Techgue | When planning your professional life, it is important to know the difference between career and job. Even though both are used to earn income and meet life's needs, the two are actually not completely the same. To better understand the difference between career and job, see the complete explanation below.
What is a Career ?
Career is defined as a job carried out by someone even throughout their life. Meanwhile, according to the Big Indonesian Dictionary, career is explained as a person's progress and development in work, life, position, and so on.
Career is a long-term goal of a person's life. Besides that, careers are not limited to work alone. Career includes the journey of a person's professional life when that person uses their knowledge, skills, educational background and competencies.
A career is not only carried out to earn income to meet life's needs, but is more than that. Career is related to a person's interest in a type of professional activity.
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Career is what makes a person enthusiastic, makes him able to complete tasks without feeling burdened, and what makes that person willing to take risks. This includes if the risk taken can affect one's own life and the lives of the people involved in it.
Talking about career paths, people generally prioritize job satisfaction rather than money. They will learn many new things, find out about the latest things related to their careers, and build many professional relationships to develop their careers.
What is Job
Work is defined simply as an activity carried out by a person in exchange for monetary value. According to the Big Indonesian Dictionary, work is explained as livelihood or activities used for a living.
Generally, work is short term and is done because someone needs income to meet living needs. Given the relatively short period of time, work does not have a significant impact on a person's life.
If someone is unhappy in their current job, they tend to switch to another, better type of job. In addition, not all types of work require special skills or studies.
Most types of work generally involve physical, mental abilities, or both. The rights, duties, functions, responsibilities and authority related to each job have also been determined by the employer.
Career and work are basically interrelated because almost all careers start with work. You may enjoy your job and have the desire to turn it into a full-time career.
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For example, your first job is as a receptionist at a restaurant. You can use all the experience you gain as a receptionist to become a waiter. Then, you can work as a restaurant manager because you know how to handle customer complaints and so on when you are a waiter.
The easiest example to differentiate between career and job is a doctor. Becoming a doctor is an individual career. A doctor may have served more than 20 hospitals. Every time he changed hospitals, he would automatically change jobs. However, he will always be a doctor.
5 Main Differences between Career and Job
So, those are the differences between careers and jobs in general. To better understand the discussion this time, take a look at some of the main differences between career and work below:
Benefits Obtained
Benefits are no longer a foreign term among professional workers. In employment terms, benefits are a series of rights received by workers from their employers. Benefits do not include salary, but rather compensation, health insurance, pension, paid leave, and so on.
With a career, someone can get all the benefits above. Work can also provide many benefits, depending on the policies set by the company. Unfortunately, not all types of work can provide benefits.
Objective
If viewed from an objective or goal perspective, it is clear that career and work have different goals. In general, careers are based on desires or ideals. So, it is clear that the goal of a career is to achieve your dreams and get satisfaction during the process of achieving your goals.
Meanwhile, the purpose of work is to earn a living within a certain period of time. A career is actually also about fulfilling life's needs. However, when choosing a career, people tend to base their decisions on their abilities and desires (passions).
Some people even determine their careers without giving importance to monetary benefits. For example, someone wants to become a social worker or volunteer. He may not always get a reward for what he has given. Even so, he still finds happiness from what he does.
Required Requirements
Careers and jobs are different in almost all aspects, including the requirements needed. Jobs do not always require abilities, educational background or special skills. Most jobs involve even more physical strength.
This is certainly different from a career which is carried out until the person decides to retire. Careers require special requirements, such as formal education, training, special studies, and so on. It is not uncommon for a career to require someone to take further studies, such as workers in the health sector for example.
Risk
The difference between work and career can also be seen from the risk aspect. Jobs are considered to be safer. The reason is, someone doesn't need to take risks that could have a significant impact on their work. People only need to carry out their duties and responsibilities to get rewards in the form of money.
Meanwhile, a career is something that makes someone willing to take risks. This includes if the risk could have an impact on himself and other people he works with.
Duration
As mentioned above, work is generally carried out in the short term. Meanwhile, careers are carried out in the long term and often take up half of a person's life.
However, if we look at working hours, those who have a career tend to work regular hours. Instead of being paid according to when they come and go, they are paid a set salary.
On the other hand, work requires a person to tend to be more time-oriented. In fact, quite a few employers pay their workers by the hour. Apart from that, work also does not have a predictable schedule. These irregular working hours can actually provide opportunities to do other types of part-time work.
Conclusion
Well, now it is clear that a job is different from a career. One basic difference between work and career is that work is what you are doing at the moment. Meanwhile, career is what you have done so far and what you want to do next.
That's the difference between career and job. Please know that you can turn your job into a career. The way to do this is to make every job an experience. Joining an online course can also help you turn your job into a brilliant career.