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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, very different environments, competent, one at a time.
Varied instead of Focused The Adapter 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, similar environments, competent, one at a time.
Rooted instead of Widespread The Perennial 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.
Similar roles, very different environments, towards mastery, one at a time.
Mastery instead of Competence The Pilgrim 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, very different environments, competent, several at once.
Parallel instead of Serial The Amphibian 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, very different environments, competent, one at a time.
Varied instead of Focused The Adapter 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, similar environments, competent, one at a time.
Rooted instead of Widespread The Perennial 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.
Similar roles, very different environments, towards mastery, one at a time.
Mastery instead of Competence The Pilgrim 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, very different environments, competent, several at once.
Parallel instead of Serial The Amphibian 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, very different environments, competent, one at a time.
Self-Led instead of Guided A Self-Led Nomad'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, very different environments, competent, one at a time.
Guided instead of Self-Led A Guided Nomad'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.
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Your type in full: The Nomad
One of the Voyagers, the family of careers that do one kind of work across very different environments
One kind of work, across very different worlds, taken one at a time, each done well. (FWCS)
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In everyday English, a nomad is someone who moves from place to place and brings a whole way of life to each new place. A Nomad career brings one kind of work into one very different world after another, one at a time, and does the work well in every world.
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The NomadThe 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 Nomad (FWCS) moves with one kind of work, done well, from one very different world to the next, and so gets to know, from the inside, worlds that most people only see from outside.
The kind of work goes with the Nomad from post to post, whether hands-on work such as electrical work or a profession such as accounting. Where this page says trade or craft, it means any skilled kind of work, from wiring a house to auditing a bank. What a Nomad learns again at each move is the world around the work, the Nomad’s work environment, from how meetings run and who decides what to which licences count and what colleagues in that world call a job well done.
A management accountant who sets the costs and budgets at a family brewery, then at a medical charity working across East Africa, then on a defence ministry’s planning staff does the same costing and budgeting each time, and learns three different views of what money is for. Some Nomads change worlds without changing employer, as when a police force moves an analyst from its city headquarters to a rural station, and some cross a border without changing worlds, when the work abroad runs the way the work at home does.
Nomads hold the work to a solid standard that a new employer or client can rely on, and give their curiosity to each new world, its people, its language and its streets, and to a life outside work.
Every move also gives a Nomad a comparison. The same task done in two very different worlds shows which way of doing the task is quicker, safer or fairer, and a Nomad can bring the better way into the next world.
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 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.
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 chemist starts in a chocolate maker’s quality laboratory, checking every batch for fat and sugar, moves to a national anti-doping laboratory testing athletes’ samples, then to the laboratory of a copper mine in the north of Chile, which tests samples of ore. The instruments and the methods travel with the chemist, while each laboratory brings its own deadlines, its own rules for handling samples and its own people waiting for results. At the mine the chemist became chief chemist, and an ore result that once took three days now takes one day.
An electrician who works for herself wires houses in her home town, then moves to a city to wire the temporary power and lighting of film and television sets, then to a marina, wiring sailing yachts. A house answers to the local wiring rules, a film set to the shooting schedule and the studio’s safety officer, and a yacht to salt water and tight spaces. In the electrician’s third year at the marina, the marina’s two boatyards both approved the electrician for work on the yachts in their care.
A human resources adviser starts at a container shipping line in Rotterdam, joins a space agency hiring engineers and scientists from its member states, then becomes head of human resources at a young company in Berlin that makes electric bicycles. Each of the three worlds hires, pays and promotes people by its own rules and its own sense of what is fair. At the bicycle maker, the pay scale and the hiring process the adviser built carried the company from forty staff to three hundred.
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 Nomad career.
They find as much to enjoy in familiar ideas as in new ones.
They get energy from meeting people whose lives are unlike their own.
Pushing their abilities to a higher level is not what they look for in a task.
Having several projects running at once does not suit them.
Every Nomad 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
FWCSO, O for owned
A Self-Led Nomad picks the next world. The next world might be a country, a sector or a kind of organisation the Nomad wants to know from the inside, and the Nomad finds a post in the chosen world by applying, by asking people who already work in that world or by offering the work freelance. Work in steady demand gives a Self-Led Nomad a wide choice of worlds, sometimes including a sector far from any the Nomad knows.
A Self-Led Nomad pays for each move personally, from any permit or licence the new world asks for to the weeks between one post and the next. A world chosen from outside can also turn out to differ in pace, language or people from what the Nomad expected. With the contract signed and a few months of pay saved before the current post ends, a slow start in the new world does not become a money problem.
