My, my, I am learning things writing this blog! It hadn’t crossed my mind that boilermakers still even existed! Shows how wrong I can be, eh? According to our friends at the BLS this is still a thriving trade (one one requiring a great deal of technical education as well).

Here’s why I was wrong. I thought that all boilers, whether they were for power generation or things like the food preparation industry, were simply made by machines in factories. Not a bit of it, larger ones are still made in sections and then assembled on site. This means that you require specialists to actually piece them together in the factory they are to be used in. And that’s a boilermaker. (Well, they also do the maintenance and so on, but the primary part of the trade is making them.)

What also surprised me was that as well as existing long past the date I thought it would, the route into the trade is still an apprenticeship. The nuts and bolts (sorry) of the trade are best learnt by actually working on site with experienced hands. Already knowing how to weld is useful, and there are also classes that must be taken (usually at a technical college) to aid in the technical education.

As far as our EQSQ tests are concerned this is definitely one for the male brain types, the systemizers. In the process of putting such boilers together a mistake can mean, a few years down the line, a grand explosion so concentration and attention to detail are vital.

I’m also encouraged by the fact that even the experienced hands keep up with their technical education, often attending classes on new equipment and new methods.

Medical billing clerks are the people who make sure the money moves in the right direction in the health care system. As you know, everything gets paid for by someone and they are the crucial link making sure that it is the right person and the right amount. When a patient gets treated (given an aspirin, sewn up after a car accident, delivered of a baby) someone has to take the notes of that treatment and assign codes to each part of it. Those codes are then added into the computers so that the bill can be calculated.

There’s one absolutely fabulous thing about this job depending upon your results in a personality test: there is absolutely no contact with patients whatsoever. We normally think of people in the medical world as being highly empathic (or with a high EQ on our EQSQ personality tests) and it is true that the vast majority are. This is why nursing, for example, has been so strongly thought of as a female profession, given that women are more likely to have that female brain type.

But what of those who would still like to work in the health care industry but who are highly systemising? It is, after all, 13 % of the entire American economy so it would be a little unfair if those with the male type brain were simply unable to work in it. Which is why this medical billing clerk idea seems so good. Absolutely no contact with patients means no requirement for empathy (well, nothing more than simple daily life in an office requires) so this makes it a perfect occupation for those who want to work in health care but don’t want to have to be nice to all those sick people.

One of the things that can stun an outsider about the USA is the list of things you need to have a licence to do. Almost all states require that barbers and cosmetologists graduate from a state approved technical school and thus have such a licence to practise. there is no requirement for a college degree, just that state licence. What is even more surprising to this outsider is that most states do not recognise the licences from other ones. If someone moves they have to go back to school and start again.

It is important, as you can imagine, to check on the law in your own state before signing up to train at one of the technical schools.

But what of our EQSQ personality tests? Do we think that barbers (who deal with men) and cosmetologists (sometimes called hairdressers and who deal with women) should be those with a female type brain (a high EQ score) or a male type (a high SQ score)? There are no limitations on men or women doing either job, but which brain type, as revealed by our personality tests, would be most appropriate? The same would also be true of those other personal grooming operatives, manicurists and pedicurists.

As the BLS tells us, within the professions the consensus is very much that the female type brain is required. Barbers and cosmetologists should enjoy working with the public, in fact, some schools consider these people skills so important that the teaching of them make up part of the program. Yes, empathy is so important that they even try to teach it to you.

Quite bizzarely, cosmetology is also taught in federal prisons.

I’m really rather enjoying this run through different career choices to see how our EQSQ can be used as career assessment tests. I’m coming across things I never even knew were in fact distinct jobs, like the audiologists of the title. I thought they were simply a speciality of doctors, you know, you have doctors for feet, for hearts, for guts, why not have a type for ears?

