career
Enable an AI agent to recognise a person's career, assess its current trajectory against that person's priorities and constraints, and identify feasible next steps.
Research draft, second pass
A second pass drafted this model: the structure a model of this thing needs, and what is known about it in the world. The line under this one says how the second half was obtained - researched against sources, or recalled without web access, in which case nothing here was read anywhere and every claim is a lead to verify. Unreviewed either way.
Researched by: Codex + Grok
Purpose and description
Enable an AI agent to recognise a person's career, assess its current trajectory against that person's priorities and constraints, and identify feasible next steps.
Career is a person's long-term occupational trajectory through paid and unpaid work, training, and role changes, treated in labour statistics and vocational guidance as a sequence of jobs and statuses rather than a single job title.
It can be Build an evidence-linked career account that distinguishes confirmed episodes, self-reports and unresolved chronology.; Assess trajectory against the person's stated priorities while identifying conflicting evidence and missing information.; Compare adjacent moves, changes of occupation, portfolio paths and continuity in the current practice.; Identify transferable experience, development needs and practical barriers for a specific next step.; Propose bounded experiments and review points, and update the career account when the person confirms changes..
Distinguishing features
A career connects work-related episodes over time; a job describes one position, even when that position constitutes the person's career so far.
A career is attached to a particular person's trajectory; an occupation groups kinds of work that many people may perform.
A career includes experience and present circumstances; a career plan represents intended future choices that may never occur.
A career can cross employers, occupations and employment statuses while remaining one trajectory; an employment relationship is bounded by its parties and terms.
A career selects work-relevant parts of a life history without treating every personal event as a career episode.
Scope
+ Career episodes and transitions across employment, self-employment, independent practice and relevant unpaid work
+ Continuity and change in responsibilities, occupational identity and demonstrated capabilities
+ The person's definitions of career success, priorities and desired direction
+ Current career phase, constraints and readiness for a next move
+ Alternative career paths, evidence gaps and reversible exploratory actions
- The person's complete identity, biography and relationships
- Detailed job descriptions, vacancy requirements and hiring workflows
- Employment contracts, payroll and benefits administration
- Course content, qualification standards and educational administration
- Organisation structures, workforce planning and labour-market conditions as independent objects
Characteristics
- Career subject
- Reference to the person whose trajectory is represented Prevents conflating a person's career with an occupation or an organisation's staffing history.
- Episode configuration
- Sequential roles, concurrent roles, mixed pattern, not yet established, unknown; assessed over a stated period Allows portfolio work and overlapping commitments without forcing a single-job chronology.
- Current career situation
- Person-described situation, optionally including established practice, exploration, transition, interruption, re-entry or exit Makes next-step judgments depend on the person's actual situation rather than an assumed linear ladder.
- Experience duration
- Months or years within a stated practice or responsibility, with overlap and intensity treatment declared Supports experience comparisons without equating elapsed time with proficiency.
- Responsibility trajectory
- Expanding, deepening, stable, narrowing, changing direction, mixed or unknown over a stated interval Distinguishes changes in actual work from title changes and avoids treating management promotion as the only progress.
- Career priorities
- Links to person-endorsed priorities, their relative importance and dates of confirmation Anchors judgments of progress in the person's values rather than assumed prestige or income goals.
- Direction alignment
- Aligned, partly aligned, misaligned, contested or unassessed against named priorities at a stated date Makes the basis of a positive or negative career assessment explicit.
- Transition readiness
- Exploratory, preparing, actionable, blocked or unknown for a named transition Separates interest in a career move from the capability and practical freedom to make it.
Also called
Where this came from
wikidata · CC0 1.0
Also registered as vr.tr.career-act
Drafted structure
Bundle to layer to finding to question, as the second pass will find it: 6 bundles · 11 layers · 18 findings · 28 questions.
Career continuity Identifies whose career is represented and how its work-related episodes connect.
A career must remain recognisable across changes of employer, work status and occupational identity.
Subject and boundaries
Establishes the person and the limits of the career account.
Career account boundary
Records whose trajectory this is and which activities the account treats as career-relevant.
- Whose career is represented, and how does that person describe its organising practice or direction, if any? definition
- Which unpaid work, training, caring periods or personal projects belong in this account, and on what stated basis? boundary
Episodes and concurrency
Captures the timeline without assuming uninterrupted or exclusive employment.
Work episode continuity
Connects roles, independent work and interruptions while preserving overlapping commitments and uncertain dates.
- Which career episodes occurred, when did they start and end, and which ran concurrently? measurement
- What evidence or person-provided account supports each episode, its responsibilities and its dates? provenance
Practice and development Tracks what the person has actually done and how their capacity for work has changed.
Titles and tenure alone cannot establish career development or suitability for a different kind of work.
Responsibilities and contributions
Describes the substance of work across career episodes.
Demonstrated work scope
Records the problems addressed, responsibility exercised and contributions attributable to the person.
- What work did the person perform, with what autonomy, complexity and responsibility in each relevant episode? definition
- Which work samples, outcomes or accounts support the claimed contributions, and what was shared with others? provenance
Capability change and transfer
Connects learning and demonstrated experience to possible future work.
