Career - Do you have a job or a career?

Career and Coaching Tips

What Happened to my career?

Do you have a job or do you have a career?

Job or Career

A job is a way to pay the bills; you might like it a lot, have great colleagues and work for a company that treats you well.

On the other hand, you might find it a slog, feel frustrated or bored, feel things aren't going anywhere.

More Than a Job

A career, however, is a lot more than a job: yes, it too is about paying the bills, but it's as much about the future as the present.

A good career builds on and is developed from your skills, strengths, innate abilities and passions.

That last quality may be the most important.

A Career is Doing Something You Like

Plenty of people have built careers based on what they're good at only to find that they don't like what they've built:

"Just because I'm good at it, doesn't mean I really want to do this for the rest of my life."

The skills and talents may be there, but the passion's missing or it's gone walkabout somewhere along the way.

A Career Can Choose You

Careers sometimes choose people rather than the other way around: we've heard many people say

"I just fell into____________; I didn't really wake up one day and say I want to become a _____________."

But since very few jobs are for life these days, it's very possible to have two or three or even more careers in a working life.

Moving On

You may feel that you've done everything you want to in one particular area and are keen to develop in another.

Or you may have built a terrific career and then become disenchanted with it.

Or you may now feel better placed to actually choose a different career instead of the one you 'fell into'.

You can even have more than one career at the same time, there was a term coined a number of years ago that was all about having a 'portfolio career' where you have a number of strings to your bow.

Changing Your Career

You may be at a crossroads and know deep down there's something that you still want to do, but aren't quite sure what it is, or aren't sure how to get there.

That's why there are so many career advisors out there (some good, some not so good and some really dreadful) to help point people in the right direction, or even to reassure them that what they're doing is spot on.

A Good Career

A good career is one that develops and evolves over the years; it doesn't stay static; it builds as you get new skills, become more proficient, expand your passions and perhaps even get more daring in the choices you make.

You may still be paying the bills, but having a career that's fulfilling not only brings in the bacon but also brings in satisfaction, pride, enjoyment, creativity.

There may be frustrations and grief along the way - hey, that's part of the working world - but if you're happy more than you're unhappy, you've got the right career.

Who wants to get to 80 and say "Oops!"?