The questions on the quiz were written by a language model, and every occupation was scored by one. This is all of it: the job postings each occupation was described by, the exact prompt, and the scores that came back. Back to the quiz
One row per occupation, rated by gpt-5.4-nano at
temperature 0. Each prompt is rebuilt from the code and hashed the way the pipeline
hashes it, so the key shown is where its response was found — the pairing is checked
rather than asserted. Open a row to see the postings, the prompt and the scores.
| Occupation | Series | Hires/yr | Postings | Hiring agency | Work family | Education needed | Response |
|---|
The 25 questions the quiz asks. Narrow ones are written to separate particular occupations; broad ones cover kinds of work the narrow ones miss.
You are rating one federal occupation against a list of statements about work. Use the real posting titles and qualification facts supplied, not your general impression of the job title. Score how central each statement is to the everyday work of someone hired into this occupation at entry level.
| 0 | Review claims, laws, and supporting records to decide whether a person gets a benefit, then explain the decision and the reason for it. | narrow |
| 1 | Stand at a clinic front desk, check people in, schedule appointments, answer phones, and sort out forms and referrals for the next step in care. | narrow |
| 2 | Respond to alarms, enter the scene of a fire or hazardous release, and carry out rescue, suppression, and emergency medical care. Move fast when lives, buildings, or aircraft are in immediate danger. | narrow |
| 3 | Review purchase requests, compare vendors and prices, and place orders for supplies, services, or repairs that keep an office or facility running. | narrow |
| 4 | Answer callers and emailers who want to know the status of their own case, explain what additional records are needed, and keep each file moving to the next step. | narrow |
| 5 | Review pay, travel, and accounting records to find the source of a mismatch, then correct the entries and document the fix. Reconcile ledgers, vouchers, and system reports until the numbers agree. | narrow |
| 6 | Guide a taxpayer through a delinquent account, gather financial facts at a home or business, and work out the next step to bring the case into compliance. | narrow |
| 7 | Research unfamiliar issues that come up in a disclosure case, pull guidance from multiple sources, and build the record needed for a decision. | narrow |
| 8 | Interview people at a border crossing, inspect their documents and belongings, and decide whether they can enter before the line moves on. | narrow |
| 9 | Receive shipments, stack and move stock in a warehouse, check counts against paperwork, and keep shelves and storage areas organized for the next issue. | narrow |
| 10 | Review complaints and allegations, sort them to the right authority, build case files, and track the follow-up until the report is ready for decision makers. | narrow |
| 11 | Handle a steady stream of requests that arrive with deadlines, sorting them by urgency and keeping pace when several cases land at once. | narrow |
| 12 | Clean patient rooms, restrooms, and hallways in a medical facility, empty waste, restock supplies, and move from area to area as the shift demands. | narrow |
| 13 | Walk a hospital ward, answer call lights, help patients bathe, feed, turn, and move, and report changes in condition to the nurse. | narrow |
| 14 | Receive emergency calls, sort out the first facts fast, and send the right units while the radio keeps ringing and the next incident is already waiting. | narrow |
| 15 | Inspect a ward or clinic room, prepare and test patient equipment, and act immediately when a reading or procedure shows a health problem. | narrow |
| 16 | Track aircraft or equipment work orders from release to completion, reshuffle priorities when urgent repairs appear, and keep the maintenance schedule moving for the shop. | narrow |
| 17 | Meet with Veterans or Soldiers who are angry, withdrawn, or in crisis, help them set goals, and connect them to the services and follow-up they need. | narrow |
| 18 | Trace wiring, replace breakers and controls, and test circuits in buildings, hangars, or industrial spaces until the system is safe to use again. | narrow |
| 19 | Take apart, repair, and reassemble aircraft systems on the flight line, then sign off that the aircraft is ready for the next sortie. Work around engines, hydraulic lines, and tight maintenance deadlines in an aircraft hangar. | narrow |
| 20 | Analyze technical systems, materials, or processes to solve engineering and scientific problems and improve how they perform. | broad |
| 21 | Plan, coordinate, and evaluate programs or services that help people learn, improve performance, or use available resources effectively. | broad |
| 22 | Protect natural resources, public property, or people by enforcing rules, preventing hazards, and responding to problems before they escalate. | broad |
| 23 | Interview people, gather facts, and prepare reports or recommendations based on findings from legal, safety, or enforcement work. | broad |
| 24 | Inspect, troubleshoot, repair, and maintain mechanical, electrical, and electronic equipment and systems to keep them operating safely and reliably. | broad |
Candidate questions were written by gpt-5.4-mini, shown
real occupations and their posting text. The cache stores responses keyed by a hash of
the request, and a generation prompt depends on which occupations were batched together
on that run, so these responses are not paired with their prompts.
You write items for a career-matching instrument for federal jobs. Each item is one kind of work, and a respondent rates how much they would want to do it. The instrument is only useful when occupations are rated differently from each other: if two jobs score alike on every item, no answer a person gives can tell them apart. Write items that split the occupations you are shown.
Draw items from these axes:
- Who you deal with all day: patients, inmates, taxpayers, travellers, soldiers, applicants, scientists, no one
- Where the work physically happens: hospital ward, forest, border, warehouse, courtroom, cubicle, aircraft hangar
- What passing through the door requires: a specific degree, a licence, a clearance, a fitness test, an age limit, nothing
- Rhythm and stakes: same task repeated to a standard, one long case at a time, emergencies, seasonal surges
- What a wrong call costs: money, a legal outcome, someone's health, someone's safety, nothing much
Write each item as a plain description of the activity, in the imperative, the way a job description would put it — e.g. "Explain rules, benefits and next steps to people worried about their own case, with every conversation different." Two sentences at most. Never begin with "Would you rather", "Do you like", "Are you interested in", or any question form. No question marks.
Do not write generic interest items ("working with data"). Do not write two items that would score the same across these occupations. Do not ask about skills or qualifications the person already has — describe the work itself, so a 17-year-old can react to it. Every item must be one a real federal job would answer differently from most others on the list.
Do not end an item by restating the axis you drew it from. Clauses like "where the wrong call can affect safety", "the main cost of a mistake is lost time or money", "with the same tasks repeated to a standard" or "in a rhythm where one urgent call interrupts the next" read as machine-written and get stripped by hand every time they appear. Describe the work and stop.