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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, competent, one at a time.
Varied instead of Focused The Allrounder 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, competent, one at a time.
Widespread instead of Rooted The Nomad 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, towards mastery, one at a time.
Mastery instead of Competence The Diver 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.
Similar roles, similar environments, competent, several at once.
Parallel instead of Serial The Shepherd 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, competent, one at a time.
Varied instead of Focused The Allrounder 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, competent, one at a time.
Widespread instead of Rooted The Nomad 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, towards mastery, one at a time.
Mastery instead of Competence The Diver 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.
Similar roles, similar environments, competent, several at once.
Parallel instead of Serial The Shepherd 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, competent, one at a time.
Self-Led instead of Guided A Self-Led Perennial'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, competent, one at a time.
Guided instead of Self-Led A Guided Perennial'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 Perennial
One of the Specialists, the family of careers that do one kind of work in similar environments
One kind of work, in one world, taken one post after another, each done well. (FRCS)
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In everyday English, a perennial is a plant that lives for many years. Many perennials die back each winter and grow again each spring from the same roots. The word also covers anything that returns reliably, such as a perennial favourite. The Perennial is named for both senses, a career rooted in one kind of work and one world, holding one post after another and doing the work well each year.
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A Perennial (FRCS) builds a working life post by post inside one trade and one world, and each new post opens with the trust the previous post earned.
From one post to the next, a Perennial keeps both the kind of work and the world, the Perennial’s work environment, so the colleagues, the customs and the unwritten rules are already known on the first day of each new post. Each new post, the particular job held, brings a different route, branch, shift or grade, sometimes a different employer, and new people to serve.
A city bus driver started on the quietest route, moved to the busiest, then to the night buses, and became a senior driver at the same depot. When the city gave its bus contract to a new operating company, the driver moved across with the routes. The employer changed and the driver’s world did not, since the streets, the depot and the passengers were the ones the driver had known for thirty years.
A Perennial reaches a solid standard in the work and brings that standard to every post, so the people a Perennial works with and for can count on the work. Once the work is at that standard, a Perennial’s remaining time and energy go to whatever else the Perennial cares about, at work or at home.
A Perennial’s record belongs to one trade and one world, and that world values the record most. People outside that world have not watched the work, so a Perennial’s record is harder to show them.
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 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.
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, each done well, without seeking mastery
A library assistant starts at a small branch in a country town, moves to the county’s central library, then takes over the mobile library that tours the villages each week. At every post the assistant does the same work, helping people find the book they came for and the next one after it. In the assistant’s eighth year on the mobile route, two villages asked for a second weekly stop.
A farmer who owns her herd sells her milk to one dairy cooperative, first from a rented farm, then from a farm she bought in the next valley, still on the cooperative’s collection route. In twenty-five years the cooperative’s tanker has not once turned the farmer’s milk away, and in the farmer’s twentieth year the cooperative asked the farmer to show its new members how the herd is kept.
A payroll clerk joins a bureau that pays the staff of small firms across one city. The clerk starts on the restaurants’ payrolls, moves to the building firms with their weekly wages, then becomes the senior clerk who checks every week’s wages before the money goes out. In the clerk’s first five years as senior clerk, every client’s staff was paid on the right day, and new clients came to the bureau on the strength of that record.
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 Perennial career.
They are less inclined to explore the unknown when it feels risky.
Meeting people from many walks of life does little to give them energy.
Feedback that helps them master new skills is not what they go looking for.
They would rather finish one piece of work before starting the next.
Every Perennial 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
FRCSO, O for owned
A Self-Led Perennial chooses each new post and applies for the post, or sets the post up alone. A Self-Led bus driver may bid against other drivers for the best route at the depot, and a stylist may compete for the senior chair in a salon. Some Self-Led Perennials go on to work for themselves, with a stall, a workshop or a shop in the trade the Perennial already knows, choosing the customers, the hours and the street. The work keeps its kind, and the Perennial decides where and for whom the work is done.
Every opening a Self-Led Perennial takes is one the Perennial spotted, applied for or set up. A Perennial who works alone also pays for any training and depends on customers coming back week after week. A new route or a rented chair can disappoint, and a Self-Led Perennial finds out only by working it. Regular customers and long-standing colleagues carry a Self-Led Perennial through a slow month, and the same people pass on the next customer or the next opening.
Marta Hill, a Self-Led PerennialMarta Hill was working part-time for a caterer when the owner closed the business and passed some of the customers to Hill. With three hundred dollars, a mixer, a spatula and some bowls, Hill opened Marta’s Bakery in Cahaba Heights, Alabama, and started with pound cakes. Over thirty-four years the bakery moved twice within Cahaba Heights and added cookies, pies, casseroles and soups. Nearing seventy, Hill made plans to sell the bakery to an employee of about four years and to do charity work. A Self-Led Perennial (FRCS-O).