Hiroshi Tateya, a Self-Led NomadHiroshi Tateya trained at a kaiseki restaurant in Ginza, Tokyo, and then cooked for many years at an izakaya, a Japanese pub. A newspaper notice calling for members of Japan’s Antarctic research expedition led Tateya to apply, and Tateya went south as the only cook for the twenty-four members who wintered at Shōwa Station. Back in Japan, Tateya opened his own izakaya, Jinkara, in Nishi-Ogikubo, Tokyo, and later volunteered to cook at Shōwa Station again. A Self-Led Nomad (FWCS-O).
FWCSG, G for guided
A Guided Nomad’s worlds are chosen by an institution. A news agency posts its correspondents from one capital to the next, a navy sends its engineers between a shore base and a ship at sea, and a multinational moves its auditors into the companies it buys on other continents. The institution arranges the contract, the desk and the first introductions, so a Guided Nomad meets each new world with backing that most newcomers lack, and the first days go to the work.
The institution also sets the calendar. A posting can end soon after a Guided Nomad’s household has settled in, and the next place on the list may be one the household would not have picked. A Guided Nomad can ask the institution early which posting is likely next, and talk with colleagues who served in that place about the work and the daily life in that place, so the household has months to plan.
Jean Wilkowski, a Guided NomadJean Wilkowski joined the United States Foreign Service in wartime, after a colleague recommended the State Department. Postings followed in the Caribbean, South America and western Europe, where Wilkowski became an expert in trade and commercial relations. In Honduras, Wilkowski became the first woman to act as an American ambassador in Latin America. As ambassador to Zambia, the first American woman ambassador to an African country, Wilkowski brought Duke Ellington’s orchestra to Zambia. A Guided Nomad (FWCS-G).
Bernard Estrade spent most of his working life as a reporter for Agence France-Presse, the French news agency. Estrade began as the agency’s correspondent in Beirut, and also reported from Hanoi, Tehran and Nairobi. When the Gulf War began, Estrade was one of the few Western correspondents still in Baghdad. In Moscow, Estrade was at the agency’s bureau when the Soviet Union broke up, and in Indonesia he covered the fall of President Suharto. A Guided Nomad (FWCS-G).
Yrma de la Cantera Medina chose ophthalmology, the medicine of the eye, over paediatrics because Cuba needed specialists. The doctor was called to six missions abroad, starting in Algeria, where she operated on many patients. For Belize, de la Cantera Medina learned English and passed the exam. In Venezuela, the doctor helped launch Mission Miracle, which brought patients to Cuba for eye operations. De la Cantera Medina has said she would choose ophthalmology again without hesitating. A Guided Nomad (FWCS-G).
A Hamburg construction firm hired Axel Boenigk while Boenigk was still studying mechanical engineering. Boenigk then spent about ten years in port consulting, handling crane engineering in Sudan, Namibia, Dubai, China, Turkey, Ukraine and Lebanon, and in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, built up an oil and gas port’s service centre to three hundred and fifty staff. After Boenigk and his Chilean wife moved to Santiago, Boenigk joined Liebherr Chile’s maritime crane division, covering Chile, Peru and Ecuador. A Nomad (FWCS).
Jochem Ploeger trained in energy technology at a Dutch technical school. A friend showed Ploeger an advert from Holland America Line, and Ploeger went to sea as an electrician on the cruise ship Rotterdam. Wanting shorter spells at sea, Ploeger wrote to the dredging company Boskalis and rose to first electrician on the dredger Resolution. Ploeger then looked into offshore work and became senior electrical and instrumentation technician on Rijn Charlie, an oil company’s production platform. A Self-Led Nomad (FWCS-O).
Hiroshi Tateya trained at a kaiseki restaurant in Ginza, Tokyo, and then cooked for many years at an izakaya, a Japanese pub. A newspaper notice calling for members of Japan’s Antarctic research expedition led Tateya to apply, and Tateya went south as the only cook for the twenty-four members who wintered at Shōwa Station. Back in Japan, Tateya opened his own izakaya, Jinkara, in Nishi-Ogikubo, Tokyo, and later volunteered to cook at Shōwa Station again. A Self-Led Nomad (FWCS-O).
Jean Wilkowski joined the United States Foreign Service in wartime, after a colleague recommended the State Department. Postings followed in the Caribbean, South America and western Europe, where Wilkowski became an expert in trade and commercial relations. In Honduras, Wilkowski became the first woman to act as an American ambassador in Latin America. As ambassador to Zambia, the first American woman ambassador to an African country, Wilkowski brought Duke Ellington’s orchestra to Zambia. A Guided Nomad (FWCS-G).
