Should You Get a Job or Choose a Career?

A career is always better than a job. Although a job requires lower levels of competency to satisfy employers or clients, it won’t result in significant rewards. 

For example, a sales clerk who has a profound grasp of sales, merchandising, and inventory management will only earn a small raise of a few dollars to their paycheck every year because of the market value of their work. 

By comparison, someone who has a retail career can go from a sales clerk to a store manager to a district manager to a regional manager  —  each rung of the corporate ladder offering tens of thousands of dollars more compensation.

Many possible career paths exist, but not all mainstream careers appeal to everyone. Some people will only find work fulfilling if they pick a career path that resonates with their talents and interests. Here are some examples of career paths to consider if you don’t find any mainstream options appealing.

A Career As a Speech-Language Pathologist

Speech-language pathologists are medical professionals who treat speech, language, cognitive communication, and swallowing disorders. They work with children and adults alike, diagnosing speech problems and providing treatment plans. Many of their patients are children who need help with their speech and language development.

While it is possible to work in a clinical setting at a single location, it is also possible to get travel SLP work at various locations throughout the country. Since finding medical speech-language pathology therapy jobs can be challenging, many professionals partner with medical staffing companies.

A Career As an Online Entrepreneur

Being an online entrepreneur is more than just running a blog or managing an eCommerce site. It means embracing internet-based technology and using a diverse range of digital resources to grow your business.

Online entrepreneurs need to choose a business model that resonates with their own strengths and weaknesses, and they also have to keep up with various trends, such as social media, email marketing, or digital advertising, to stay competitive. 

As an entrepreneur, you may often need to rely on analyzing your company’s product metrics to figure out whether you can meet your goals. There are many different ones that you can use to track your progress. For example, an important metric is conversion rate, which is the percentage of visitors who become customers.

A Career As a Writer

Writers often work in fields such as public relations, journalism, advertising, and publishing. However, as a result of the rise of self-publishing and freelance work, many writers and authors are now independent content creators.

Writers use language to inform, instruct, or entertain. Although anyone with an education can write, not everyone is a professional writer.

Thinking of writing as a job is a myth. It is a career because it requires a combination of skill sets and because there is no upper limit to professional writing skills or compensation.

It is always possible to improve skills such as researching, planning, and writing. It is also always possible to improve grammar, punctuation, spelling, and vocabulary to deliver better copy to publishers. While editing and proofreading are separate specialties, it’s often useful for writers to learn these skills to provide a more polished manuscript.

Why a Career Is Not a Job

When deciding on a career, it’s essential to be able to distinguish the difference between a career and a job.

This can be tricky for three reasons:

1. They are both related to work.
2. Theoretically, someone in a job can earn more than someone in a career.
3. Job recruiters often mislead candidates by glamorizing open jobs as career opportunities.

Ambitious people prefer a career over a job because it gives them a way to make consistent progress and enjoy greater rewards in their chosen profession. For instance, language-speech pathologists, online entrepreneurs, and writers think of their work as careers because of the complexity of what they do. Moreover, as they get increasingly better at their work, their influence and income rises.