FRCSG, G for guided
A Guided Perennial is offered each next route, branch or grade by the employer or the service, often on the strength of years of work the managers know first-hand. The offered post brings a wage paid on the same day each month, often a pension, and a training course before the first shift. In a large employer, a Guided Perennial can rise through the grades of one kind of work across a whole working life.
A Guided Perennial’s next post comes when a vacancy opens or a reorganisation calls for one, and the Perennial seldom picks the moment. A depot can close or a branch can merge on a decision taken far from the Perennial, and the post offered in its place is fitted to the employer’s timetable, whatever the timetable at home. A Guided Perennial who knows how the organisation fills its posts, whether by seniority, by interview or by a manager’s choice, can see the next offer coming and plan the household around the offer.
Frank Schubert, a Guided PerennialFrank Schubert grew up on Staten Island, worked as a lifeguard, then joined the crew of the Tulip, a ship that tended navigation buoys. When the lighthouses passed to the Coast Guard and civilians were no longer wanted aboard buoy tenders, Schubert was offered a lighthouse keeper’s post. After the lighthouses at Old Orchard and on Governors Island, Schubert chose Coney Island so his family could live with him, and kept that light for forty-three years. Schubert became known as America’s last civilian lighthouse keeper. A Guided Perennial (FRCS-G).
At sixteen, Lorraine Shand went along to a friend’s job interview at Baxters, the food company in Fochabers, Scotland, and left with a job of her own. Shand started on the beetroot line, then spent twenty years on can labelling and shrink wrapping. In the nineties Shand moved to the export department, which sent Baxters products to Europe, the Middle East, Canada, America and Australia. After fifty years at Baxters, Shand retired, saying she had enjoyed coming to work every single day. A Guided Perennial (FRCS-G).
Walter Orthmann went to work at fifteen to help his family, and Industrias Renaux, a textile company in Brusque, in southern Brazil, hired him as a shipping assistant because he spoke German. Orthmann moved into sales and became the company’s sales manager. Guinness World Records verified eighty-four years at Industrias Renaux as the longest career in one company. At a hundred, Orthmann still went to the office every day, and said that doing what he liked made the time go by unnoticed. A Guided Perennial (FRCS-G).
Ali Akbar left Rawalpindi, Pakistan, as a young man and reached Paris in the early seventies. Georges Bernier, known as Professor Choron, took Akbar on to sell the satirical papers Charlie Hebdo and Hara-Kiri to students in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and Akbar later sold Libération and Le Monde on the same streets. More than fifty years on, Akbar still calls out the day’s papers in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. President Macron, once one of Akbar’s customers, made Akbar a knight of the Ordre national du Mérite at the Élysée. A Guided Perennial (FRCS-G).
José Arturo Morales learned the shoemaker’s trade at seven, helping his father make sandals in Comitán, Chiapas. Morales came to Mexico City to study and then worked for decades in clothing and cosmetics shops, years in which his career was not yet a Perennial’s. To pay for his daughters’ studies, Morales went back to shoes and opened El Rápido, a repair workshop in Colonia Roma. El Rápido’s customers came to include Silvia Pinal and Salma Hayek. A Self-Led Perennial (FRCS-O).
George Musisi spent a year at a seminary, trained in carpentry and joinery at Uganda Technical College Kichwamba, and worked in a bank’s construction department before teaching. Musisi then taught for about forty years, most of them at St Joseph’s Vocational School in Mbarara, where he taught woodwork and became known as Teacher Musisi. The school sponsored Musisi’s training in Norway, and he was among those chosen to set Uganda’s national exams in technical drawing. On retiring, Musisi said he had enjoyed every moment of teaching. A Perennial (FRCS).
Marta Hill was working part-time for a caterer when the owner closed the business and passed some of the customers to Hill. With three hundred dollars, a mixer, a spatula and some bowls, Hill opened Marta’s Bakery in Cahaba Heights, Alabama, and started with pound cakes. Over thirty-four years the bakery moved twice within Cahaba Heights and added cookies, pies, casseroles and soups. Nearing seventy, Hill made plans to sell the bakery to an employee of about four years and to do charity work. A Self-Led Perennial (FRCS-O).
Frank Schubert grew up on Staten Island, worked as a lifeguard, then joined the crew of the Tulip, a ship that tended navigation buoys. When the lighthouses passed to the Coast Guard and civilians were no longer wanted aboard buoy tenders, Schubert was offered a lighthouse keeper’s post. After the lighthouses at Old Orchard and on Governors Island, Schubert chose Coney Island so his family could live with him, and kept that light for forty-three years. Schubert became known as America’s last civilian lighthouse keeper. A Guided Perennial (FRCS-G).
