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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, towards mastery, one at a time.
Focused instead of Varied The Pilgrim 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, towards mastery in at least one, one at a time.
Rooted instead of Widespread The Steward 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, competent, one at a time.
Competence instead of Mastery The Adapter 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.
Very different roles, very different environments, towards mastery in at least one, several at once.
Parallel instead of Serial The Polymath 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, towards mastery, one at a time.
Focused instead of Varied The Pilgrim 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, towards mastery in at least one, one at a time.
Rooted instead of Widespread The Steward 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, competent, one at a time.
Competence instead of Mastery The Adapter 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.
Very different roles, very different environments, towards mastery in at least one, several at once.
Parallel instead of Serial The Polymath 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, towards mastery in at least one, one at a time.
Self-Led instead of Guided A Self-Led Reinventor'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, towards mastery in at least one, one at a time.
Guided instead of Self-Led A Guided Reinventor'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 Reinventor
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, taken one at a time, with a drive for mastery. (VWMS)
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In everyday English, people who reinvent themselves leave one line of work for a very different line of work and grow into the new one. On this site a Reinventor career moves into very different work in a very different world more than once, one move at a time. The everyday word says nothing about depth, so the site’s name for the career adds one meaning more, that in at least one kind of work a Reinventor goes on raising the standard.
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The ReinventorThe 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 Reinventor (VWMS) career moves into very different work in a very different world, more than once, and builds a range of know-how and contacts across those worlds, with real depth in at least one kind of work.
A Reinventor leaves behind, at each move, both the old work and the old world, meaning the work environment with its colleagues and its customs.
Contacts from earlier worlds, a quicker start in each new field and a widening range go with a Reinventor from move to move.
A geologist maps oil fields for an oil company, then joins the diplomatic service and in time becomes the negotiator the service sends to the hardest talks on energy. The negotiator’s next move may change the world alone, from the diplomatic service to an investment bank’s team for debt deals, and over a whole Reinventor career the work and the world each change more than once.
In the field taken deep, a Reinventor’s work reaches the level that brings the field’s senior titles, as when the geologist turned negotiator is made an ambassador. However, a field taken deep asks for a long stretch inside one commitment, and the next move waits until the climb in that field is complete.
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 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 small brewery of her own is the third workplace of a former bond trader, after an investment bank’s trading floor and a year studying full time at a brewing school. The new brewer brews each recipe many times before the beer goes on sale, and sends samples to competition judges for written comments. The judges’ comments end in a national gold medal for the brewer’s stout, and forty pubs now pour the stout.
At thirty, a political reporter on a national newspaper is accepted into a perfume house’s school for perfumers. The trainee learns some fifteen hundred raw materials by smell. The new perfumer’s third fragrance becomes the house’s best seller in the fragrance’s first year on sale, and the house makes him a senior perfumer.
A production accountant at a film studio joins a bookshop chain as its fiction buyer, choosing the novels for the chain’s two hundred shops. The buyer reads every novel the chain puts in its shop windows and keeps a record of which choices sold. The buyer’s record shows translated fiction rising fastest of all the chain’s shelves, and the chain’s board makes the buyer managing director.
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 Reinventor career.
They like to explore what they do not know, even when it feels risky.
They get energy from meeting people whose lives are unlike their own.
They seek out feedback that helps them master new skills.
They are not comfortable when interruptions break their flow of work.
Every Reinventor 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
VWMSO, O for owned
Each new field in a Self-Led Reinventor career starts as the Reinventor’s own plan, and the Reinventor finds the way in. The way in can be a junior post taken at a junior’s pay, a qualifying exam studied for from the first page of the textbook, or a first piece of work entered in the new field’s own competition. A Self-Led Reinventor also decides which field to take deep, and that field can come third or fourth in the career as readily as first.
The old field’s employer has no reason to hold a place open, so a Self-Led Reinventor usually makes each move without a way back. A move timed for the start of the new field’s training year, when schools and employers take their beginners, shortens the stretch between leaving one field and earning in the next.
