Anyone who works in any field, whether they are self-employed or working under someone, must have come across this term occupation, and sometimes it is used for job, profession, or career. Therefore, to find out what an occupation is, we must look at all these three terms. Let’s know the Meaning of Current Occupation.
What is Occupation?
An occupation is a combination of all these three. Under occupation, there will come lots of professions and job titles/types of work. The U. S Bureau of Labor Statistics divides occupations into 23 categories. Occupation is a broader term that describes various career interests. We can say a person is in an occupation when they possess all these requirements such as, a job needs to turn into a profession that would lead to a career and make it into an occupation.
Let’s look at a few examples to understand what occupation means in its most authentic essence and its nuances when one declares their occupation.
- B joined a fundraising department in an NGO as a volunteer. B discovers his talent and passion matches this role, so he decides to take a course on fundraising to get himself certified and turn it into a profession so that he could make it into a lifelong career out of it.
This example shows the vastness of the meaning of occupation.
- Another example is Mr. Z, who has experience in the recruitment field in a consultancy. Z applied for a hiring manager position in an IT company because Z knows experience in recruitment.
This example shows you may be in a different industry, but if the field is similar, you can make those work experiences across industries into an overarching career.
Let’s define a job, profession, and career to have a deeper understanding of the meaning of occupations.
- Job– This means a person works for pay, and it may be a full-time, part-time, or freelance type of job. To have a job, one does not require any expertise, education, or qualification. A job title can be anything. Anyone can do a job or work.
- Profession:– To have a career, one needs to study a professional course, study related to that profession which has certifications and sometimes a license is necessary—example:- lawyer, doctor, etc.
- Career:- a career is a profession or a job position that enables you to form a path in that chosen career field. For instance, a person cannot have a career without the needed experiences or qualifications. You need to have either knowledge or the required qualifications.
- For example:- it can hire a fresh MBA graduate as a manager, and a person with years of experience in management can climb up the ladder and become a manager. In both cases, the job title is the same, but they got it with a different approach.
So when someone asks you what your current occupation is, you may answer them by telling them the immediate job type you hold for the industry you work in by using your skills set, experiences, or craft.
- Question:- What is your current occupation?
- I teach for a living. I am an autism specialist.
Or
- I am a painter. I take up painting projects for Ngos working for nursing homes.
Let’s look at some questions asked and know what those questions mean regarding our work/profession/career.
- When do people ask you what you do? It means they are asking about your profession. You may answer them according to what your profession is.
- Suppose you are a pilot by profession or a doctor. You can tell them that.
- Another question you will hear people asking is, what do you do for a living? This question is the same as what you do, but it’s asked of a younger group of people.
- Another question is this, what sort of work do you do? This means you need to narrow down what you do. For example, if you are a teacher, you need to tell them which subject you teach.
- Another question you will come across is this, what line of work are you in? It just means that they want to know which industry you belong to. So suppose you are a teacher, you say I am into education, or if you are a pilot, you say I am in the aviation industry.
- These are some simple yet confusing questions to answer, and segregate them whenever someone asks you these questions into the required categories.
There are countless job titles under those twenty-three occupations mentioned earlier. So you can imagine the vastness of the meaning of occupations. But it’s not a confusing word anymore, as the explanations above will make it easier for you to answer whenever someone pops the question asking about your current occupation.
