The term career has several meanings. It can be viewed from different perspectives. A career is a job or profession someone has done for a long time. A career describes an individual’s journey through learning, work, and other aspects of life.
It is a period spent in a job or profession. Popular usage can mean advancement or upward movement to linear progression.
For example, he is moving up in his career. This definition suggests that a person is pursuing a career only if he or she exhibits steady or rapid advancement in status, money, and the like.
People who have not experienced advancement or other substantial achievements do not have a career.
Career Definition: What is a Career?
A career means a profession (for example, he has chosen a career in medicine). It is a lifelong sequence of jobs. It is a sequence of positions a person has held over his or her life. It means stable employment within a profession.
For example, physicians and lawyers are thought to have careers, whereas clerks and mechanical are not. This definition suggests that one must achieve a certain occupation or social status in one’s work activities to constitute a career.
In popular usage, it can mean advancement (“He is moving up in his career), a profession (“she has chosen a career in medicine), or stability over time (career military).
For our purposes, we will define a career as the pattern of work-related & experiences that span the course of a person’s life.
Using this definition, it’s apparent that we all have or will have careers. The concept is as relevant to transient, unskilled laborers as it is to engineers and physicians.
Therefore, for our purposes, any work, paid or unpaid, pursued over an extended period of time can constitute a career.
In addition to formal job work, careers can include schoolwork, homemaking, or volunteer work.
Super and Hall define a career as a sequence of positions occupied by a person during a lifetime. A career is all the jobs held during one’s working life. This is an objective career.
A career may be defined as a source of stability within a single occupational field or Closely connected fields. A person pursuing closely connected jobs like teacher, guidance counselor, or private tutor is considered a career.
A career consists of changes in values, attitudes, and motivation as a person ages. This is a subjective career.
So all careers have subjective and objective elements that together form the basis of an individual’s career.
Both of these perspectives, objective and subjective, focus on the individual.
Both assume that people have some degree of control over their destinies and can manipulate opportunities to maximize the success and satisfaction derived from their careers.
A career means advancement, professional status, and stability. Arther, Hall, and Lawrence (1989) consider the career to be an evolving sequence of a person’s work experience over time.
A career is defined as the pattern of work-related experiences that span the course of a person’s life.
Work-related experiences include objective events or situations such as job positions, job duties, work-related decisions, subjective interpretations of work-related events such as work aspirations, expectations, values and needs, and feelings about particular work experiences.
A career is often composed of the jobs held, titles earned, and work accomplished over a long period of time, rather than just referring to one position.
While employees in some cultures and economies stay with one job during their career, there is an increasing trend for employees changing jobs more frequently.
For example, an individual’s career could involve being a lawyer, though the individual could work for several firms and in several areas of law over a lifetime.
Career Patterns
It is important to understand career patterns for managers needing access to the best available talent and for individuals seeking the best fit of their skills and aspirations with the shifting work patterns.
The career patterns concept represents a new and future workforce model that is simple but powerful.
It clarifies current issues and provides foresight for better decision-making by everyone. This new workforce composed of individuals situated in multiple and changing career patterns will cause organizations and individuals to respond and behave differently as each adjusts to the new reality.
Recently, researchers have advocated multiple career concepts. They make distinctions among these four career patterns. These are discussed below:
A traditional linear career emphasizes upward mobility.
For example, Nadia joins as a lecturer and finally moves to be a professor.
A doctor has been providing medical services for 20 years and is becoming an expert in his area. An expert career focuses on stability in a special area. It focuses on building skills and knowledge within an occupation or field (traditional secondary view of career).
The spiral career path allows the employee to make lateral moves between different functional areas within the same organization. It allows people in human resource jobs to retain talent by continuously challenging employees with new tasks and broadening their expertise.
In a spiral career, major career shifts occur periodically, perhaps every 5 to 10 years. One joins as an Assistant Commissioner of tax officers and then shifts to administrative service.
A transitory career is characterized by changes in career fields as frequently as every one to five years.
On average, employees in the USA experience five to seven employers before they go for retirement.
The four career patterns can be described as follows:
| Career Pattern | Pattern Description | Key Personal Motivators |
|---|---|---|
| Linear | More or less vertical movement up an organizational hierarchy to positions of greater responsibility (traditional primary view of career) | Power, achievement, and external rewards |
| Expert | Focus on building skill and knowledge within an occupation or field (traditional secondary view of career) | Competence, status, and stability |
| Spiral | Periodic moves across related occupations or fields with sufficient time in each (5-10 years) to achieve a high level of competence before progressing on | Creativity and personal growth |
| Transitory | HB Frequent (1-5 years) moves across different occupations or fields | Variety and independence |
Career vs Job
A career is often confused with a job. A job is something employees do to earn money; a career is a series of connected employment opportunities.
A job has minimal impact on an employee’s future work life, while a career provides experience and learning to fuel the employee’s future. A job offers few networking opportunities, but a career is loaded with them.
Experts differentiate between a career and a job. A person usually holds several jobs in their career. It is usually easier to change jobs in the same field of work that defines one’s career.
However, switching careers is more difficult and may require the person to start at the bottom of the ladder in a new career.
According to Greenhouse, a career is a perceived sequence of attitudes and behaviors associated with work-related experiences and activities over a person’s life span.
A job is what a person does at work to bring home a paycheck, and a career is being engaged in a satisfying and productive activity. Thus a career involves a long-term view of a series of jobs and work experiences.
For some people, their jobs are part of a careful plan.
For others, their career is simply a matter of luck. Merely planning a career does not guarantee career success. Superior performance, experience, education, and some occupational luck play an important role.
However, people rely largely on luck and are seldom prepared for career opportunities.
Successful people identify their career goals, plan, and then take action. Put another way, successful careers are managed through proper and careful planning.
People who fail to plan their careers may do so because they think their company or boss will assume responsibility.
Or perhaps they are unaware of the basic career planning concepts.
Without an understanding of career goals and career paths, planning is unlikely.
A career path is the sequential pattern of jobs that forms one’s career. Career goals are the future positions one strives to reach as part of a career.
Thus, it is clear that some differences exist between a job and a career.
Difference Between Career and Job
| # | Career | Job |
|---|---|---|
| What is it? | A career in the pursuit of a lifelong ambition or the general course of progress towards lifelong goals. | Job is an activity through which an individual can earn money. It is a regular activity in exchange for payment. |
| Requirements | Usually requires special learning that includes individualized components that develop abilities beyond that which training is capable of. | Education or Special training may or may not be required |
| Risk-taking | A career may not mean work stability as it encourages one to take risks. The risks are often internal and therefore planned. | A job is “safe,” as work and income are stable. However, shifting priorities, especially in resource jobs, can abruptly change the demand and require relocation, an unstable factor. Risks may be completely external. |
| Time | Long term | Short term |
| Income | It varies depending on the value to society or some other entity. Non-monetary benefits may be higher. The salary is more common. | Varies with demand. More likely to wage. |
| Contribution to society | It May have high value as social change/progress may be possible. | It may negatively impact when counterproductive social practices are continued in the name of protecting jobs. |