Hajime Yoneda, a Self-Led ReinventorHajime Yoneda graduated in electronic engineering and joined an electronics company as an engineer. At twenty-six, two years later, Yoneda left engineering for the kitchen, training at a culinary college and then in kitchens in Osaka, Kobe and France. In Osaka Yoneda opened his own restaurant, HAJIME, which won three Michelin stars within about a year and a half, reportedly faster than any restaurant before, and has been named among Asia’s fifty best restaurants. A Self-Led Reinventor (VWMS-O).
VWMSG, G for guided
A Guided Reinventor changes field when asked, and the asking often comes from the top of one organisation, as when an oil company moves its chief geologist to lead its talks with governments, or a film studio’s owners put the studio’s production accountant in charge of its new distribution company. A move made inside one organisation can usually be undone if the new field does not suit.
A move made at the top also happens in public view. The new field’s results, such as a company’s sales or a negotiation’s outcome, are watched by a board, the press or shareholders from the first months, before a beginner in the field has had time to climb.
A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, a Guided ReinventorA. P. J. Abdul Kalam joined India’s defence research organisation as a scientist. The space research organisation then made Kalam project director of India’s first satellite launch vehicle. Back in defence research, Kalam led the guided missile programme. The ruling coalition, with opposition backing, nominated Kalam for president, and the electoral college elected him. After the presidency, Kalam taught and lectured to students until the day he died. A Guided Reinventor (VWMS-G).
Michelle Bachelet qualified as a doctor in Chile, specialised in paediatrics and public health, and worked as an epidemiologist and an adviser to the health ministry. President Ricardo Lagos appointed Bachelet minister of health, then minister of defence, the first woman in Latin America to hold that post. Chileans twice elected Bachelet president, and between the two terms she led UN Women as its first executive director. A Guided Reinventor (VWMS-G).
Klaus Zimmerling studied mechanical engineering at the technical university in Dresden and worked in the city as a design engineer. After the Berlin Wall fell, Zimmerling left design for wine, did an internship at a winery in Austria that shaped his organic approach, and bought his own vineyard at Pillnitz, in Dresden. In time the VDP, the association of Germany’s leading wine estates, admitted the Zimmerling winery. A Self-Led Reinventor (VWMS-O).
Jorge Drexler studied medicine in Uruguay, as both his parents had, and specialised as an ear, nose and throat doctor. Encouraged by the singer Joaquín Sabina, Drexler left his clinic and moved to Madrid to make music. In Spain Drexler built a career as a singer and songwriter, and his song “Al Otro Lado del Río” won the Oscar for best original song, the first Academy Award for a Uruguayan. Drexler has also won more than a dozen Latin Grammys. A Self-Led Reinventor (VWMS-O).
Hajime Yoneda graduated in electronic engineering and joined an electronics company as an engineer. At twenty-six, two years later, Yoneda left engineering for the kitchen, training at a culinary college and then in kitchens in Osaka, Kobe and France. In Osaka Yoneda opened his own restaurant, HAJIME, which won three Michelin stars within about a year and a half, reportedly faster than any restaurant before, and has been named among Asia’s fifty best restaurants. A Self-Led Reinventor (VWMS-O).
A. P. J. Abdul Kalam joined India’s defence research organisation as a scientist. The space research organisation then made Kalam project director of India’s first satellite launch vehicle. Back in defence research, Kalam led the guided missile programme. The ruling coalition, with opposition backing, nominated Kalam for president, and the electoral college elected him. After the presidency, Kalam taught and lectured to students until the day he died. A Guided Reinventor (VWMS-G).
At work, a Reinventor treats the present field’s best work as the target, whatever field the Reinventor came from.
When someone leaves or a team is short, they can step into more than one kind of work.
They can introduce people who would otherwise not meet.
In their speciality they go after the difficult problems that others would rather pass on.
They give their working week to one commitment, so the organisation behind it has more reason to spend on teaching them.
A Reinventor’s picture of each field left behind stays as the field was on the Reinventor’s last day there. Exams, job titles and the usual routes up in a field go on changing after a Reinventor leaves, so a Reinventor’s account of how to get ahead in a former field drifts out of date.
A Reinventor path needs fields that take beginners at any age, through an entry exam, a school or an open competition.
A path that stays inside one government or one large company can run Guided from end to end, and a path that ends in a business of the Reinventor’s own is Self-Led at least at the last move.
