What Is a Career, Career Growth and Professional Promotion: Meaning, and Differences

The basic concepts of career planning: career, career growth, and professional promotion.

What Is a Career: Meaning

Career is the subjective, personal judgments of the employee about his working future, the expected ways of self-expression, and job satisfaction.

A career is a movement along the once-chosen path of activity. For example, gaining more authority, higher status, prestige, power, or more money.

It is worth noting that a career is not only a promotion. We can also talk about a career as a housewife, mother, student, and so on.

Read post “What Are the Types of Careers and Career Growth: Professional, Intra-Organization, Qualification Growth.”

The career concept does not mean an indispensable and constant movement up the organizational hierarchy. It should also be noted that a person’s life outside of work has a significant impact on the career and is part of it.

In other words, a career is an individually conscious position and behavior associated with work experience and activities throughout a person’s working life.

Career as a Process of Human Movement Toward a Goal

The process essence of a career is reflected in most definitions, which is eloquently evidenced by the terms “movement”, “advance”, and “growth” used in them. In addition, the word “career” from French carriere “road, racecourse” (16c.), from Old Provençal or Italian carriera, from Vulgar Latin *(via) cararia “carriage (road), track for wheeled vehicles,”. The sense of “general course of action or movement” is from 1590s, hence “course of one’s public or professional life” (1803).

So, a career means:

We can interpret a career as the movement of a person in the space of organizational positions, involving a consistent change of status functions, and socio-economic status.

That is, a career is a process of moving along the path of mastering certain values, and benefits recognized in a society or an organization. These are:

• positions, levels of hierarchy;
• steps of the qualification ladder and related categories, differentiating the skills and knowledge of people according to the level of skill;
• status ranks reflecting the value of the employee’s contribution to the development of the organization (seniority, unique rational proposals that are crucial for the organization);
• levels of power as the degree of influence in the organization (participation in making important decisions, proximity to management);
• levels of financial compensation, income (wage levels and a variety of social benefits).

At the same time, we should emphasize that the listed benefits can be considered both through the prism of a person’s subjectivity and from the point of view of his environment (organization, professional sphere, society), can be evaluated both subjectively in the form of self-perceptions, self-assessment of achievements, and supported by the recognition of their by the environment in the form of a promotion, pay level, etc.

For example, a person may feel changes in his skills, and knowledge, but others will perceive, “see” his professional growth only after he will be promoted.

Career as an Internal Development of a Person and His External Movement in the Development of Social Space

A full-fledged career is a balanced ratio and interaction of the processes of a person’s internal development and his external movement in the development of social space.

The internal development includes:

• professional growth of a person, which is expressed in the increase of knowledge and skills;
• change of his influence (power, authority) in the environment;
• prestige change in the eyes of subordinates or colleagues;
• improvement in the level of well-being.

The external movement fixes the results achieved in development and is accompanied by the mastering of certain steps, for example, movement through official positions, ranks of the qualification ladder, status ranks, or levels of financial remuneration.

Read also post “How to Tell Your Boss You Are Leaving: What to Say, Examples.”

Static Characteristics of a Career Growth

In addition to the process characteristics, a career also has a static feature.

In a career movement, both the content of the process and the image of the result of this process are important, both the content of a person’s development in social space and the form of this development, the trajectory of the path, the sequence of positions occupied by a person in social space.

Since a person lives most of his social life in organizations, the social space for him is the organizational space, which, as part of the general social space, is characterized by multidimensionality.

At the same time, each dimension of the organizational (career) space is formed by a separate vector of possible development and advancement of an employee:

• official,
• professional,
• status,
• monetary.

And each of these career vectors, being formalized to some extent, contains a set of career positions, the sequence of which constitutes a career. The official vector is formed by job grades, professional – qualification grades, status – by status ranks, and monetary – levels of material compensation.

Thus, a career is a process of professional, socio-economic development of a person, expressed in his advancement through the levels of qualifications, statuses, remuneration, and the positions occupied at these levels fixed in a certain sequence.

In other words, a career is the development of a person and the mastering of a social space by him (if we are talking about an inter-organizational career) or the expansion of a person in the organizational space of a particular enterprise (if an intra-organizational career is considered).

What Is Career Growth?

The concepts of “career” and “career growth” are synonymous. A career is usually defined as moving forward and upward, and career growth is a constantly unfolding process of planned and directed actions to achieve life goals and realize personal employment.

Career growth is the result of individual career planning and the organization’s provision of employee support to realize his potential. Ideally, this is a process of cooperation.

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The Horizontal and Vertical Career Growth

Career growth can be divided into:

1. Horizontal. These are qualitatively new duties and projects, which allow you to expand your professional horizons.
2. Vertical career growth is the transition to the next step of the career ladder.

Career growth is facilitated by:

• positions, levels of hierarchy;
• steps of the qualification ladder and related categories, differentiating the skills and knowledge of people according to the level of skill;
• status ranks reflecting the value of the employee’s contribution to the development of the organization (seniority, unique rational proposals that are crucial for the organization);
• levels of power as the degree of influence in the organization (participation in making important decisions, proximity to management);
• levels of financial compensation, income (wage levels and a variety of social benefits).

The complexity of career growth is due to many reasons, depending on the personal qualities of the employee, the sphere in which the career is formed, as well as on the society in which the person and the organization operate.

Read post “Six Main Stages of Career Development.”

What Is a Professional Promotion

Professional promotion is a series of progressive movements through various positions that contribute to the development of both the organization and the individual. The movements can be vertical and horizontal.

The concepts of “professional promotion” and “career” are close, but not identical.

Professional promotion is a sequence of various stages (positions, workplaces, positions in the team) offered by the organization that an employee can potentially go through.

A career is usually understood as the actual sequence of steps occupied (positions, workplaces, positions in a team) by a specific employee.

The coincidence of the planned path of professional advancement and the actual career in life is quite rare and is more the exception than the rule.

Changes in Attitude Towards The Career Planning

Career planning has always been important, but today analysts say it has taken on a new dimension and the nature of career management has changed dramatically.

If earlier it was believed that a successful career, is when a person works in one organization for 20-30 years, and the pinnacle of success is to tighten the same screw on the conveyor for 30 years.

Now, more and more people are realizing that careers can span a wide range of jobs, organizations, industries, and professions.

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