What Career Personality are you?

This introduction will start a cycle of blog posts dedicated to the various career personalities. The inspiration? A casual conversation discussing patterns of job hunters like “jumpers” and – as the person I was talking to elegantly put it – “wandering butterflies”. That was enough impulse to dig up the theory and compare it to what we, Career Angels, observe every day. We invited Senior Consultants from Devonshire Poland to share their experiences, insights, observations and pieces of advice.

A little bit about the theory

Source: Brousseau, 1990; Brousseau & Driver, 1994; Driver & Sundby, 1983; Driver, 1985;
career personalities

Careers can be categorized by analyzing two dimensions:
– the direction of the career moves (up the corporate ladder or side-ways)
– the time a person spends in one position

You get the following groups as a result:
Expert: a person that hardly ever changes their jobs and tends not to pursue a managerial position.

Linear: a person that strategically changes their job every 5-10 yrs aiming at (top) management positions from early on.

Spiral: a person that changes jobs every 5-10 yrs moving laterally from industry to industry and slowly up the corporate ladder.

Transatory: a person that changes jobs every 3-4 yrs “wandering” from position to position.

Transatory+ (not included in the original research): a person that changes jobs every 1-2 yrs “jumping” from company to company.

In the coming posts, we will explore each career personality in detail giving examples, and sharing advice.

This blog cycle will culminate in summarizing comments by Daniel Łupiński, Country Manager of Devonshire Poland.

—- update:
Read also:
Tireless Kangaroo
Wandering Butterfly
Constant Chameleon
Loyal Dog
Royal Lion
Busy Beaver
Lazy Sloth
Summary