Prologue

People tend to use the terms job and career interchangeably without knowing their technical difference. Job and career are different terms in an individual’s life, determining his or her employment opportunities. The difference between the two will help you in your employment decisions. There are some similarities between the terms of job and career. We can construct a Job vs Career Venn diagram with the aid of the similarities and differences.

The common area of job and career represent similarities. In comparison, the specific area of each circle of job and career will represent the differences. To understand the difference between job and career, let us know the definition of each term.

What Is the Job?

A job is a particular task, duty, role, or responsibility which an individual performs in exchange for money. A job or occupation can also be defined as a short or long term contract between the employer and the employee.

The individuals may work in a job, either for full time or part-time. The money amassed from working in an occupation is the wage. The job helps you to gain experience to build the right career path for the future.

What Is a Career?

When an individual is motivated by passion, ambition, and professional objectives, they pursue a career.

Hence, a career is a long term pathway on which the individual moves by procuring training or formal educational credentials for a longer duration.

A career also helps to refine your skillset and procure experience necessary in your field. With the aid of a lucrative career, the individuals can amass fixed salaries and various benefits like bonuses, pensions, or plans.

The individuals can also reap the benefits of various non-monetary aspects of a career. Such attributes entail work satisfaction, self-respect, pride, networking outreach, etc. Generally, people tend to pursue a single career throughout their entire lives.

Job vs. Career

Now we know the definitions or meanings of a job and a career. These meanings will help us to compare the two terms.

Generally, an individual applies for a job to reap its monetary aspects and earn a living. However, a job in the required field may help you move a step forward in your career ladder.

Let us understand job vs career using an example:

Alex is a passionate content writer with an excellent flair in English. Due to his hard work, he got a job in a company in a content writer’s capacity. However, the company required him to initiate his term of employment after six months from the date of his selection.

During his tenure of six months, Alex joins a job of social media marketing.

With the help of this occupation, he procures a fixed monthly stipend and augments his networking outreach.

The social media marketing job also gives Alex work experience and other soft skills like effective communication, teamwork, leadership, etc. After six months, Alex passionately joins his job as a content writer.

In the above example, Alex is a content writer who started as a social media marketer to amass the required experience and training. Alex’s passion and ambition will lead him to become a content writer and pursue this career.

However, he procured a social media marketer’s job only to earn a living for the time being and enhance his resume with relevant experience.

With the above example, we can understand the meaning of a job-oriented person and a career-oriented person. A job-oriented person’s primary goal is to amass high revenues rather than satisfy the clients and employers.

On the other hand, a career-oriented person’s main aim is to learn various technical and soft skills to fabricate an impressive career path.

Effect of Job on A Career

Aggregation of The Jobs

Career is an aggregate of all the jobs procured by an individual during their lifetime. It can be a possibility that the person works in a single job for years. On the other hand, they may work in several unrelated jobs throughout their lifetime.

For example, you may work as a data analyst in one company for a period. However, you may become a digital marketer after your previous job gets over. So, we can term the jobs as short term attributes that help us acquire our long term objectives.

Augment Networking Outreach

A job helps to build various professional and informal Contacts. When you work in an organization with different management levels, you come in touch with colleagues, superiors, and juniors.

By creating a good image of your personality in the recruiters’ minds, you can expand your networking outreach.

The recruiters tend to suggest your name to various organizations and different managers. In this way, a job helps you to move further in your career path.

Dedication

Career-oriented individuals always give their best during a job. They strive to refine their skill set to achieve proficiency in their career field.

New Skills

The job opportunities help to amass various technical and soft skills, essential for your career development. The technical skills proffer you the formal job credentials.

On the other hand, the soft skills complement the technical skills and help you perform your duties smoothly and effectively.

Risk and Commitment

A career has more significant risks than jobs. Changing a career means acquiring new formal credentials relevant to the modified career field. But you can easily switch on to various jobs without having a profound impact on your earnings.

People are less committed to jobs. They may quit or resign if they get an employment opportunity from a company that pays them a higher salary.

Individuals pursue a career with full dedication and commitment. They acquire jobs to refine themselves and gain experience for their career. However, they may switch between jobs and choose the professions which align their career goals.

Due to extra hard work and experience, the later part of one’s career offers a better salary than the initial or any job. Moreover, the incentives of a job are relatively less significant than in a career.

Due to their passion and commitment for a career, the individuals generally go through the job profile, description, and post’s growth rate before applying in any organization.

Which Is Better?

It’s kind of impossible to find a winner from job vs. career fight as they are incomplete without the other.

John and Edward work in a store from 7:00 AM to 11:00 PM. Along with his studies at the University, John works in the store to fetch incomes for meeting his study expenses. Hence, he ignores the customers’ needs in the store and keeps on looking at the Clock. Once his time gets over, he immediately rushes out of the store without even greeting his supervisor.

But Edward works in the store to amass the required skills needed to become a retailer. He converses in a polite tone with the clients and helps them to the best of his potential.

During overload, he even helps his supervisor by working overtime. The regular customers always tend to approach him to clear their queries rather than meeting John.

The above example shows that John works in the market store to satisfy his monitory needs. This is an example of a job. But Edward works in the store to train himself for his career.

So, both the terms- job and career are beneficial in different circumstances. No one has an advantage over the other.