At work, a Nomad (FWCS) is a colleague who knows one kind of work well and is ready to take that work wherever it is needed next.
A useful contact, idea or chance they come across goes to their one commitment, with nothing else competing for it.
They have seen much of what their trade can throw at them, so few problems in it are new.
They carry methods that work in one world into another that has not seen them.
They do everything to a solid standard, with few weak spots.
In a new world, a Nomad can break a rule that nobody mentioned, such as who has to see a document first or which meeting really decides, and the slip can cost goodwill before the Nomad learns of the rule. Worlds that rely on habit more than on written procedures hide the most unwritten rules. The blind spot shows in the first weeks of a post, when good work runs into a habit that nobody thought to explain.
Nomad careers form around kinds of work that employers in very different worlds all need, and whose standard a licence, a certificate or a reference can show to people who have not yet seen the work done.
A town pharmacy, a drug maker’s quality department, a hospice’s medicines team
A company’s internal audit team, a national lottery, a United Nations agency
A furniture maker’s sourcing team, a national railway’s purchasing office, a peacekeeping mission’s supply depot
A tidal power station, a city’s new metro line, a pipeline across a desert
A newspaper’s newsroom, a law firm’s offices, a theme park’s ticketing and ride systems
A company canteen, a sleeper train’s dining car, the state banquets of a royal palace
A shopping centre, a government ministry, the venues of an international sports tournament
Other words people use for this pattern, and how each fits a Nomad.
Said of a career that works in more than one country. Both words fit a Nomad whose worlds are countries, and expat only while the Nomad lives abroad. On this site a new country counts as a new world only when the people, rules and habits of the work change with the country, so very different worlds can also lie in one city.
In everyday use, a person known for one kind of work is called a specialist, and the word fits a Nomad. On this site the Specialists are the family whose careers keep one kind of work within similar environments, so the Nomad, whose worlds differ widely, belongs to the Voyagers. FRThe Specialists
Each move takes a Nomad (FWCS) into a world that has not yet seen the Nomad’s work. A few things done before and soon after each move make the arrival easier, and some of them still help in the posts that follow.
Ahead of a move, a Nomad can find out which licence, register or local exam, if any, the new world asks of the work, how long recognition takes and what recognition costs, and start the paperwork while still in the current post.
In the first months in a new world, shared lunches, team outings and after-work events are where colleagues get to know a newcomer. A Nomad who accepts a few invitations in the first months, or offers one, can stop being the newcomer sooner.
Someone who works as a buyer, a planner or a trainer can show a Nomad, over a couple of conversations a year, what a day in that work is like and what that work pays, long before a change of work is needed.
In each post, a Nomad can take on one problem that the usual methods of the work do not settle, work out an answer alone, and ask an experienced colleague or a peer in the same kind of work to check the answer before the answer is used.
When the one post stalls, a short list of worlds the Nomad would like to work in next, with what each world asks for and how a post in each world is found, gives the Nomad a way forward that is already thought through.
| The skill |  Focused |  Widespread |  Competence |  Serial |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Learning agility Bringing the work up to a solid standard quickly under a new world's conditions, so the Nomad does a full share of the work early in each post. WC | Serves Widespread | Serves Competence | ||
| Cultural intelligence Reading what the people of a new world count as polite, quick, careful or rude, and adjusting how the work is delivered while its standard holds. W | Serves Widespread | |||
| Learning the unwritten rules Working out, in the first weeks in a new world, who decides what, what was tried before and which habits matter, so the Nomad does not break a rule nobody wrote down. WS | Serves Widespread | Serves Serial | ||
| Translating between worlds Explaining a method from one world in the terms of another, so colleagues in the new world are willing to try a practice the Nomad saw elsewhere. FW | Serves Focused | Serves Widespread | ||
| Keeping a wide network Light, occasional contact with people from each world the Nomad leaves, so the next world can be found through someone who knows that world. WS | Serves Widespread | Serves Serial | ||
| Changing well Handing over a post properly and parting on good terms with its colleagues, so each world the Nomad leaves stays open to a return. S | Serves Serial |
Nomad careers often grow out of one kind of work done in one world. Three other career types lie one aspect away from a Nomad (FWCS) career.
One kind of work in one world, done well. A Perennial career becomes a Nomad career when the work moves into a very different world.
FWCSA Nomad can take one kind of work into almost any world and be of use in that world early on.
The same work across very different worlds, once a second commitment is taken on beside the first, and both are kept.
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Coming soon
The NomadThe 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.
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