Job, Profession or Role

bertie

"inspired" from a thread in Speakers Corner.......................... what do you think you do ?  are there differences ?  Personally I think it can be sometimes be all three...............or at least two..................  where role is merely a "sub definition" of areas of responsibilty.  I have 'several' roles within my current job as an IT professional......................

randomhandclaps

I agree that it can be all three.  I think a profession is something reliant on a skill and your profession may not necessarily be your job.

Personally I have always been confused by the difference between a job and a role.  I suppose a job could been seen as the title of your position and your role is what your job involves.

chillidoggy

‘Job’ to me means ‘function’: Plumber, manager, musician, hairdresser etc.

‘Role’ to me means more about tasking, rather than job title: It’s what you actually do. By way of an example, I interviewed a chap recently who had listed his job title as “Replenishment Operative”. When I asked him what it meant, he said he was a shelf-stacker. ‘Profession’ I feel has a more classier ring about it, and there appears to be a ring-fenced list of occupations that attract the particular term. I think it might be something to do with the background training, but I’m not sure.

fretmeister

http://www.differencebetween.info/difference-between-job-and-profession

Not sure I agree with all of it, but the basic outline seems sound to me.

Fretwired

To me a profession involves training and studying for specific exams with control, regulation and standards set by a professional body. Think accountancy or law.

A trade involves learning a skill which can be via an apprenticeship or college study - think plumber.

A job is simply someone exchanging physical work for a wage - think unskilled shelf stacking.

A role is often the name given to an unskilled job in a corporate environment or a specific repetitive office task. When I was in the corporate world there were 'roles' in HR in which people just checked forms all day. Repetitive and boring. It's also a way of giving someone a job in which the tasks can be continually changed hence the use of 'role' ...

PolarityMan

Profession: The broad company agnostic term for what you do. For example Software Engineer, Manager.

Job: The function you are employed for that could be reused across multiple teams. For example Senior Software Engineer, Delivery Manager.

Role: The local function you provide embedded in your current position, for example "Lead widget developer", "Product A delivery manager"

I find you also tend to collect additional roles that aren't directly related to your function (Quality Champion etc) so you might have multiple roles but a single job.

guitarfishbay

It is Chris Rock so NSFW language.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnlNUZqFzgY

octatonic

I know I avoided all of these by being a musician, which is part 'calling' and part 'unemployment'.

It isn't an equal split, either.

Phil_aka_Pip

IMO

role = a part played by an actor
job = gainful employment of any kind
profession = something trained for with a significant academic content
professional = doing a job for a living with the implication of being consistently good enough at it to keep getting paid for it
amateur = doing it for the hell of it, may include not being good enough at it to get paid for it but also doing it to a very high standard but not for a living
task = something done as part of a job, may be continuous or a fixed term project

... but those are only opinions

fatherjack

In the other thread, @sporky mentioned the Wikipedia page on the subject - I've had a look and I think it gives a pretty good definition.

Sporky

I am a professional engineer  (the IET agrees with me for the sum of £130ish a year).

My job is Senior Design Engineer.

My role is technical sales; I see customers and gather their requirements (including surveying rooms), I design systems, I explain to the customer how what I've designed is what they need, then I hand everything over to the installations department. I also commission the more complicated and more important installations, particularly the ones with lots of audio.

One of the defining aspects of a profession is that it is advice and consultancy based; the work is intellectual rather than physical. That's one of the things that's made it tricky for me to get chartered status - it was essentially impossible while I had the word "sales" in my job title, so I've gradually modified that from Technical Sales Manager to what it is now, one word at a time... I have a lot of old business cards with different titles on them, whereas what I actually do is still the same as when I joined.

Myranda

Hmmm

What I do - warehouse picking-monkey and writer of reports on what-went-wrong with what we did. It's mostly soul destroying monotony.

What I'm trained to do - Goldsmith, jobbing jeweller, ring-maker... I was good - but haven't done anything in 6 years... don't have any tools... after getting made redundant I realised that there's no way for someone without money for tools to earn enough to buy tools. I spent my whole working life as a jeweller earning minimum wage (or less). Another in the workshop had his own tools, so earned three times what I did - for 3 days a week rather than 5...

What I'm training to do - IT. Plan to start out in helpdesk stuff, but want to do data security, whether that becomes penetration testing for companies or incident handling for companies or what - who knows... the future isn't written. 

Before... I was a retail manager for a small company, and it was brilliant fun, very mellow jokey atmosphere... 

dindude

I think a profession can be gained through experience.

For my own example, my title is "General Manager" but in the logistics sector. Could I be a General Manager at a depertment store? A lot probably stays the same, people management, decsion making etc. but I would be pretty crap at it as I have zero retail experience, whereas I have 15 years in my present field and consider myself a "professional" in that sector.

General Manager is a crap title though, or as my brother always says when people ask him what I do for a job "he generally manages".

Myranda

Isn't "profession" clearly defined by some sort of lexicon of words? We'll call it a dictionary for now. 

Phil_aka_Pip

the wiki page referred to about references a "list of professions"

Sporky

Myranda said:

Isn't "profession" clearly defined by some sort of lexicon of words? We'll call it a dictionary for now. 

Yes. Yes it is.

Still, we have people who clean toilets getting called "sanitation engineers" despite no engineering qualifications, and people making coffees getting called barristers.

That last one was a funny, albeit a crap one.

chillidoggy

dindude said:

I think a profession can be gained through experience.

For my own example, my title is "General Manager" but in the logistics sector. Could I be a General Manager at a depertment store? A lot probably stays the same, people management, decsion making etc. but I would be pretty crap at it as I have zero retail experience, whereas I have 15 years in my present field and consider myself a "professional" in that sector.

General Manager is a crap title though, or as my brother always says when people ask him what I do for a job "he generally manages".

I too, have the title of "General Manager". I am a marine engineer, but in a related industry. But stick me in logistics company and it'd be worse than Parcel Force, for sure.

holnrew

Job is for the money, career ties in with life goals and stuff.

Grunfeld

guitarfishbay said:

It is Chris Rock so NSFW language.

Bang on observations there! :-)