A Profit & Presence Co. tool · For anyone weighing up support work
And when it gives way, most people read it as a personal failure. It usually is not. Most hiring asks whether you can do the tasks, and that question predicts almost nothing. These two ask the ones that do.
Part one · Does the work fit you
Not the way you would like to be by spring. A “not me” here is worth more to you than a yes you have to keep up. Nothing is recorded and no email is asked for.
Finishing something somebody else started is satisfying to me, not deflating.
I would rather be the reason a thing got done than the reason it got thought up.
Being interrupted to help is the job to me. It is not the thing ruining my day.
With no instructions, I make the call and tell them after. I do not wait.
I can name a result I owned, not just a list of tasks I completed.
Writing in somebody else’s name, to their people, does not rattle me.
I can answer inside two hours during their working day, most days, on purpose.
When the priority changes with no warning, I re-sort and go. I do not need the reason first.
I can name three tools I am genuinely fast in today, with an example for each.
I want this seat for the next two years. Not until my own thing takes off.
I would spend two unpaid hours on a skills assessment to land the right one.
I want to be the second chair. Being the one out front is not what I am after.
Your read-out
Answer the twelve and the read-out writes itself.
Part two · Which of the six seats
Fitting support work and fitting a particular seat are two different questions. Five more answers will tell you which lane you are built for. If you have already taken Working Genius, mark your two and it sharpens.
Who do you want to be responsible to?
Where do you want to sit?
Your best working day looked like what?
Something is late and it is not your fault. You…
What would you rather be handed?
Optional. Taken Working Genius? Mark your two Geniuses, not your competencies.
Your lane
Answer the five and the lane appears.
If you want the wiring underneath all this
None of these are about this job either. They tell you what kind of work gives you energy and what kind quietly drains you, which is the thing underneath every answer you just gave. Under an hour, and three of the four are free.
The one worth paying for. Two kinds of work energize you, two you are capable of but drain on, two you avoid. Support work lives in the last stretch of a job and in responding to what is in front of you. If those two are your frustrations, no amount of training fixes it.
Twenty-eight questions, about five minutes. How you communicate and decide. Worth knowing before you sit beside somebody whose style is nothing like yours.
What you are naturally good at. Read it against Working Genius. Where they overlap is gold. Where they disagree is the more useful page.
How you process. Out loud or on your own, and how you handle detail and follow-through.
There is no wrong score on this, and no wrong lane. Somebody who finds out now that this is not their work has saved themselves a year. Somebody who finds out they were applying for the wrong one of the six has saved themselves the same year.
One more thing, and it is the part most candidates never think to check. A seat can be wrong because of you, and it can be wrong because the founder wrote a list of things they are tired of doing and called it a job. That second one is not your fault and it will still end with you out of work. Before you take an offer, ask whoever is hiring you to run the other half of this. How they react to that question tells you most of what you need to know.
Written by Lauren Apple, Profit & Presence Co.™ We place executive assistants with founders and then coach the founder through the first ninety days, which is how we know what is on this page.