Coastguard officer, map data analyst, charity chief executive
Air traffic controller, toy designer, head of children’s programmes
Architect, app developer, director of the aquarium
Welder, ferry deck officer, florist with a shop of her own
Racing cyclist, translator, founder of a sports nutrition company
Ship’s engineer, wine buyer, owner of the cookery school
Field archaeologist, honey producer, mayor
Other words people use for this pattern, and how each fits a Reinventor.
The common term for a person who moves into very different work, usually in a very different world at the same time. A Reinventor is a career changer who changes more than once and takes at least one of the new fields deep.
On this site, the family that changes both the work and the world, a Reinventor’s among them. Recruiters tend to read the word as the opposite of specialist, and a Reinventor’s CV can be read either way, depending on which field the CV leads with. VWThe Generalists
A picture from hiring and teamwork, the letter T, whose top bar stands for broad skills and whose single downstroke stands for one deep speciality. A Reinventor’s downstroke can sit in the third or fourth field entered as readily as in the first.
The Greek letter pi, with two downstrokes under one bar, for two deep specialities. A Reinventor’s two specialities belong to two different stretches of the career.
A Reinventor and this site’s Polymath (VWMP) share three letters and differ in the fourth, since a Polymath holds the very different roles at the same time. VWMPThe Polymath
A change of field can come with a change of country, as when an accountant leaves to run a vineyard abroad, and expat applies to a Reinventor while the vineyard is home.
Between the move and the day the new field’s work matches the old field’s standard lies a stretch when a Reinventor is skilled at something nobody nearby has seen. How that stretch is spent decides whether the new field is taken deep.
A Reinventor can take to each first meeting in a new field one finished piece of work from the field taken deep, such as a negotiated agreement, a prize-winning beer or a published report, and say what standard the piece met.
Brewers know the other breweries and bankers the other banks, and a Reinventor who learns the same map of a new field in the first year has somewhere to turn inside the field when the one commitment stalls.
Before applying, a Reinventor can work through the syllabus of the new field’s entry course or exam, page by page. Most of a field’s routine work appears in the syllabus, from the hygiene rules of a brewery to the filing rules of a bank.
A notebook of every term, abbreviation and name that colleagues use without explaining, each looked up by the end of the week, turns a newcomer’s questions into a reference the Reinventor keeps adding to.
A teacher, a head brewer or a senior perfumer can set a Reinventor a standard for the first year in a new field, and a weak result is then measured against that standard.
| The skill |  Varied |  Widespread |  Mastery |  Serial |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Naming skills that travel Sorting the last field's skills into those the next field also pays for and those the next field has no use for. V | Serves Varied | |||
| Finding backers Finding a mentor among a new field's best people, and showing that mentor each step of the climb toward the field's top level. MW | Serves Widespread | Serves Mastery | ||
| Taking stock Reviewing each finished commitment for what it taught, so the lessons of one world reach the next. VS | Serves Varied | Serves Serial | ||
| Keeping options open Holding on to the licence or membership of each earlier field, so a later move can lead back as well as on. VS | Serves Varied | Serves Serial | ||
| Counting every kind of wealth Treating contacts, health and know-how as savings too, and drawing on them in the beginner's years of a new field. VS | Serves Varied | Serves Serial | ||
| Growing from setbacks Reading a weak early result in new work as information about the work, so the standard keeps rising. MS | Serves Mastery | Serves Serial |
The Pilgrim’s depth in one craft, the Steward’s range of roles in one world and the Adapter’s practice at changing both work and world each lead into a Reinventor career.
One kind of work, taken through very different worlds one at a time and deepened in each. When the next move changes the kind of work completely, the Pilgrim’s career is a Reinventor career.
Very different work inside one world, taken deep in at least one area. When the next move takes a Steward’s work out of the Steward’s one world and into a very different one, the career is a Reinventor career.
Work and world changing at every move, each role done well. When an Adapter starts to take one kind of work past the standard the work asks for, the career is a Reinventor career.
VWMSA Reinventor career can carry a beginner from a distant field to that field’s top rank, and can do it again in the field after.
A Reinventor’s climb, kept going, once a second commitment is taken on beside the first, and both are kept.
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Coming soon
The ReinventorThe 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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