If advertising doesn’t work out, you could always try being a preacher.

Posted by John Mescall on May 3, 2011

The first intake of a new Award School class is about to rock up to the agency. And every time I see advertising hopefuls en-masse, it always gets me thinking about advertising (the career) rather than advertising (the job).

Because they’re two very different things, aren’t they? Anyway, I don’t know about you but I’m a sucker for online personality tests, so I figured I’d do the test at CareerOne. Apparently it’s based on something called the Humm-Wadsworth Temperament Scale, which sounds impressive and scientific enough.

I think you do these tests hoping for validation of stuff you already believe about yourself (which is why horoscopes are such an effective scam) but on the flipside you hope nothing weird happens.

Weird, like being told you’d make a great insurance actuary or undertaker or parking officer.

So I did the test, and bottom line: I’m a bit all over the place but they managed to give me 8 possible career choices which should apparently suit my personality down to the ground:

Counsellor; Design Consultant; Teacher; Lawyer; Creative Director; Minister of Religion; Union Representative; Preacher.

First I breathe a quick sigh of relief that my actual profession is on that list. That, and the lack of undertaker and parking officer. The next thing I notice is Minister of Religion and Preacher. Are they thinking Jerry Falwell, Martin Luther King or just some beige bloke in the pulpit going through the motions?

Hard to say. But you look at that list long enough, and it all starts to make sense. To work as a creative director in an advertising agency, you pretty much have to employ all the skills from all those oddly different careers.

Creative Director and Design Consultant speak for themselves. Lawyer is interesting, but a lawyer is nothing more than an advocate paid to represent his client in the best possible light. He needs to be personally persuasive, and construct equally persuasive arguments. Which is exactly what adpeople do. Except for a third of the money.

Teacher? Half the job is nurturing younger creatives, figuring out the best way to help them maintain their individuality while at the same time being a productive member of the group. We’ve got teachers covered in the money department, but they absolutely smash us when it comes to time off.

Preacher is the one that really piqued my interest though, because unless you’re… well, kind of weird, it’s not the sort of job that you ever really think of as an option.

But when you think about it, what is a preacher if not a salesman? His product category is God and his brand is whatever religion he represents. And again he’s there to cajole, to persuade, to reinforce beliefs, to spark flagging enthusiasm.

I could do that. Sure I don’t believe in God, but I suspect most of the preachers on cable TV in the States don’t either.

Counsellor? Absolutely. There’s more angst and mood swings and emotional craziness in an agency than you’ll get practically anywhere else on earth. And when a good idea dies, you have to be there to make sure no-one does anything too dumb.

Union Representative is a curly one though. But again, these guys are squarely in an advocacy role too: selling the worker’s message to the uncaring suits. I think they drink and swear a lot too, so that helps.

So there you have it. If a CV drops into your inbox and it’s from someone who’s currently working as a preacher or a union representative, you might want to think twice before consigning it to the trash.