Profiling

Hi, I’m Buddy, your corporate guru.  Well, actually, I’m your corporate-appointed guru, which is slightly different, but trust me, it makes you special.

Well, the first way it makes you special is that you’re the only person in your department to have a corporate-appointed guru, and the second way is that you and I are going to spending a lot of time together now, in order to get your karma valeted and your personality enhanced so that you’re ready to accept the promotion that is destined to be yours.  

No, I don’t do the valeting myself actually, that would be rather a waste of my talents.  I explain to you how you valet your own karma and you keep it maintained after that.  Or find someone to do it for you; Steve in Sales is always willing to lend a hand.  

I’d say sticky rather than clammy, but if you feel that way perhaps you’d be better looking for a valet of your own then.

Yes, I did mention a promotion, and I was hoping your might pick up on that.  Corporate only issue gurus when they feel that they need to promote someone to the management fast-tra– Oh, you’re already management?  That’s not down on your profile you know.

Oh really?  That’s a job title now?  Huh!  Well, you learn something new every day don’t you.  Oh don’t look at me like that, I bet that not’s what your business cards say… oh would you look at that!  You do have a card calling you that.  And you give them out….

Well, before we go any further then, I think we’d better profile you so that we’re both clear what we’re dealing with her.  No, not Myers-Briggs.  How nineties is that?  And who wants to be a collection of letters anyway?  Well, if you must know, I’ve collected about half the alphabet so far.  Yes, I know there’s only eight available in the standard version of the test.  And before you say it, yes, I know that the baby-version assigns you letters and doesn’t explain how you can go about collecting the missing ones.  I suppose that does sound a bit like Pokémon.  Yes, I’m writing that down.

So we’re doing a goodness-of-fit test to find out the kind of person you are, the kind of role you best fit in the company, and the best kind of company for you.  We’re looking for the obvious misfits first – librarian in a fire-station kind of thing – and then we’ll do a second pass looking for misfits that have arisen through natural career progression – expert stripper running the front desk and accounts for example. 

Yes, I have coached strippers.

No, I think you’re better suited to a less clothing-optional environment.  I mean that in a nice way, of course.

Look at these sixteen squares and pick the colour that you find most appealing.  Take your time, this matters.  No, it doesn’t matter if you don’t know the names of all these colours, not everyone could attend school every day, could they?  Well that’s clearly Nasturtium.  And that one’s burnt sienna.  Yes it is a colour, now just pick one!

Right good.  Now, I’m going to show you a list of names, pick out the ones you were called when you were at school.

OK, that many?  Well you’ve got quite a choice ahead of you then; pick out one that hurt most and you really hated, and one that didn’t bother you at all.  Or at least, the one that hurt less than all the others.  You can take your time so long as you’re not going to tell me you don’t know what all the names mean.

Well that one is a bit unusual, but you can find it in the Urban Dictionary.  No, don’t look it up at work.

OK, that’s good.  One more for now; which of these hair-styles have you never tried?

Right, that’s fantastic.  So, taking what you picked, your basic personality type is homicidal.  I get that a lot, I think I’m getting type-cast you know.  Not that this is about me at all.  And your preferred role in a company is… dreamer.  That’s a little unusual, but every company needs someone with a big picture and a vision of how to achieve it.  That’s very useful, this will be why you’ve been gurued.  And the kind of company you’d work best in is… mobile ice-cream sales.

Oh, I am sorry.

Well no, I have to report this back now.  And you might want to think about where you could buy an ice-cream van from.