Often the terms “job”, “occupation” and “career” are used interchangeably. However, in reality, these terms have quite different meanings, so it is important to distinguish between them.
to work”It’s a job you get paid for. So it is a means of living and may or may not be long term or lead to anything else by way of work. For this reason, a job can be seen as one big task or a series of tasks that are usually done for money. Contract work and project work often contain “jobs” that need to be done, usually on a fixed-term basis (even if repeated over many months and even years). People tend to talk about their job as “just a job” when it doesn’t provide them with much long-term job satisfaction.
An “occupation” is a broad category of jobs with similar characteristics. In other words, an occupation is a broad title for what someone does on an ongoing basis. This means that all of your work tends to fit into a professional category that most people recognize. There are many examples in this category, but some might be an accountant, doctor, engineer, nurse, plumber, police officer, scientist, or teacher. As you can see, most occupations are fairly well understood in concept, if not in specific terms, and therefore there is a lot of good information to gather about them (online, for example) as a future career option. Job satisfaction is usually higher in an occupational role, but in modern times people are much less likely than before to stay in a single occupation. Today, many of us will change occupations several times in our lives.
Finally, to “race” it’s a lifetime journey of building and putting your skills, knowledge and experiences to good use (wherever they are invested). Stated another way, a career is a period of long-term employment, usually in a certain area or industry. Therefore, a person will typically spend many years in one area or industry and fill what may be a number of different roles. Thus, a career is similar to an occupation, but is often much broader in that it can involve several linked occupational jobs in the same or similar fields. For example, a physician may start out as a resident in a hospital, become a surgeon, act as a specialist, become a medical director, and finally become a hospital administrator. There are four occupations that are very directly linked but that can be considered a career in the medical field.
Of course, in a more general sense, there’s nothing stopping people from pursuing a fairly varied career where they start out as accountants, for example, work their way up to CFO, and then become CEO. He or she may even end up on the board of a completely different company in an unfamiliar field, still a great career!
So, in summary, a job is a job for which you are paid, an occupation is a variety of jobs with similar characteristics, and finally, a career is a lifetime of putting your skills, knowledge, and experiences to good use.
Why does that matter?
If you simply want a job, you may be happy to collect your money in return for the hours you put in and not worry too much about where it might take you in the future. Both younger and older employees often feel this is completely acceptable, as they either want to gain some experience for their resume or have to earn money to fund their activities or interests outside of work. However, as soon as you start to think about other topics, such as increased work interest, growth, learning and development, and opportunities for collaboration, you begin to think in more occupational terms (a field of activity in which you could thrive) and career. . terms (where one good job can lead to another that you can enjoy even more). For this reason, we will examine how to consider occupations and careers that provide the greatest potential for enjoyment for people. And to do this, we first have to know quite a bit about ourselves.