POLL: How's Your Job?

Remove all ads!

This isn't really getting us anywhere, so I'll just end by saying that the point I was trying to get across (and I think you may have missed) was that a career is more than just a college degree, and certainly more than just a job. It's what you consider yourself and once aspired to be. A dentist is more likely to identify himself as such when asked "what do you do?," whereas a dental assistant is more likely to answer "I work in doctor so-and-so's office." In short, a job is what you do - a career is what you are. Necessity & monotony vs. pride & achievement. There are certainly plenty of careers that don't require an education - like athletes, artists, real estate speculation. What's required is self identification as that role, a drive to become better and a desire to do it for the rest of your working life.

A good test? Ask someone if they can imagine themselves doing the same thing 30 years from now. If they say "*ugh*," it's just a job for them.

 

Lifeguarding, aka the easiest job ever, would be my current job, though I doubt that I'd be doing it out of high school.

Still got a few years til' that whole "career" thing needs to be decided upon...

 

A lot of people really like being in sales. I don't think anyone chooses to sell carpet in particular. But to most sales guys, sales are sales, whether you are selling technology and computers (like I did) or flooring, or cellphones or even cars. So yes, "sales" can be a career. And some people can have a passion for whatever it is they are selling - even floors (hard to believe).

 

Regarding the career-job question, I have a career. I do expect to be doing this until I retire, though perhaps not at the same place. I like what I do, usually, and if I stopped doing it, it would not be for another career but for a plain old job, most likely for financial reasons.

 

Ha, my company's employee annual survey results just came in and my work group's satisfaction scores (particulary those dealing with what we think about our managers) were so low that they have hired a consulting firm to help address the situation. The scores are presented side by side with the scores for the entire department and the company as a whole we we so far below them in just about every category that it is truly sad.

Even worse are the comparisons with the last two years results. Two years ago we were a very happy bunch, last year's score dropped to the company average, and then we end up here with our friendly neighbourhood consultant. It is only three data points but the trend line is still pretty damned strong.

The only thing that has changed is our managers. We had three managers of which one was excellent, one pretty good and the third who basically seems to want to have as little to do with us as possible. Guess which one of those three is the only one left now. The two replacement managers can only be described as dreadful.