The non-scientific guide to spirit animals and why my animal is the best one.

The world is a vastly diverse place full of different people. Sometimes a tad weird. As a Brazilian that just moved to Toronto, it is easy to stumble in some quirks worth debating about and examine them with fresh eyes. That gets even more interesting if we take a closer look at the job market.

In Brazil, job interviews tend to be a pot of straightforward and plain simple questions seasoned with a few tests but here in Canada, I have been noticing an extra spice to the recipe. A spiritual one. The Spirit Animal. 

So you are there, interviewing for some tech job, expecting some algebra test or to start coding and suddenly the hiring manager throws an unexpected right hook on you in the shape of a question: “What animal are you?” Immediately you travel back to your high school biology classes, trying to remember animal phyla at the same time your brain keeps asking “What the hell is this?” This is totally understandable. I would think the same. 

But it seems that Spirit Animals and other popular “creative” questions are meant to see how quickly interviewees can think on their feet in a job interview.

How you answer also indicates to employers how well you know your own strengths and weaknesses. A fun way to summarise how you see yourself.

On a quest to understand my spirit animal, I found that this is no easy task and it might not be for you either. 

So if you consider yourself the hard-working kind of person you might think of an ant. Ants are hard-working insects… wait… can we use insects on this? Oh forget it, let's try another hard-working creature such as the Beaver. Beavers build their own dams. They do work hard, but beavers are weird creatures that will not do so well outside their environment. And recruiters like resilience right? Oh yes, resilience is music to recruiter's ears. 

Camels are pretty resilient animals. They can walk hundreds of miles with a tank of water without complaining a lot. But wait a second. Did you ever get close to a camel? They stink! And I don’t. So no camel for me. What about tortoises! Tortoises live forever and in order to live forever, you have to be resilient in some way… but tortoises are slow.

Recruiters don’t like slow. They like fast. Efficient. 

Lion! Of course. The king of the jungle. Fast. Dominant. But if we dig deeper on the lion family, the lioness is the one that does all the hard work. She hunts. She breeds. She takes care of the family while the lion is just roaring and being king. I can definitely relate to some old colleagues that behave like lions, but I am much more of a hands-on kind of guy. 

So if resilience and leadership are important, there’s an obvious answer: the mighty elephant. Elephants are very social animals. They are strong and very intelligent. They are also loyal and family oriented. They are perfect, besides the fact that they are huge and catch a lot of attention. And recruiters don’t seem to like flamboyant characters. And a chimpanzee? What about a chimpanzee? Chimpanzees are family oriented, smart adaptable animals that are fast and active. Perfect! I am a chimpanzee.

But wait. The chimpanzee’s DNA is just 1,2% different than human’s DNA. What if the recruiter considers the chimpanzee just a worse version of a human? Ok. Screw it! This is too stressful and I am not that resilient. I am making my own spirit animal. It is the only way. And it will be awesome.

It is going to be an elephant. But a very small one. A dog sized elephant. With wings. To solve its mobility problem. My animal will also feature the autonomy of a camel and the shell of a tortoise to improve resilience. The social skills of a chimp and lasers. Because lasers are a cool 80’s feature and I am from the eighties.

So it is finally done. I am a dog-sized hard working elephant with a tortoiseshell, wings, camel-like autonomy, chimpanzee social skills and of course, lasers! Now the question is: would you hire me?

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* Lipsio Carvalho is a Brazilian creative director and entrepreneur living in Toronto and always chasing his spirit animal.