The game Eve-Online offers a few different "jobs" a player can try his or her hand at, and specialize in. A character's skill training will likely revolve around his profession, as training of skills is very time-consuming and tends to boost very specific abilities. Therefore a player may want to dabble in the beginning to see what he or she wants to do, and then choose a skill and career path for the character in question.
This Guide is a simple description of each job a character can become good at, including what types of skilltraining might be involved and what responsibilities and abilities this character would have.

Miner
A Miner is, quite simply, a person who mines ore (or ice) for an Eve living. He goes out in a ship, uses mining lasers to harvest asteroids for their ore, then hauls (or has a Hauler haul) the ore to a dock where it is sold or (more often) refined. Miners usually train for advanced mining ships such as mining barges and Hulks, and train up their refining skills, as well as good drone skills so that their drones can protect them. A miner can make excellent isk with little risk (hey that rhymes!) or he can try his hand in low-sec space and make a huge fortune. In a corporation, the miner is responsible either (for industrial corps) for bringing in minerals for production or (in a PvP corp) for bringing the corp isk or ice products that run POSs.

Haulers and Traders
Haulers simply haul ore and other objects back and forth through space. Once advanced, they can go into business for themselves as Traders, using haulers or even huge Freighters to transport goods at either a high cost to the goods' owner or at a profit to themselves when they buy goods cheaply, then transport them elsewhere where those goods sell high. A player can take Courier missions from npc agents to make money and raise their standings with different Eve factions, and earn agent loyalty points too; often advanced courier missions run through low-security space, but they can make a player tons of isk for relatively little investment and time. Also, high-security courier missions can be run while the player is almost completely afk; the ship can be set to autopilot and the player can go about his non-Eve business until the ship arrives. Traders themselves can use smaller ships at first, eventually graduating to Freighters, although either haulers or traders can transport small, expensive items through low-security space for a large profit too. In a corporation, dedicated Haulers often simply haul ore from a corp's mining operations to the dock for refining. Haulers and Traders need to train for the same skills, such as training for the large ships that they use, training for cargo- and speed-enhancing modules and training up tanking skills to keep their ships safe. Traders, however, will want to trade up many business-related skills as well. These often-overlooked members of the Eve community can make a great deal of isk for little risk, and for little comparative work and time.

Manufacturer
The Production folks of Eve produce a great deal of the goods--munitions, ships, modules and drones--that the rest of the community uses. T2 items, especially, are a product of players and corps rather than the npc market. A Industrialist/Manufacturer will buy blueprints and minerals, and spend their time building and selling (or providing to their corporation) various in-demand items. Manufacturers need to train their Manufacturing, Production Efficiency and Industry skills up, and often Refining as well if they work with raw ore. In addition, to build tech 2 items, many specialized skills (such as Minmatar Starship Construction) are also required. In corporations, these people are often provided with blueprints to use so that they can make the corporation items with the corp's own minerals, providing their members with modules, ammo, drones and ships free of charge, at a reduced rate or "at cost," getting protection and/or ore freely in return.

Mission Runners
Mission-Runners are people who talk to agents, get missions from those agents and run missions for isk payments, loot, bounties, rewards and loyalty points. In a corporation their main function is to provide isk to the corp by way of taxes on the bounties they get, though in some corps the loot is required to be handed over as well. Mission Runners can survive quite well outside of a corp, however, as even low-level missions usually more than pay for the ammo used (or even the ship lost, in some cases!). In a corp, however, you'll have the chance to bring people along to help you; while it's possible to solo high-level missions, it can be helpful to have people along to provide firepower, tanking support, or even to bring along a quick ship to loot and salvage for you in return for a portion of the loot/salvage. These people will need to train their fighting skills up, including Navigation, Gunnery and likely Missiles, as well as everything necessary for a good tank and good fittings--in other words, most Engineering, Mechanic and Electronics skills. For information on Courier missions, though, see "Haulers and Traders."

PvPer
PvPers are players who choose to fight other human players for a living. There is no real isk in this (aside from in Piracy, which will be covered next), but these players are usually the ones in the spotlights. They fly into battle and lose ships, modules and often their lifepods in battles with other players, defending the Manufacturers, Haulers, Traders and Miners of a corporation. These are what enables a self-sustaining 0.0 corp to maintain itself without being taken over. These players have an exciting Eve life, and end up with some excellent stories to tell. It's unusual to find non-pirate PvPers outside of a corporation; they are usually found defending corps, and are in great demand across the universe. Mercenaries count as PvPers, and these people make their money (usually in a mercenary corporation) by hiring out their services as protection against or harrassment toward an enemy. PvPers need to train all of their fighting skills to high levels to be good fighters, the same as the Mission Runners need to do, but to an even higher level. They must not only train their skills to high levels, but they need to spar and practice, learning their ships, good setups and how to fight in all situations.

Pirate
Pirates are fighters, whether they belong to a pirating corp or are on their own. They can make a great deal of isk if they are careful. Pirates basically attack other players without provocation, and either kill them and take whatever modules are not destroyed, or stop just short of killing them and ransom them instead. Either way, it's a dangerous life; a pirate operating in Empire (anything over 0.0) space will often soon be unable to enter high-security systems because of how quickly his own security status falls. He is vulnerable to other pirates, to the corp- and alliance-mates of his victims, and to roaming gangs of anti-pirates. Sometimes pirates are recruited to defend an alliance or corp's 0.0 space against intruders, killing all of those who are not official allies; these people are mercenaries more than pirates. The rest of the time, the pirate has no responsibilities at all other than to himself--to make himself isk and to enjoy himself. A pirate will want to train up skills the same way as a PvP or mission-running pilot, although he may wish to focus on training for tech2 ships sooner, or to train his webifier and warp-scrambling skills sooner and better.

Leader
A Leader, whether the CEO of a corporation or a Director or squadron leader, has a special job. He must be able to organize and guide those under his command, have good communication skills (not a trainable skill of course) and be able to "read" people fairly well over the internet (i.e. without facial expressions and sometimes without voice to guide him). He must be a commanding figure as well, and good or at least knowledgeable at whatever his corp or division specializes in. A CEO will train corporation management skills such as Corporation Management, Ethnic Relations and perhaps Megacorp Management. A squadron leader will train his Leadership skills, which give bonuses to his gang members' speed, armor and hull strength, targeting speed, etc. Their main responsibility is to remain active in Eve, to communicate readily and keep the objective of the group clearly in sight, and to keep the group moving smoothly toward their goals. Facilitating teamwork between the underlings, training new members and delegating lesser responsibilities are among their other tasks. Leaders also need to always remember one important thing: a bossy, aggressive man will get less respect than a knowledgeable, helpful one. Leaders need to earn respect, rather than demand it; in this way, this can be a very rewarding role indeed.