Is Your Work a Job, a Career or a Calling?
The same job can be a pay cheque, a ladder or a purpose - it depends on who is doing it
A well-known line of research on work psychology proposed that people relate to their work in three basic ways: as a job, mainly a means to an income; as a career, focused on advancement; or as a calling, felt as meaningful and part of who they are. The same occupation can house all three - the difference is not the title but the relationship. This test shows which one is closest to yours, and whether you are still looking.
Before you start There are no right answers. Pick what is usually true for you, not what sounds best.
Answer about the work you do now. If you are between jobs or studying, answer about your most recent work or the one you are preparing for.
What it measures
Three orientations to work - job, where it is mainly a means to an income; career, where it is about advancement and status; and calling, where the work itself feels meaningful and part of who you are - plus a fourth score, searching for a calling. It is not a test of which career suits you, which the career interests test covers, nor of what motivates you day to day: it is about what your work means to you.
Based on: Job, career and calling orientations (Wrzesniewski et al., 1997) and Brief Calling Scale (Dik et al., 2012)
Possible results
Job
Work as a means to an income and the life it pays for.
Career
Work as a path of advancement, status and progress.
Calling
Work that feels meaningful in itself and part of who you are.
Searching
Actively looking for work that would feel like a calling.
Common questions
Is having a calling always better?
No. A calling is linked on average to a stronger sense of meaning and hope about work, but a study of zookeepers found that a strong calling also made people more willing to see work as a moral duty and accept low pay, long hours and personal sacrifice for it. A job orientation, by contrast, protects boundaries. The healthiest version is probably a calling held with open eyes: meaning in the work, and a clear sense of what you will not give up for it.
Can a job turn into a calling?
Often, yes, and that is really the point of the distinction: the three orientations describe a relationship to the work, not a property of the occupation itself, so two people in the same job can genuinely differ. Shaping the tasks you do, the people you work with and how you think about who benefits can move a job some way towards a calling.
How is this different from job satisfaction or burnout?
Satisfaction and burnout describe how your work is going; orientation describes what you want your work to be. Someone with a job orientation can be very satisfied, and someone with a strong calling can be exhausted - in fact a calling can make burnout more likely when the conditions are poor, because stepping back feels like betraying something important.
Sources
- Wrzesniewski, A., McCauley, C., Rozin, P., & Schwartz, B. (1997). Jobs, careers, and callings: People's relations to their work. Journal of Research in Personality. doi:10.1006/jrpe.1997.2162
- Dik, B. J., Eldridge, B. M., Steger, M. F., & Duffy, R. D. (2012). Development and validation of the Calling and Vocation Questionnaire (CVQ) and Brief Calling Scale (BCS). Journal of Career Assessment. doi:10.1177/1069072711434410
- Bunderson, J. S., & Thompson, J. A. (2009). The call of the wild: Zookeepers, callings, and the double-edged sword of deeply meaningful work. Administrative Science Quarterly. doi:10.2189/asqu.2009.54.1.32
An honest note The items are Quinthea's own wording, so scores are not comparable with published norms. The job, career and calling framework was not published as a validated multi-item scale, so the first three bars are Quinthea's own translation of that theory into statements; the fourth, searching, comes from the Brief Calling Scale. Most of this research was done in the United States, and the idea of work as a calling is shaped by culture and by how much choice people have.
Try one of these next
Do You Work Hard, or Can You Not Stop?
Long hours, the pull you cannot switch off, and whether work gives anything back
What Kind of Workplace Fits You?
The same job is a different job in a different culture
What Are You Really Trying to Achieve?
Getting better, being the best, or just not falling behind