The Difference Between a Career and Job

What is a career? What is a job? When you ask people to differentiate between the two terms, you will get more confused than them. Some will tell you that a career is a job and other will tell you that a job is a career. So, which one is which? Is a job a career or a career a job?

According to an online definition by google, a career is an occupation undertaken for a significant period of a person’s life and with opportunities for progress in future. Am still confused.

The same search engine says that a job on the other hand is a paid position of regular employment or a piece of task or work especially one that is paid or a casual or occasional work. It may also mean to buy and sell as a broker-dealer especially on a small scale.

From the two definitions, above, do you get any difference between the two terms? A job is something you do in the short term to earn money. It is something you offer in exchange of money. When you are working, and being paid for that work, that is a job.

A career on the other hand is long-term. A job is short-term. A career is an ambition that one pursues for life. Anyone can do a job but not anyone can do a career. With this, it means, for a job, one may not need a particular education or skills for the same, (For instance, a journalist trained for writing political issues starting to write on business issues for money) but a career needs a specialized training. It is about an ability for someone to do work. It entails experience, training and ambition.

I will use journalism as an example because I am a journalist. Being a journalist can be a career but working in a media house, which can be terminated at any time is a job. Do you get the difference? let us also say, as a journalist, you get someone who does purely photography, you learn from him and then take up photography as a lifelong thing, that becomes your career.

What should one bank on? A job or a career?

This is a question that disturbs many people. What one needs to understand is that both a job and a career are driven by factors and that all those factors depend on the person. How stable a job is depending on how good the person is as a worker and how much one’s skills are needed by the employer. For a career, it needs patience. It is about investing in years in developing one’s experience.

So, what will you invest in? A job or a career?