Career

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word “career” as a person’s “course or progress through life (or a distinct portion of life)”. This definition relates it to a range of aspects of an individual’s life, learning, and work.

It is also frequently understood to relate to the working aspects of an individual’s life – as in “career woman”, for example. A third way in which the term is used describes an occupation or a profession that usually involves special training or formal education, considered to be a person’s lifework.

In this case, it is seen as a sequence of related jobs, usually pursued within a single industry or sector: one can speak for example of “a career in education”, of “a criminal career” or of “a career in the building trade”.

It has been defined by organizational behavior researchers as “an individual’s work-related and other relevant experiences, both inside and outside of organizations, that form a unique pattern over the individual’s life span.”

For many people, it means the part of life that is concerned with employment. From an occupational standpoint, it means the sum total of the various jobs in some’s lifetime.

The progress and actions taken by a person throughout a lifetime, especially those related to that person’s occupations.

It is the job or profession that someone does for a long period of their life. Career success is a term used frequently in academic and popular writing about career. It refers to the extent and ways in which an individual can be described as successful in his or her working life so far.