Increasing interest by national and international agencies affects the environment career practitioners work in. Market-driven systems, deregulation and technological innovation change how people access services. This article examines some of the implications of these aspects on how career practitioners build their occupational identity, finding tensions exist between top-down professionalising actions such as building professional bodies to consolidate a fragmented occupation and the grassroots feelings practitioners have about their occupational identity. My focus is on how career practitioners in Aotearoa New Zealand, construct their occupational identity. I find the work of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler helps me to understand the discomfort many experience. My findings, with which others may identify, are that such discomfort about occupational identity inhibits a coherent push for professionalisation.