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Your result
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, several at once.
Varied instead of Focused The Keystone 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, several at once.
Widespread instead of Rooted The Amphibian 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, several at once.
Mastery instead of Competence The Banyan 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, one at a time.
Serial instead of Parallel The Perennial 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, similar environments, competent, several at once.
Varied instead of Focused The Keystone 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, several at once.
Widespread instead of Rooted The Amphibian 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, several at once.
Mastery instead of Competence The Banyan 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, one at a time.
Serial instead of Parallel The Perennial 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, similar environments, competent, several at once.
Self-Led instead of Guided A Self-Led Shepherd'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, several at once.
Guided instead of Self-Led A Guided Shepherd'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 Shepherd
One of the Specialists, the family of careers that do one kind of work in similar environments
One kind of work, in one world, several posts held at once, each done well. (FRCP)
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In everyday English, a shepherd is the person who looks after a flock of sheep, leading the flock to pasture, keeping the flock together and guarding it. A shepherd tends the whole flock at once, not one sheep at a time. A Shepherd career borrows that picture for work, with several posts of one kind of work held together in one world and each post kept to a solid standard.
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The ShepherdThe 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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A Shepherd (FRCP) works in one trade through several posts at once, each kept to a solid standard. A Shepherd’s world, their work environment, stays the same, and each post shows the Shepherd a different part of that world, so a Shepherd sees one world from several of its places in the same week.
A post is any regular place in a Shepherd’s week, a hospital’s Saturday list as much as a club’s training night. Over the years a Shepherd takes up some posts, drops others, is promoted in one post and comes to serve new people.
A swimming teacher gives lessons at the city’s public pools for the council, coaches the youngest squad at a city swimming club and runs the summer courses at the open-air pool for a leisure company. The council, the club and the leisure company each pay for one post, and every post is swimming teaching. The swimming teacher sees the same children in the council lessons, the club squad and the summer courses, and can tell the club’s coaches which child is ready for the squad.
The pupils, patients or clients of each post meet the same standard from a Shepherd, whichever day of the week that post falls on. A new rule met at one employer, a better method seen at a second and a problem noticed at a third all reach the other posts through the Shepherd, often before anyone in those posts has heard of them. However, no single post shows all of this, so a colleague who meets a Shepherd in one post can take the Shepherd for a part-timer with one job.
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.
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 self-employed vet stands in for the vets of two practices in one valley, on Mondays and Tuesdays in the market town and on Thursdays higher up the valley, and takes the Saturday duty at the valley’s livestock auction. When a foot disease spread through the valley’s dairy herds one wet spring, the vet saw the pattern from all three posts, and both practices were treating the herds the same way within two weeks.
A bookkeeper works three days a week in the accounts office of a builders’ supplier, keeps the books of several shops in the town on the other two days and is the unpaid treasurer of the town’s volunteer lifeboat station. When the lifeboat station applied for a grant to rebuild the boathouse, the bookkeeper priced the materials from the builders’ supplier’s own invoices, and the grant covered the whole rebuild.
A physiotherapist treats patients three days a week at a city clinic, looks after the players of the city’s rugby club on training nights and match days, and runs a weekly class at a community centre for people recovering from knee operations. The rugby club’s captain, back from a knee operation, trained in the class all winter and played in the spring final.
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 Shepherd career.
They find as much to enjoy in familiar ideas as in new ones.
Introducing people who might benefit from knowing each other is not something they go out of their way to do.
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 Shepherd 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
FRCPO, O for owned
A Self-Led Shepherd finds and asks for each post. An upholsterer answers a second furniture shop’s advert, a piano tuner adds a concert hall to the round on a pianist’s recommendation, and a locksmith signs a call-out contract with a second letting agency. Each post has its own employer or client and its own agreement, so a new manager at the concert hall changes nothing at the piano tuner’s other posts. The Shepherd picks which places in the world to work in, and which days go to which place.
Several employers each fix a few days of a Self-Led Shepherd’s week, and nobody but the Shepherd checks that the days fit together, or counts the hours spent driving between workplaces. When a post ends, nobody offers a post in its place, and the free days stay free until the Shepherd finds the next post. A Self-Led Shepherd who mentions the free days in every post soon has several workplaces looking out for a fitting post.