Career capability transfer
Distinguishes evidenced development from assumed competence and tests relevance to a named destination.
- What evidence shows capabilities gaining depth, breadth or currency across the person's career? provenance
- For the proposed next role or practice, which capabilities transfer and which require fresh demonstration or development? action
Direction and success Captures the person's desired relationship to work and the criteria used to judge progress.
The same career move may advance one person's priorities and undermine another's.
Priorities and tradeoffs
Makes preferences and acceptable compromises explicit.
Person-defined success
Records endorsed priorities without presuming that pay, rank or occupational continuity defines success.
- What does the person currently want from their career, including income, mastery, impact, autonomy, stability or time outside work? definition
- Which tradeoffs are acceptable, and which conditions are non-negotiable for the next career decision? boundary
Trajectory assessment
Evaluates present direction against dated, explicit criteria.
Progress and misalignment
Records where the trajectory supports or conflicts with the person's priorities and distinguishes self-assessment from agent interpretation.
- Over what period, and against which person-endorsed criteria, does the career appear to be progressing or becoming misaligned? measurement
- Which assessments come from the person, which from external feedback and which are agent inferences? provenance
Transitions and feasibility Explains career changes and the conditions governing possible next moves.
A plausible career direction is not necessarily accessible, affordable or desirable under present circumstances.
Transition history
Preserves the context of moves, interruptions and returns.
Transition context
Records reported reasons and consequences of changes without inferring motivation from chronology alone.
- What prompted each material career change, and how much choice did the person report having? provenance
- How did each change affect work content, continuity, responsibility and alignment with the person's priorities? measurement
Constraints and enablers
Connects a particular career option to practical requirements and available support.
Next-move feasibility
Identifies relevant limits and enabling conditions while linking detailed facts to their owning models.
- For the proposed move, which income needs, time commitments, location limits, entry requirements or support relationships materially affect feasibility? boundary
- Which requirements are verified, which remain assumptions and what must be checked before treating the move as actionable? action
Options and career action Maintains candidate paths and turns uncertainty into bounded next steps.
A career model must support decisions without presenting a speculative future as an established trajectory.
Candidate paths
Keeps alternative futures distinct from actual experience and committed plans.
Career option comparison
Compares specific paths using the person's priorities, demonstrated experience and relevant external evidence.
- Which paths are under consideration, including staying in the current practice, and what would each change about the person's work? definition
- What evidence supports each path's accessibility and fit, and which expected benefits remain speculative? provenance
Experiments and review
Defines learning actions and conditions for revisiting career choices.
Bounded career experiment
Records a limited action that tests a career assumption, its permitted scope and the decision it will inform.
- What bounded step, such as a work sample, short project or informational conversation, could test the most consequential uncertainty? action
- What action has the person authorised, and what evidence or review date will trigger continuing, changing or stopping the experiment? action
Evidence and external alignment What the world already says about this thing, gathered so the model can be checked against it.
A model that cannot be lined up against existing standards, identifiers and practice cannot be adopted by anyone who already uses them.
Reported evidence
Findings from the breadth pass, kept separate from the structural claims.
Kinds and varieties
Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.
- wage-and-salary employment career
- self-employment / entrepreneurial career
- portfolio / multiple-job career
- public-service / civil-service career
- professional / licensed-occupation career
- military / uniformed-service career
- academic / research career
- caregiving or informal-work career (often unpaid)
- Which of these kinds and varieties hold for the sense of career this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Identifiers and schemes
Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.
- Wikidata - Q1308046 (career, occupation-related) - Need to verify exact Q-id
- Which of these identifiers and schemes hold for the sense of career this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Standards and regulation
Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.
- ILO ISCO-08 - International Labour Organization
- Which of these standards and regulation hold for the sense of career this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Real-world use
Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.
- CV/resume construction
- HR talent management
- labour-force surveys
- career guidance counselling
- Which of these real-world use hold for the sense of career this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Typical measurements
Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.
- years of experience - 0-40 - years
- Which of these typical measurements hold for the sense of career this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Failure modes and hazards
Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.
- career interruption
- skills obsolescence
- precarious employment
- Which of these failure modes and hazards hold for the sense of career this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Regional variation
Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.
- lifetime employment vs. job-hopping cultures
- Which of these regional variation hold for the sense of career this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Neighbouring kinds and how to tell them apart
Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.
- occupation - occupation is a type of work; career is the trajectory through occupations over time
- job - a job is a specific employment spell; a career comprises many jobs
- Which of these neighbouring kinds and how to tell them apart hold for the sense of career this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Sources
- International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO-08) - Occupational classification used to describe jobs that compose a career, not the career itself.
What the second pass must settle
- Does the registry intend career to mean an individual work trajectory, and how does that interpretation fit its INF / INF.MED placement?
- Does an existing Vercy world model already own this concept or part of its longitudinal scope?
- Should multiple simultaneous professional identities be represented as strands of one career or as related careers, and who determines that boundary?
- How should unpaid work, informal livelihoods, caring periods and retirement participation be included across different cultural and occupational contexts?
- What evidence and comparison methods can support assessments of career progress and transition feasibility without imposing a universal ladder or overstating uncertain opportunities?