What does career mean?

Most of the time when we hear the word “career,” we think about jobs. Career services is where college students get jobs, career counseling is how we get help to get jobs, and career education is training to get a job. It sounds pretty straightforward—but it’s only part of the picture.

Your career is so much more than a job. The activities that make it up can be paid or unpaid, they can be temporary or long-term, they can include education, volunteering, service, and more.

In this post, I’ll share a couple of my favorite definitions of the word “career.” After reading them, you’ll see why career coaching is about much more than just getting a job, and why anything from learning more about who you are and what you value to learning mindfulness and resilience techniques can all be a part of the career coaching journey.

History of the word “career”

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the word “career” first appeared in 1534, referring to an intense gallop required in the sport of jousting. It isn’t until the 1800s that the word shifted from meaning to “go fast” into referring to what it does today in the world of work.

Merriam-Webster defines that current meaning in two ways:

1: a profession for which one trains and which is undertaken as a permanent calling
2: a field for or pursuit of consecutive progressive achievement especially in public, professional, or business life

Both of these seem to imply that not all jobs are part of your career—especially using words like “profession” and “calling” that can imply a lot of prestige or meaningfulness. That may be because the dictionary often defines words by how they are already used by a majority of a language’s speakers, and most people tend to use the word “career” to mean something significant and aspirational. Most of us have heard a friend say they’re looking for “more than a job—a real career!” Or maybe it’s vice versa, like the many young adults I’ve met that say, “I just need a job, I’m not ready for a career.”

The way we currently talk about career keeps it at a distance, something that must be worked toward with extensive training or which can only be achieved by some people and not others. This poses a problem, especially if thinking about careers in this way makes career coaching feel inaccessible or only useful for people pursuing “real” careers.

What “career” really means

So if we currently use this word in a limiting way, what’s another way to understand it? Simply put, we can look to the vast variety of activities that people pursue in their lives, and understand all of them as diverse ways to have a career—to make a living, to pursue meaning, and to leave an impact on the world.

Going back to the origin of this word, CERIC: Advancing Career Development in Canada defines “career” like this:

The word “career” comes from the Latin for cart or chariot (carrus), a means to carry you from one point to another. A career is about the life you want to lead—not just a job, occupation or profession. It involves deciding among possible and preferred futures. It answers: “Who do I want to be in the world?,” “What kind of lifestyle am I seeking?” and “How can I make an impact?”

I love the imagery of a chariot carrying you between points in your life. We can also take that analogy and think about your role in the journey—in a chariot, you don’t have to just sit back and go along for the ride. You have the opportunity to stand up and take the reins, to be the driver and chart your path as you see fit.

Another definition I appreciate comes from OneLifeTools, which offers a poetic definition of “career” acknowledging the role of volunteering, education, artistic passions, and other interests and roles that ebb and flow throughout our lives:

The full expression of who you are and how you want to be in the world, which keeps on expanding as it naturally goes through cycles of stability and change.

Like the CERIC definition, this one asks you to think deeply about who you want to be, and what kind of life you want to live. Even when we consider our career in terms of “just a job,” the truth is that our jobs greatly impact the rest of our lives, from where we live, what we think about, what we earn and can afford, and so on. We owe it to ourselves, our families, and our friends and community to be intentional in our decisions about work and career.

Putting all of this together, the Career Development Institute offers this succinct understanding:

A career refers primarily to the sequence and variety of work roles, paid or unpaid, that individuals undertake throughout their lives; but it is also the construct which enables individuals to make sense of valued work opportunities and how their work roles relate to their wider life roles.

Ultimately, all words are about making sense of the world around us. And that’s what the word “career” offers us about our working lives—a way to make sense of work and how it fits in with everything else that we do.

What do you think? What does “career” mean to you?