Having a job and having a career are two different things. Job is more a role or activity we do usually for financial compensation. In comparison, a career is a path. Something that combines all the jobs we have done, all the experience both professional and personal we have gained and also the education we have gone through.
I am a member of Generation X. I heard, it is the last generation that knows how to work, but we are hopefully also the last generation lost in the expectations of others.
As the previous generation of baby boomers is on their way to retirement, people of my generation are the most experienced cohort in the labour market. If we follow the linear career path, Generation X should be currently in the leadership positions as being in the middle of their careers.
When I look around me, people in their early 40-ties do reconsider their career paths quite frequently. In a linear career, you start at the entry position and slowly but steadily climb up the ladder to management. But life is not so simple and linear and being a director is not the ultimate dream of many.
The majority of my friends are from so-called helping professions, where after 20 years spent in “saving the world” we have experienced at least one burn-out episode, and we are far away from being passionate at the same level as we were at the beginning of our careers. We usually do not have any (or any big) savings because we worked for a non-profit, where the good feeling compensates for the financial part. Well, the good feeling is gone, when checking my pension plan 🙂
The other big group of my friends are those from the corporate world. Many years in the business, climbing the ladder and realising that it makes no sense for them anymore. They are tired and leaving in huge numbers as well. Several of them started small businesses, where they transformed hobbies into work opportunities. Very often they exchanged white-collar jobs for manual or art work.
I also know people who normally work for 4-5 years, after that, they quit the job intentionally and make the most out of their unemployment benefits. After one year or so, they return to the job market. Some other friends realised in their 40-ties that they were not sure at all what they would like to do for the next 30 years. The profession they had chosen 20 years ago, is not working for them any more…
For the generation of our parents, all these feel like a disappointment. We either do not earn enough money, or we leave good positions, or we dare to question our choices. What a shame on the family! 🙂 I still remember my grandmother. After she found out that I had started working in a non-governmental organisation, she said passionately: “You should work at the ministry, or at least in some office!” Working in the state apparatus or the office was an absolute work success for her.
What other career options are available if you do not climb the ladder and do not become a manager, director or any other type of boss?
You can be an expert in a certain area. You specialise in something very particular and you might not have any interest in managing people or changing the field. Your expertise is in the depth of your knowledge and your career grows too, just not vertically.
You can also have a kind of widening career where you try different types of work in the same or similar areas. A good example might be social work with different target groups, using different methods, then writing and managing projects, working in an NGO as well as for a municipality etc.
You can also jump from one field to another. Either purposely or because you have no other choice. If you change from one field to another willfully, you might have many interests and want to try them out.
More difficult is when you must change jobs/areas because having no other choice. Having a job you love and a career you are the perfect fit for is one thing. But at the end of the day, we all need to feed our children and have our bills paid.
Sometimes it is good to forget about the career and focus on the job. Do not see the role but see a person. Career is a social construct after all 🙂
