Hello and welcome back to the Easy English Podcast.
I'm your host, Oliver, and I am back from my holidays.
I've had a relaxing time away and I'm back to the very rainy Northern Ireland in the UK to make some more podcast episodes for you.
And today we are going to be exploring about jobs.
So different types of work.
And it's a topic that is important in everyone's life at some stage.
And that is working, of course, whether you're working, looking for a new role or simply want to understand jobs and things around you in companies and industries.
So maybe you have tried to explain before what you do in English and it's been quite difficult to find the words.
Hopefully, this episode today will help a little bit with that.
But I am going to do it in quite a different way today.
And you'll see what I mean in a moment.
We will become career detectives.
So we're going to explore the language of jobs, roles and industries.
But to do it, we're going to follow a story or follow a process.
But as always, we are going to do our usual vocabulary learning.
I always like to make sure that you get a good four or five keywords and phrases each episode for you to listen out for and to reinforce and build your knowledge.
So let's look at our five words that are essential for discussing jobs and careers.
The first word is, of course, a job.
Seems quite simple, oliver.
Yeah well, let's have a look at the actual definition of a job.
So a job is regular paid work.
For example, many people are looking for a job.
But in English, it can also be a one-time thing.
Like, I need you to help me with a job.
It can also be used like a task.
But for this topic, it is regular paid work.
You might also say profession in this case.
Okay, our second rule, our second word, I'm getting ahead of myself.
Our second word is role, role.
And this is a noun.
And it means the position or function that someone has in a company or an organization.
For example, my role is to manage the team.
Let's say in easy English, my role is to create, record, and produce the podcast.
Okay, our third word today is industry.
Industry.
And this is a noun.
Industry.
And it is a group of businesses that provide a particular product or service.
So the type of group of businesses really.
For example, we can say the technology industry.
That is companies and organizations related to technology.
Okay, our fourth word is profession, profession.
I mentioned this earlier.
A profession is a type of job.
It's a type of job that requires special training in most cases, and often a high level or a higher level of education, but not always.
For example, we can say that medicine is a respected profession.
And finally, today we have the word skills.
Skills or skill, singular.
Skills are abilities that you need to do a particular job or role.
For example, good communication skills are required for this job.
Good English speaking skills or English communication skills are required for this role.
You might see such things when looking at job advertisements, or advertisements, if you want to say, the very British pronunciation.
Okay, so those are our keywords.
Don't worry if some of them were difficult.
And if you know loads of them, or some of them, try to practice your active listening for those in today's episode.
So let's go to our main part of the episode.
But first, remember, if you haven't yet joined, you're very welcome to go to the Patreon.
The link is in the description below.
On Patreon, you get access to all of the existing episodes without advertisements.
So no advertisements, Spotify ads, that type of thing.
And you get like the higher quality audio with those, as well as full transcripts that you can read along to.
You get a pdf with each episode that has the full transcripts.
It has the extended vocabulary list, extra vocab that you can use to learn, as well as phrasal verbs.
It also has some exercises with each episode in the PDF as well, to help reinforce and extend your learning with each Easy English episode.
And that's not all!
As an Easy English Patreon supporter, you get access to bonus content every week.
That can be some interesting topics, some personal topics about my life, as well as some bonus series.
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Okay, back to the main episode.
To make this interesting, and this topic interesting, I had an idea.
So I want us to become detectives.
And in doing so, we are going to follow a single object.
A smartphone.
So when we have a product, let's say I've got my phone here, my smartphone.
When we have a product like a smartphone, we often don't think about how it's actually made and the process that it goes through.
But to make this fun and to get it to me, There are a lot of jobs involved along the way.
Lots of people with lots of different roles.
So we're going to discover the different job roles, skills and industries that bring this smartphone, my iPhone that I'm holding in my hands, to life and that bring it to me.
And this narrative approach, this story approach, I guess following through will hopefully help you remember these words and concepts in a memorable way, right.
So our journey with the smartphone begins with an idea.
Any product that there is out there usually starts with an idea. even a service.
And this is someone usually a product designer.
They think of a new idea about maybe what this phone will look like.
What will the smartphone look like?
Their role, the product designer's role, is creative.
And they use lots of different creative skills like sketching and digital design.
And this is all happening within the huge, so very big, technology industry.
Once the design is ready, the engineers, they get to work.
A software engineer writes all of the code that makes the apps run.
While a hardware engineer, someone who is working on the actual technology, they design the physical parts of the phone.
And these are both what we would call high level professions.
And they require specific technical skills.
Right.
Oh, a lot of words there.
So you can see that how the jobs relate to the different words here.
So really, every job, every profession has a different set of skills, different abilities and things required to do the job.
So in the case of this phone that we've talked about, we've already had people with creative skills.
We've had people with technical skills.
So looking at the technology itself.
Now let's see what else we can get involved in this phone.
So the whole project from start to finish is guided by a project manager.
Perhaps some of you listening are project managers, maybe you're software engineers or some of these jobs that we're talking about today.
Let me know if you are in the comments below.
So this project manager, their role, their role, their tasks, their specific job tasks, let's say, is to organize the team, the deadlines and the budget, to make sure that everything works together.
And probably nowadays in most companies, these project managers.
They start to use more software, more AI to help them manage the team.
So now that the designs are made, we've got most things sorted and prepared and the ideas have been done and the actual technical skills have been used to create this idea of the product.
Next, we actually have to make it.
