How many occupations should a profile have?

+7 votes
193 views
Some people have one occupation their whole working life and others seem to collect occupations as if they were baseball cards.  What is a good rule-of-thumb for deciding which occupations to include on a person's profile?

Also, some occupations have a high level of overlap.  For instance, engineers often get patents on their work, which would imply that they are also inventors.  When multiple subcategories apply should they all be included on a profile or is there some practical limitation that we should observe?
in Policy and Style by Erik Oosterwal G2G6 Mach 5 (53.0k points)
multiple employments are not that unusual, I look at my own father, who was in the army during WW2 as a corporal instructor in Borden camp, then after the war he worked as a mason/mason helper on building the hospital in his home town, then he studied and became an electrician, then he worked for a big electrical company and was a lineman, then he became a time and motion study agent for the successor electrical company he worked at (big merger of companies).

2 Answers

+12 votes
 
Best answer

I would write about all the occupations in the biography. This helps tell the story of their life and may help other researchers.  Once all the facts are sourced, then  think about which of the occupations  were genealogically significant and whether it would actually be useful to group this profile together with others of the same occupation. Was it a family business ? Did they meet their spouse due to work, or at work ? Include that information in the biography and it will be there for others to find. Keep the number of categories down to those that are genealogically useful. You can't tell a story using categories.

by Joe Farler G2G6 Pilot (149k points)
selected by Amy Gilpin
I think Joe has the right idea.  Take me for example.  My entire life, I've worked in various office occupations, be it medical, legal, government, financial, etc.  Now I'm a self-employed bookkeeper.  That's the one I would put as a category for myself, and then describe any interesting information about my other 'jobs' in my bio.  Then, take my husband's career:  He's been a heavy equipment operator most of his adult life. So only one category would really fit for him.
I’ve always thought that, for the most part, occupations are of little genealogical importance and should be discussedin the Biography.

I’ll admit that lawyers, doctors, etc.often follow in their parent’s footsteps, but otherwise, but a travelling salesman is not likely to have many relatives in his occupation Category.
I'm with you, Robert.
+11 votes
I don't think there's any practical limitation or any site policy about that.  My approach would be to include whatever info I feel would be relevant or interesting to a descendant (or other reader or researcher) who wishes to understand an ancestor's life style.  Sometimes an occupation pretty much defines a person's adult life.  Sometimes people change occupations successfully.  Those who have an occupation count that rivals their baseball card count often don't really have an occupation at all, and their working life can be summarized (as I've seen in some U.S. Census records) as "odd jobs."  That pretty much says it.
by Dennis Barton G2G6 Pilot (546k points)

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