At work, the people around a Perennial (FRCS) know what the Perennial’s work will be like before the work is done.
Perennials know the rules nobody writes down, so they are less often caught out.
The level they work at is the one newcomers are aiming for, so they can show how to reach it.
They give their working week to one commitment, so the organisation behind it has more reason to spend on teaching them.
Nobody wonders where they fit, so they are seldom asked to fill gaps outside their trade.
A Perennial knows one trade from the inside and can show a colleague every step up within that trade. A Perennial has seen little of other kinds of work at first hand, so a Perennial’s advice tends to stop at the trade’s edge. A younger colleague asking about careers, or a team member who wants to leave the Perennial’s trade, may need a second adviser for the ground beyond that edge.
The worlds below all need one kind of work done to a known standard, post after post, by people whom customers and colleagues already know. A prison service promotes from within, and most of the Perennials who stay in one are Guided. In a town’s hair salons a stylist more often rents a chair from a salon owner and later opens a salon, a Self-Led route through the same trade.
Sorting office, a town delivery round, a rural round, senior postal worker
Night driver for a cab firm, day driver, owner of a licensed cab
Prison officer, senior officer, wing manager
Apprentice lineworker, lineworker, crew lead
Registration officer, senior officer, district land registrar
Junior, stylist, senior stylist, owner of a salon
Apprentice, lift engineer, senior lift engineer
Other words people use for this pattern, and how each fits a Perennial.
The Perennial belongs to the Specialists, this site’s family of careers that stay with one kind of work in similar environments. In everyday use the word often points to the expert who has pushed a field further than most, which on this site is nearer the Diver (FRMS) and the Banyan (FRMP). A Perennial’s single trade, practised well in one world, earns the plain sense of the word all the same. FRThe Specialists
Said of someone who stays with one employer from a first job to retirement. An employer is not a world, so the label fixes no letter by itself. Of the sixteen career types, the Perennial is the one the label fits most often, when a Perennial’s career stays with the first employer throughout.
A Perennial (FRCS) keeps the work and the world and changes the post, to a new route, a new branch, a new shift or a higher grade. A change of post is the one moment in a Perennial career when the routine opens, and what a Perennial picks up at that moment stays in the work for years.
At each change of post, a Perennial can ask a manager or a long-standing customer for a written reference, and keep any certificate the trade recognises. A forced move then begins with letters a stranger can check.
When a change of post comes up, a Perennial can pick the post with a new route, new people to serve or a new part of the trade, so the same work meets fresh problems.
Some senior posts, such as supervising a shift or checking the work of a team, go to the person whose standard has held longest rather than to the person who pushed furthest. At a change of post, a Perennial can find out which senior posts in the Perennial’s world are given for a long record, and apply for those posts.
A shared training day, a trade union course or a friend in a sector that uses the same skills, such as a coach firm for a bus driver or a council’s pay team for a payroll clerk, gives a Perennial people and rules to start from if the Perennial’s own sector turns harsh.
At a change of post, a Perennial can agree to stay on call to the old post for the first weeks of the new one, answering the successor’s questions while learning the new routine. A short, planned stretch of two posts at once is practice in holding more than one thing, before a busy season demands it.
| The skill |  Focused |  Rooted |  Competence |  Serial |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Job crafting Reshaping a familiar post, its tasks, its people and its routine, so one kind of work stays interesting over many years. FC | Serves Focused | Serves Competence | ||
| Contextual intelligence Learning the depot, the branch or the office so well that every new post in the same world starts without a settling-in period. R | Serves Rooted | |||
| Making work visible Asking each manager and long-standing customer for a written word on the work, so the years can be shown to people who were not there. R | Serves Rooted | |||
| Seeing change coming Reading the trade's own news, a contract lost or a depot sold, in time to look at a neighbouring sector before the change arrives. RF | Serves Focused | Serves Rooted | ||
| Cognitive load management Putting a rush of tasks into an order when they all land in one shift, a skill a single post at a time seldom calls for. S | Serves Serial | |||
| Knowing when to quit Telling when a post has turned routine without staying comfortable, and whether a new post, or a new world, would serve the Perennial better. SR | Serves Rooted | Serves Serial |
Many careers begin the way a Perennial (FRCS) career runs, in a single trade and a single world, with posts taken one after another and the work done well. Every letter of FRCS is an end where careers commonly start, so no other type comes before the Perennial. A Perennial career can run a whole working life, as Lorraine Shand’s and Frank Schubert’s did, and any one of its four letters can also grow, into a neighbouring career.
FRCSA Perennial career gives one world a standard that world can count on, and gives the Perennial a world that knows the Perennial’s work.
The same work 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 PerennialThe 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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