Career



Sims need a job to pay the bills, get food and furniture. There are many careers, a part of them are listed below.

The Sims & Expansions
For a list of all career tracks, see Career Tracks.

Promotions
Sims can earn promotions primarily by having the correct skills and enough friends. The amount of friends they need and the skills they must have are shown on the job panel- highlighted. Even if they have the correct skills they do not get automatically promoted.
 * The chance of a promotion increases if the sim has a high aspiration level and decreases the further up the career they get. Often the chance for a promotion appears in a chance card.
 * If a sim has a relative higher up the career than they are there is a small chance they will pull strings to advance them in the career.
 * If Nightlife is installed and a sim has a good date with an employee of higher rank in the career they may also be promoted in this way. It should be noted however that the dated Sim must be at least 2 Job Levels higher then the Sim being promoted for this to work.

Demotions
If a sim has a low aspiration level, looses too many skill points or answers a chance card wrong there is a chance the sim will be demoted or fired. If either happens the sim will come home immediately, have a major drop in all needs and spend a real-life minute moping by the pavement. They will also get a bad memory and autonomous reactions will occur in which the sim will start crying and thinking about the demotion throughout the day.

Chance cards
Any time a sim is at work, a sim can encounter a chance card. The game presents to the player a scenario if the form of a text box describing a predicament or a decision a sim must make. The player can choose one of two options (or press ignore) to complete the scenario. Ignoring the chance card has no good or bad effects.

The "correct" and "wrong" answers are determined randomly after the choice is made. The option chosen has no effect on whether a good or bad thing results. It only changes which good or bad thing happens. There is always a 50% chance of success. The exception is with FreeTime, in which the aspiration reward Business Instinct can be chosen, which causes an 80% chance of success.

A map of how a result is determined is as follows:

Given choices A and B:
 * User chooses A
 * Computer generates good value
 * Good Result A
 * Computer generates bad value
 * Bad Result A
 * User chooses B
 * Computer generates good value
 * Good Result B
 * Computer generates bad value
 * Bad Result B

Career reward objects
For a list of all career reward objects, see Career rewards.

A new item in The Sims 2 is a career reward object. As Sims progress through their career, they earn a Career Reward Object, which lets Sims earn skills at a faster rate. The Sim who earned the object is not the only one who can use the reward - they can teach other Sims how to use the object, so they too can earn skill points faster.

Note: If your Sim moves after putting the Career Reward Object on their lot, they will lose the object and have to earn it again. Although now that sims have inventories starting with Nightlife, you can remedy this by making sure to place the object in your sim's inventory before you move.