Mariano Frassa, a Self-Led ShepherdMariano Frassa was born in the countryside of Buenos Aires province, Argentina, and trained in family medicine at the Hospital del Carmen in Chacabuco. As a doctor Frassa started in Rawson, in the same district, then added Castilla and finally O’Higgins, three small towns that Frassa now serves together. Frassa drives about six thousand kilometres a month between the three towns, and says the people there need him as much as he needs them. A Self-Led Shepherd (FRCP-O).
FRCPG, G for guided
A Guided Shepherd is asked to take each new post. A private clinic asks a hospital dermatologist to run the clinic’s Saturday sessions, a second golf club asks a greenkeeper for two mornings a week, and a second family firm asks a company secretary to keep the firm’s records too. The person making the offer has often worked beside the Shepherd somewhere else in the same world. Because the posts come from several bodies in one world, a Guided Shepherd can be offered more work than any single employer has to give.
Each body that offers a post plans its own timetable, and only the Shepherd sees the whole week, so a new offer can ask for a day that another post already fills. Turning down one offer can also weigh on the other posts, since the people asking often meet the Shepherd elsewhere in the same world. A Guided Shepherd who asks about the days of a new post before asking about the pay keeps the week from filling up by accident.
Elena Espiau, a Guided ShepherdElena Espiau played basketball for Spain’s youth teams, winning two European titles at under-sixteen level, and took up refereeing after playing until twenty-three. After six years as a referee, Espiau was one of the three women the Spanish federation named as the first all-women crew to referee in LEB Oro, a national men’s league. For seven seasons from then the federation assigned Espiau to two national competitions at once, the women’s Liga Femenina and the men’s LEB Oro. A Guided Shepherd (FRCP-G).
Michel Drucker joined the sports service of French public television as a trainee and became a reporter and football commentator. The radio station RTL then gave Drucker programmes of his own while Drucker presented the Sunday show Les rendez-vous du dimanche on television, so Drucker worked on radio and television in the same weeks. French public television later gave Drucker its Sunday afternoon, Vivement dimanche, which Drucker presented for more than twenty years. A Guided Shepherd (FRCP-G).
Julia Otero started in radio at seventeen, when a friend took her to Radio Sabadell. Radio Miramar in Barcelona later chose Otero to take over its mornings from Luis del Olmo, and Spanish public television soon gave Otero her first programme, a debate show. Onda Cero invited Otero back for Julia en la onda, which Otero still presents, and RTVE added Días de tele, so Otero presented on radio and television in the same weeks. A Guided Shepherd (FRCP-G).
John Smith taught mathematics as a part-time lecturer at three California colleges at once, Santa Rosa Junior College, Diablo Valley College and Solano Community College, travelling to all three from his home in San Francisco. Smith told the Santa Rosa college newspaper that he really liked teaching and working with young people. A Self-Led Shepherd (FRCP-O).
Edith Ovelar taught the social sciences at four schools around Asunción, Paraguay, two in Fernando de la Mora, where Ovelar lived, and two in the capital. Ovelar had been a docente taxi, the Paraguayan name for a teacher who travels between schools, for twenty-three years, ever since qualifying. Ovelar taught history, economics, sociology and ethics, mornings, afternoons and two evenings a week, and told the newspaper Última Hora she would choose no other profession. A Self-Led Shepherd (FRCP-O).
Mariano Frassa was born in the countryside of Buenos Aires province, Argentina, and trained in family medicine at the Hospital del Carmen in Chacabuco. As a doctor Frassa started in Rawson, in the same district, then added Castilla and finally O’Higgins, three small towns that Frassa now serves together. Frassa drives about six thousand kilometres a month between the three towns, and says the people there need him as much as he needs them. A Self-Led Shepherd (FRCP-O).
Elena Espiau played basketball for Spain’s youth teams, winning two European titles at under-sixteen level, and took up refereeing after playing until twenty-three. After six years as a referee, Espiau was one of the three women the Spanish federation named as the first all-women crew to referee in LEB Oro, a national men’s league. For seven seasons from then the federation assigned Espiau to two national competitions at once, the women’s Liga Femenina and the men’s LEB Oro. A Guided Shepherd (FRCP-G).
At work, a Shepherd (FRCP) is the colleague who also works, on other days, at a clinic, club or firm nearby, and knows how those places do the same work.
Shepherds know who to ask, and who to go to when something needs doing.
