Definition: A professional is an individual that provides an expert-level service to a given organization. It is a person with enough qualifications to ensure a high standard of quality on his work.
What Does a Professional Mean?
Professionals are highly knowledgeable and skilled individuals, trained to perform a particular activity. They have done a particular set of studies or have specialized in a particular area of business or academics to perform its duties with confidence.
In business, there are some special fields that require a professional-level individual. For example, accountants are professionals since they provide a particular service that require in-depth knowledge about the accounting field.
On the other hand, consultants are also professionals, regardless of their area of expertise, since they offer expert-level advice to companies to enhance their results. This “professional” status might come from academic degrees or licenses obtained by the individual, to certify their training. Nonetheless, people with extensive experience in a given field might also be considered professional, either if they hold a degree or not. But this will not be a common thing in highly-specialized fields like accounting, medicine, law or economics.
Example
Mr. Garret is a 43 years old individual living in New England. He has 10 years of experience practicing mercantile law and he currently works independently providing legal consultation to small business all around the city. He holds a Bachelor in Business Administration and a Law degree from a state university. His services include writing legal documents, defending clients from lawsuits and drafting contracts, among many other services he provides as a lawyer.
According to our concept, to be considered a professional, Mr. Garret must be able to provide an expert-level service to the organizations he serves. As we can see from this description, both his academic background and work experience show enough evidence to consider that he is able to provide such level of service.