Just shows how much I know, eh? For there is a type of doctor for ears, ENT (Ear Nose and Throat…as they all link into each other they all get treated by the same people) but audiologists don’t do the actual cutting people up and so on. No, the job is rather more like an optician. Testing how good people’s hearing is (as opticians check sight) and if hearing aids are needed, they supply those (as opticians do glasses). Tests and so on, yes, the audiologists do these but if they find disease then they refer them to the ENT people. So audiologists are not, in fact, doctors at all. As our friends at the BLS tell us that having a clinical doctoral degree might become necessary in the future but at the moment the requirement is a master’s in audiology.

But how would we use our EQSQ questions as a career assessment test? Audiologists have to do a great deal of very delicate and accurate testing to see just how good (or bad) someone’s hearing is. As with all diagnosis, attention to detail is vital. So we might be looking for a high SQ score then? But they are also dealing with patients: one thing about these tests is that they take a long time to track down not just the level of performance but also why there is that particular level. This makes me think that we’d also be looking for a high EQ results.

So it might well be true that what we are looking for in an audiologist is someone with a balanced brain, both systemizing and empathizing.

Now here’s a cute little example of how the EQSQ personality tests can be used to give direct advice on a career choice.

Appraisers and assessors do almost exactly the same job. With a combination of office and computer work plus visits to the actual site, they work out what property is worth. It might be commercial property, residential, for a private person or even for the government, to calculate the taxes. But they’re using very much the same methods to do the work, whoever the client is.

Although most with either job have at least a four year college degree the actual training is a combination of classes at a technical school or community college plus experience actually doing the job: almost every State also has licence requirements.

But what has this to do with the EQSQ personality tests? It lies in the actual difference, not similarity, between the two jobs. As the Bureau of Labor Statistics tells us appraisers have independent clients. Look at this another way and this means that they have to go and sell their services to their customers: so they have to have the attributes of a decent salesman. This is obviously an empathic skill, meaning that we would expect people with a high EQ score to be good at it. Assessors almost always work for the government meaning that they obviously don’t need to have this skill.

Interesting don’t you think? The work is almost exactly the same but one variant needs to have a much higher EQ than the other.

Animal care and service work is not exactly the highest paid occupation in the country: according to the BLS wages run around the $8 - $10 an hour range. However, it does have its compensations…for those who love animalsof coursethere could be nothing better than to earn a living caring for them. For most jobs a college degree isn’t necessary, a GED or similar isenough for an entry level position. There are a couple that require a college degree (marine mammal care or zoo keeping) but most training is done on the job, employers being happy to take on those with a previous experience of animal care and then teach people as things move along.

For some specialities, like pet grooming, there are schools across the country that will teach the basics and offer a State qualification in the subject.

What do we think is the most important qualification though? Yes, from our EQSQ tests, it would have to be empathy, wouldn’t it? Animals can’t actually tell us directly what they’re thinking or feeling so we actually have to notice ourselves. Not a bad little definition of empathy there, the noting of what others are feeling without being told.
Larry Powell has a great set of stories about what it’s like to be a volunteer animal care worker: just the sort of experience that would help you work out ifthis is the sort of work for you.

Where would you think aircraft (or airline if you prefer) pilots fit into our EQSQ personality tests scheme? Do you think that being able to talk with a soothing voice to nervous passengers requires empathy? Or that watching 65 squillion gauges and controls to keep 400 tonnes (for a 747) in the air and flying in the right direction might owe something more to systemizing qualities?

Put that way (well, I am trying to guide you gently to the right answer) I think it’s clear that a higher Systemizing Quotient is what we might look for in potential pilots. Attention to detail is at the very center of then whole enterprise… actually, there’s a name for those pilots who ignore them: dead.