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.
Among people of their trade they share the language and are trusted as a peer.
Several posts in one world can look like several different ways of working, yet all the posts share the world’s training, rules and suppliers. Comparing one post with another, a Shepherd can take the habits every post shares for the only way the work is done. Those habits come into view when a colleague trained in another country or another sector suggests a different way, or when a new rule from outside changes every post at once.
Shepherd careers grow where the same work is needed in several places of one world, part-time or on fixed days. Hospitals and the county music service usually offer a second post from inside, and Guided Shepherds are common there. Driving instructors and farriers mostly build a round pupil by pupil or yard by yard, and many of them work Self-Led.
Reporting scans for the teaching hospital, Saturday lists at a private clinic, second reader for the breast screening programme
Pupils at home, the county music service’s school visits, accompanist for the youth choir
Board member at three associations, chair of one association’s audit committee
Lessons for a driving school, private pupils, refresher courses for the council’s van drivers
Clinics for the health service, weekly sessions at two schools, private clients after school
A riding school, a racing stable, a round of owners’ horses on the farms
Classes at two gyms, a running club’s Tuesday sessions, a hockey club’s pre-season training
No everyday word names the whole of a Shepherd career. Two names come close, one for the single trade and one for the several posts.
This site gives the name Specialists to the four types that keep to one trade in one world, the Shepherd among them. Everyday speech saves the word mostly for those who push one trade to mastery, such as the Diver (FRMS) and the Banyan (FRMP), yet a Shepherd who has kept one trade going in several posts for years is a specialist in the ordinary sense too. FRThe Specialists
Work spread across several posts in the same weeks. This site keeps the word for the Keystone (VRCP) and the Mender (VWCP), whose posts are very different kinds of work. The everyday label asks only for several posts at once, so the swimming teacher with three posts has a portfolio career as much as a writer who also teaches and consults. VRCPThe Keystone
Each post a Shepherd (FRCP) takes on or gives up changes the week and the view at once. A new post fills days and shows a new part of the world, so choosing a post decides what a Shepherd sees of the world for years to come.
When choosing which post to add, a Shepherd can prefer a post that leads to a qualification recognised in other worlds. Employers outside the Shepherd’s world read that qualification without needing to know the world.
A post for a new age group, a new kind of client or a new setting asks a Shepherd to learn something from the beginning while the other posts carry on. If the Shepherd ever has to change trade, the last new start is recent rather than many years back.
Asked what they do, a Shepherd can say the trade and list every post, such as a physiotherapist at a clinic, a rugby club and a knee class, so a new contact hears all three posts in one answer.
A post in a mixed team, such as a clinic where physiotherapists work with nurses and doctors, gives a Shepherd colleagues with a different training every week.
A short record of the standout results in each post, such as a waiting list cleared or a season without a serious injury, shown to whoever fills the next post, lets that person see the best results as well as the everyday standard.
| The skill |  Focused |  Rooted |  Competence |  Parallel |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cognitive load management Planning each week across several employers' timetables, so no day is promised to two posts. P | Serves Parallel | |||
| Contextual intelligence Knowing which person in each post can say yes, and passing what one post learns about the world's people to the other posts. R | Serves Rooted | |||
| Telling the career story Putting several posts into one sentence that names the trade first, so a stranger hears the whole set of posts. P | Serves Parallel | |||
| Making work visible Keeping a record of the best result in each post, so the people who fill the next post see the best results as well as the everyday standard. CR | Serves Rooted | Serves Competence | ||
| Seeing change coming Taking a fall in work at one post as an early warning for the other posts, so a change in the trade can be planned rather than forced. FR | Serves Focused | Serves Rooted | ||
| Knowing when to quit Judging when a post costs more in days, travel or money than the post gives back, and handing the post to a colleague who can take it over. CP | Serves Competence | Serves Parallel |
Many Shepherd (FRCP) careers begin as a Perennial (FRCS) career, one post at a time. From a Shepherd career, a change in any one of three letters leads to a neighbouring career.
The same career, one commitment at a time. A Perennial (FRCS) career becomes a Shepherd career once a second commitment is taken on beside the first, and both are kept.
FRCPA Shepherd works in several places of one world in the same weeks, keeps each place at the standard that place relies on, and sees what no single place can see alone.
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Coming soon
The ShepherdThe 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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