Q&A with Paul Massell, founder of Catholic Gigs.
Sponsored: This article is made possible by Catholic Gigs, supporting quality and engaging Catholic content.
Start at the beginning. What is BOSCOS?
BOSCOS is a free, ten-minute assessment on Catholic Gigs. You answer a set of statements about how you tend to act in ordinary situations, and it sorts your answers into six ways of working. The result tells you which kinds of work energize you, which kinds drain you, and where you tend to fit on a team.
It describes how you work, which is different from a personality test. I built it because I am seeing job titles and descriptions changing faster than anyone can plan for. I think more than ever people should focus on cultivating their strengths instead of trying to contort themselves to the job market.
Where does the name come from, and why Bosco?
The letters stand for the six types: Builder, Operator, Seller, Cultivator, Optimizer, and Strategizer. Together they can spell out BOSCOS, and that was mostly a happy accident.
St. John Bosco spent his life in Turin with boys who had no work, or work that was abusing them. He went out to meet them where they were, found jobs for those who needed them, and negotiated apprenticeship contracts that protected them from being used as cheap labor. He is often named as a patron of young people and apprentices. Catholic Gigs exists primarily for people early in their careers or holding several jobs at once, so I could not think of a better patron.
Was it always six types, or did you land there?
It started as two: people who build things and people who sell them. That left out too many people, so Cultivator quickly came in for anyone whose work is developing other people, like teachers and coaches, and Operator came in for the people who keep things running. Then Optimizer, for the people who see the flaw and make a thing better. Strategizer came last, for the person who decides what matters most and in what order, because none of the other five focused on that.
Six is where it sits today. The framework may still shift as more people take it and tell me where it misses.
Someone finishes the assessment. What do they actually walk away with?
You walk away with three things. The first is your two strongest types, which point to the work that tends to give you energy. The second is the type at the bottom, which points to the work that tends to drain you. The third is a set of gig categories on the platform that fit that blend, so the job feed is aimed at work that suits you instead of at everything.
So it doesn’t just tell people what they’re good at, it tells them what drains them?
Most jobs are a mix, and the draining part is usually what makes people miserable in their jobs. I think knowing that ahead of time can save a lot of grief.
There is a deeper reason too. I had been reading a great book called “Leisure, the Basis of Culture by Josef Pieper.” In it he wrote that we tend to mistrust anything that comes easily and only feel good about what cost us toil. I think a lot of us have accepted that work has to grind us down to count. I don’t think that is entirely accurate. And when your work fits how you were made, you can still work hard, but you can also rest when it is done and see that it is good. Naming what drains you is part of finding that. The BOSCOS result calls it work that depletes you, because that is what it measures, and it says nothing about whether you are good at it. In fact, maybe you are good at something that depletes you, and somewhat counterintuitively, maybe you should avoid that.
What if someone reads their type and thinks, “that’s not me”?
Then I want to hear about it. This is an early version, and some results are going to be inaccurate. The whole point of putting it out now is to gather that feedback and improve the questions.
That said, a result that feels wrong can still be worth sitting with. Sometimes the type that surprises you is one you have never had the chance to use, and sometimes the reaction itself tells you something about what you want your work to be.
Related Links
Connecting Catholic Job Seekers and Employers: Inside Catholic Gigs
Saint John Bosco: Teacher of the Two Pillars
Thank you to today’s sponsor! Check out the BOSCOS Assessment by visiting Catholic Gigs.