So the phone is now produced in the manufacturing industry, a different industry.
And there are factory workers with machines that help assemble the parts to build the phone, to put it together.
Then there are more managers But in this case, we would call them logistics managers.
And these are the people that organize how the phone, in this case, gets to the shops.
So it gets from the factory to the different places that it needs to go.
So we're now getting these thousands of phones which have been designed with the creative skills and the technical skills.
It has then been produced, so that means actually made.
It has been physically created in the manufacturing industry.
And now logistics, the people that deliver and move the product, are getting it to another industry.
Do you know what that final industry is?
So think about where you buy the phone.
It could be online, but let's think physically.
This is the retail industry.
So it arrives to the stores.
And here you might have in the old traditional shops like maybe even an Apple store or a phone shop of some kind, you'll probably have some kind of a salesperson that will help you to choose the right phone.
But in the modern day you might just look online, but you could see digital salespeople reviews, all kinds of different things that help you to pick your phone.
And once you have your phone, You might have to speak to a customer service representative if you have any problems with it or you need any support with getting it working.
And in this service industry retail the most important skills tend to be, I would say, patience and good communication skills.
That's not all, there are still more jobs and industries related to this one phone.
Of course, we have lots of things that I've not talked about, like marketing, so actually advertising the phone and everything else around that too.
But once the company has now sold you the phone, All of these sales, all of this money from selling the phone has to then be managed, usually by an accountant in the finance industry.
So they're going to track and look at the costs and the money and the profit.
So you can see.
A simple phone like this has an entire network of different jobs, roles and industries.
So I hope this was an interesting way to think about these different terms.
So now to one of my favorite bits of each podcast.
You know I love it.
It is the listener spotlight.
Okay, so with the listener spotlight, I want you to tell me what is your dream job?
If you could do any job in the world, It might be the one that you're doing right now that you love.
Or maybe it's one that you imagine that you would like or you would like to do.
Tell me what that job is and why.
You can write to me by email.
You can leave a comment on YouTube or on Spotify if you're listening on Spotify.
That's probably the best way to do it.
Or just find a way.
Practice yourself if you want to as well.
So tell me, what is your dream job and why?
In the last week's episode, we looked at reviews.
So online reviews.
And I asked you guys to leave some reviews, both on the platform maybe you listen to or in the comments.
And I had some really great well-written ones.
So I want to read some.
Read some of those just to really highlight some of the great English work from these comments.
So the first one, we have a comment from Zagorsz.
I hope I've said or pronounced your name correctly.
Zagorsz from Poland says, And they said, I enjoy watching your podcast.
I'm starting to understand more and more of what you're saying.
You cover a variety of topics and you have a great way of connecting with your audience.
You have a unique style that makes me want to tune in next time.
I can tell that you love what you do and that it brings you joy.
I wish you all the best.
Maybe you could do an episode about positive psychology or life coaching.
It's great that you're here.
Greetings from Poland.
Thank you very much for that comment.
I'm very, very glad that you enjoy the podcast and that you're learning and starting to understand more and more.
That's definitely my goal is that, through listening to these podcasts, you start to get exposed to and understand more and more words, as well as my speech too.
It can really help listening to consistent speech and it will help you to practice and track your progress as well over time.
So great job and thank you so much for leaving that wonderful, wonderful comment.
I had many, many more comments.
I'm not going to read them all.
I do try to feature maybe a different person every week or in each episode that we do the listener spotlight.
So please do answer this week's question, which is, what is your dream job?
And I look forward to reading some of these out in the next, probably the next week's episode, next Monday's episode.
Okay, so we have followed the journey of a smartphone from the beginning through to having purchased it, or bought it to look at the different jobs and industries involved in it.
So I hope that has been interesting.
But yeah, it was a small little section I wanted to add and that was really the weird and wonderful world of jobs.
So...
As we know, and the more people you meet, you realize there are so many different jobs.
Some of them are strange.
Some of them, of course, are very normal.
And to keep you on your toes, to keep you guessing and thinking about jobs, I want to tell you two interesting online jobs that I found.
And that is, the first one is a professional sleeper.
So really a professional sleeper is someone that in a way is getting paid to sleep.
And that is their role is to be part of specific scientific studies and also advertising studies for mattress companies to test mattresses or even sleep quality for new medicines.
And these people work in the research industry.
So there is such a role as a professional sleeper in some areas.
Of course, maybe it's not a full-time job but something that a few lucky people get to do to earn some extra money.
Another job I saw is a pet food taster.
And their job is to test food for animals to make sure that it tastes good and that it's then safe for them to eat.
This is a very specialized profession in the food industry, but a very interesting one.
And I'm sure it requires a very good sense of taste.
I often thought about, you know, how do they know that the animals like the taste of the food?
So we have people that actually are testing it and making sure that it is how it should be.
So today you've become a little bit of a career detective.
So we've looked at a product and we've followed it.
We've seen the amount of roles and jobs involved in different industries all for one product.
I hope you enjoyed our little adventure and I hope that you learned a word or two brand new for you.
As always, all of my links are in the description below, if you want to check out my book or join the Patreon and get access to bonus content.
That's where the vocabulary list is for this episode.
So if you want to get access to that, you have to be a Patreon member.
Otherwise, thank you so much for listening to the podcast.
If you're new here, make sure that you followed and subscribed.
And I will see you in the next episode of the Easy English Podcast.
Goodbye.
