Defining Work, Job, Occupation, Career, and Career Development

While reading chapter I came across the section about "Defining Position, Job, Occupation, Career, and Career Development," and I thought that Brown raised an interesting point about how terms such as "position", "job", and "work" "occupation" were presumably created to refer to different stages of Career Development, but we don't always refer to them as such. We used them interchangeably. This really got me thinking, and I felt that it was really important to define these terms and to set them apart, in order to better understand what we're talking about. I researched each of these terms and below is what I've found to be the difference between them. I also decided to create my own definition of career development by incorporating and adding to what Sears (1982) and Brown 2012 have defined it as. 

Work: Something that has been produced or accomplished through the effort, activity, or agency of a person or thing (American Heritage, 2011). 

Job: a piece of work, especially a specific task done as part of what an individual person is expected or obliged to do; duty; responsibility which can be paid or unpaid (Scholar, 2015). 

Occupation: Defined as everyday tasks and activities in which people are actively engaged, and identity, it is how as how an individual views themselves and are viewed by others. (This is their identifier. Example: "I'm a lawyer" or "I'm a dentist." If this is the case, other individuals will also view them as a lawyer or a dentist, respectively.  

Career: a person's progress or general course of action through life or through a phase of life, as in some profession or undertaking whether that be paid or unpaid (Scholar, 2015). 

Career development (personal definition): The continuous process that occurs over an individual's life span; through the integration of the roles, settings, culture, and life events - all of which combine to shape that individual's career. 

Now that a better understanding has been reached by looking more into some aspects of career development, I would like to turn my attention to another point raised in the book, which is “Why people work.” As noted in some of the definitions above, work, job, occupation, etc., can be paid or unpaid. I believe this piece is really essential, because while most individuals work in order to earn a living, work can also mean volunteer opportunities or even internships, both of which can undoubtedly help further your career or allow for more opportunity professionally. Brown (2012) mentions this too. The fact that money doesn’t always explain why people work, I think the missing piece of that puzzle is passion and doing what you want, simply because you want to. If you’re lucky enough to find a job that you genuinely enjoy, they say, “you’ll never work a day in your life."

Resources:

American Heritage (2011). Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

Brown, D. (2012). Career information, career counseling, and career development (10th ed.). New York: Pearson Education, Inc.

Lahberte‐Rudman, D. (2002). Linking occupation and identity: Lessons learned through qualitative exploration. Journal of Occupational Science, 9(1), 12-19.

Sears, S. (1982). A definition of career guidance terms. A National Vocational Guidance Association perspective. Vocational Guidance Quarterly, 31, 137-143. 

Scholar. (2015). Dictionary.com Unabridged. Retrieved August 31, 2015, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/scholar