mender at the board’s next search.
Among the people a Mender meets in the worlds already held, one may also have a foot in the next world, such as a customer who sits on its committee or a fellow trustee who works there. Starting the new commitment on that person’s recommendation gives the Mender a first ally among the new world’s people.
Most worlds have a slack time, such as a ski school’s summer or a parish council’s August without meetings. A Mender who notes each world’s slack time can give each world’s slack weeks to whichever role needs more attention that year.
A Mender who already keeps a shop’s accounts can begin a club treasurer’s role with the club’s accounts, and leave the unfamiliar parts of the role for the second month.
The local paper and the local radio station look for stories such as a pharmacy’s returns bin, and one report can reach every world a Mender works in at once.
| The skill |  Varied |  Widespread |  Competence |  Parallel |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Asking for feedback Inviting one person from each world, once a year, to name what the Mender's work there could do better. CW | Serves Widespread | Serves Competence | ||
| Seeing the whole system Tracing how a change in one world reaches the others, as a new market day moves a radio slot and a shop's opening hours. WP | Serves Widespread | Serves Parallel | ||
| Cognitive load management Ending each day in a world with a written note of where the work stopped, so the next day in that world starts at the right place. P | Serves Parallel | |||
| Translating between worlds Turning a farmer's complaint into a motion a council can vote on, or a council's new rule into advice a shop's customers can follow. VW | Serves Varied | Serves Widespread | ||
| Setting each role's size Agreeing the size of each role when the role is offered, such as which meetings a seat includes, so the role fits the week as agreed. CP | Serves Competence | Serves Parallel | ||
| Guarding attention Putting off a new request from one world while another world's busy season runs, such as a committee task in lambing week. CP | Serves Competence | Serves Parallel |
Each of the three careers a Mender career often grows out of already has two of the Mender’s three kinds of breadth, very different roles, very different worlds and several commitments at once. An earlier career becomes a Mender career when the third kind of breadth arrives.
One kind of work, practised side by side in very different worlds. An Amphibian career becomes a Mender career once work of an unrelated kind joins the mix.
Several roles with little in common, held together in one world. A Keystone career becomes a Mender career when a new role is taken up in a world unlike the Keystone’s own.
Very different roles in very different worlds, taken one at a time. An Adapter career becomes a Mender career once a second commitment is taken on beside the first, and both are kept.
VWCPA Mender career gives one person a working week no single employer could offer, three very different jobs in three very different worlds.
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Coming soon
The MenderThe 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.
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Our signup is not answering just now. This opens the newsletter's own signup page, with your address filled in.
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