Strategy #9: Choose A Job, Career Or Vocation

How high do you want to climb the work ladder? Are you shooting for the top or do you have more modest intentions? What size and what shape cog do you want to be in the next machine you choose to work in? To use a different analogy, do you aspire to be a big fish in a small pond, or perhaps a small one in a big pond? If you’re ambitious, perhaps you’d like to be a very big fish indeed, or at least an important or influential one, irrespective of the size of the pond you choose to swim in.

These sorts of aims are amusing to ponder in isolation, but sometimes difficult to implement when the reality of a working life kicks in. That’s the challenge of fulfilling your potential in any job you decide to do. What’s certain is that you shouldn’t start any work search without thinking carefully about where you want to go and what you want to achieve.

I’ve named my job-search training programme carefully. That’s Vocation Master in case you didn’t already know, which might give a clue about the scale of many of my course participants’ ambitions, or at least the possibilities that I believe my approach will open up to you. Let me explain what I mean by this.

I think that work can be put into three broad categories. You can choose to do a job, you might decide to have a career or you could aim to pursue a vocation. Job, career or vocation: those are the three basic options that are in front of you and, in this strategy, I want to outline what’s involved at each level of work and explain how this simple framework is a good place to kickstart your job-search planning. I’ll also give you a few ideas about the best route to take to make sure you arrive at your preferred destination as quickly and effectively as possible.  

So, here are the three possibilities.

First up comes a job. Although I put this at the bottom of the hierarchy of work choices, I want to be clear that I don’t belittle the notion of having a job compared to a career or vocation, and I certainly don’t criticise anyone for opting to do nothing more than a job. Most employees fall into this category, after all, and many people are perfectly content with their jobs and derive meaning, purpose and satisfaction from them. That said, how do I define a job in this context?

There are no hard and fast rules here but a job is often work that someone does for practical reasons above all. As the foot soldiers of any organisation, people who do jobs are crucial to the smooth running of an enterprise, despite often being seen as the most expendable or replaceable. Pay is usually lower than what you earn in the other two categories, something I’ll talk about shortly. There’s not necessarily any implied progression beyond whatever the work involves, although a job might deliver a worker onto a career track and it may pay extremely well in some cases.

But here comes the major distinction. If someone does a job, in the sense that I’m talking about here, they rarely have much control over fundamental aspects of their work. There might be some flexibility about how, when and where they do their jobs but, on the whole, someone else sets the parameters regarding the way these things happen. This is hugely important in terms of personal and professional wellbeing, the level of satisfaction you get from your work and your perceived quality of life. The less agency you have over your workplace actions and decisions, the worse these things tend to be. 

Next up comes a career. People who occupy this category often have more control over their work in comparison with job-type people. It’s not always the case but work that’s associated with a career generally focuses on higher-level, more business-critical functions. This usually leads to greater agency, although it’s not always the case, notwithstanding greater pressures from bosses, clients and so on. 

Lots of careerists work alone but another metric is to identify career people as those who do some kind of managerial or supervisory work, compared to job people who are managed or supervised in some way. The US Bureau Of Labor Statistics reckons that 15% - 20% of workers fall into this category whilst taking home around 30% of the entire earnings pot. So, more money is the norm for anyone who has a career.

Does having a career make you happier than having a job? Well, that depends. If you value higher earnings, more responsibility and the prestige that goes with your position, quite possibly. But if the added stress and pressures that go hand-in-hand with some career paths isn’t your cup of tea, possibly not.

Finally, and at the top of my hierarchy of work categories, comes a vocation. Some people think of a vocation as meaning that you dedicate your life to a traditional occupation such as education, the sciences or one of the caring professions, but I see things a little differently. For sure, some people are intrinsically drawn to a particular line of work including some I’ve just mentioned.

Perhaps they’ve always had a burning desire to join this worthy cadre of workers. It might be that they’re following a family tradition of specific work that’s been cultivated since birth, or an inspirational teacher or friend sparked an early passion that’s never been extinguished. These are foundations which can often lead to a lifetime of fulfilling work. However, there’s another way of assessing a vocation.

If you do work that you feel a strong affinity to, or that you consider to be an unusually good match for your professional skillset or personal strengths, I’d say that you’re firmly in vocational territory. This can apply to any field of work and not only the ones that are associated with traditional vocation stereotypes. If you do work that you enjoy so much that you look forward to 9am every Monday morning, or if you’d happily do your work for no pay if that was a financial possibility, you’re part of the way there.

Other measures of achieving vocational status are these. You do work that almost entirely satisfies each of your professional demands, psychological needs and personal desires. You’re highly regarded in your work arena, whether that’s within your industry or purely inside the company you’re employed by. You’re probably a linchpin, a person who’s central to the success of your organisation. You could even be a mentor, an expert in your field and an authoritative voice who coaches and advises up-and-coming staff who might eventually follow in your footsteps. Above all, having a vocation intrinsically confers the most rarefied levels of work satisfaction and fulfilment.    

Without wishing to knock the upsides of having a job or a career, if you want to maximise the quality of your working life, a vocation’s where it’s at. And here’s an important question that many people ask: does a vocation lead to the highest earnings? The answer is simple: sometimes but not always. The people who earn the fattest pay cheques often sit lower on the work hierarchy, although they invariably have to put up with serious compromises and trade-offs to enable them to make a fat wad of money.

I know what it’s like to occupy each of these three work categories. I’ve experienced all of them at different stages of my life and I can tell you that having a vocation beats the others hands down. In my view, too many workers fall short of acquiring vocational status, despite the eminent possibility of getting there if they wanted to. Some of the reasons for this concern a lack of ambition or a willingness to accept mediocrity over excellence. But it’s often about poor clarity of purpose or not knowing the best strategy to follow.

These last two are my area, because the number one aim of my training programme is to help as many people shift out of the 80% of disengaged workers and into the 20% of engaged ones. Look back at article number 5 if you’d like a refresher on that. My secondary aim, which follows hot on the heels of the primary one, is to show anyone who wants to move upwards through a job, a career and on to a vocation precisely how to walk this pathway. That’s why I’ve given my training programme the name Vocation Master. Helping you get there is what this series of strategy articles is all about.

Join me next time when I’ll be talking about the importance of preparing yourself for the success that will soon come your way. This is an essential psychological part of the planning process as you begin to discover fantastic work opportunities with high-quality employers who are desperately in need of what you can offer them, and everything you do after that. 

Yes - we're heading for vocation territory here...

If you prefer to watch training materials rather than read or listen to them, follow this link to my YouTube channel where you can access the video version of this article;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6tSdCfIDxw&t=87s

And finally, if you have any questions about the issues I raise here, or if you'd like to contact me personally, please get in touch via LinkedIn;

https://www.linkedin.com/in/vocationmaster/