According to our friends at the Bureau of Labor Statistics as well as the EQSQ personality test score (and similar psychological tests are used in choosing who to train on the larger planes) want to be pilots, in theory at least, simplyneed to have a pilot’s licence of the correct type for the job and airplane they want. However, almost all employers now look for at least two years, if not four, of college as well: the major doesn’t really matter, it’s more a signal that you have the intelligence required than anything else.
the money’s pretty good too, $129,000 average for airline pilots, rather less for cargo ones. As for training, there are some college courses that offer credits against some of the requirements of the advanced pilot’s licences and the military is definitely a great place to learn to fly. Better planes too.
For a taste of what it’s like to work for a smaller airline, try Cockpit Conversations.

I’m old enough to remember when Ronald Reagan fired all the air traffic controllers so I did know that 90% of them are employed by the Federal Government. What I didn’t know was quite how well paid the job was, $106,000 a year according to the BLS. There’s also a slightly od training method. Applicants for training need to have either a four year college degree or some equivalent number of years work experience. I’m not quite sure why some number of years flipping burgers is considered the same as a college degree but then the ways of government are not for mortal minds to understand. There is then an 8 hour test to see if you have what it takes to become an air traffic controller and only then are you allowed to join the training program. The initial part takes 12 weeks but it can be up to two years before someone is fully qualified.

But what are the personality attributes they are looking for in these trainees? What would our EQSQ tests be able to tell anyone thinking of trying this career? It’s very definitely for systemizers, those with a higher SQ than EQ result. A high IQ is required as well, for the job is complex in making sure that airplanes do indeed fly on the correct routes, do not bump into each other and all the rest. But the most difficult part is the stress, the stress of knowing that for each and every hour of your working life you are responsible for the well being, the lives even, of several thousand people. This isn’t a time when you want to be “feeling their pain”. Those with too much empathy will not survive the mental stresses.

For something different, try these air traffic control jokes at The Bee’s Knees.

Did you know that there is a difference in the average size of the brain between men and women? More than the difference that would be explained by body size? As this piece at Boris Johnson’s blog points out (all about organ donation and so on, this is mentioned just in passing) it is in fact true.

But what, I hear you ask, does this have to do with our (and Simon Baron Cohen’s) EQSQ personality tests? One of the odder things that we can do with these personality tests, whether you are empathic or systemizing, is predict whether your brain size (that is, simply the volume of it, not how well it functions!) is higher or lower than the average. Those who have autism have distinctly larger brains than those who are not. Systemizers have larger brains than empathizers. The theory actually works the other way round, that empathy is in some ways associated with smaller brains. This is why, at least according to this theory, that empathy is more common in women than in men, for it is true that the average size of womens’ brains is smaller than that of mens’.

What we don’t as yet know (as the theory is too new for anyone to have weighed the necessary number of brains as yet) is whether this holds true for those women who have the male type (systemizing) brain and vice versa. But if it is, then those with higher SQ than EQ scores can comfort themselves with knowing that they have big brains, while those with higher EQ than SQ can know, well, that they don’t?

Whst do we think would be the requirements, according to our EQSQ tests, for someone who desired to be an agricultural or food scientist? As the Bureau of Labor Statistics tells us the basic requirement is a four year college degree in either of the sciences or perhaps something related like biology. This would be enough to qualify to work in applied research or in the commercial world attached to the farming or food businesses.

To go further and work in basic research will need a further college degree, perhaps to Master’s or Ph.D level.

Well, we know that a hard science degree requires a certain amount of systemizing: that’s actually a pretty good description of what science is really, working out the systems by which the Universe works. So at first glance we would say that, by our EQSQ tests, people with higher SQ than EQ would be good candidates.

However, there has also been something of a change in the way science is done in recent decades. Instead of working alone and in isolation science is now increasingly done by multi-discipolinary teams: this of course requires more attention to be paid to those others and thus greater empathy. It isn’t therefore quite as simple as we might think: it may be necessary to have strong systemizing traits to take the various college degrees to enter the field but once there, empathic skills could become more important.

Something of a puzzle then and if anyone has a good idea (or a good guess even) about which traits should predominate please do let us know in the comments.

The Slowlane Blog has an amusing little tale about touring a campus that offers college degrees in agricultural science.