“ACTION IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION REDUCES THE DISTANCE BETWEEN YOU AND THE GOAL” Anitha Nadig’s A Quest for a New Career Path will motivate you to discover your passion and purpose as you look for an alternative career. With clarity and practical solutions, this book guides you through the exciting process of changing your mindset to help you shed your inhibitions and blaze the trail that you’ve always wanted. It also deftly handles money matters and the preparations required to begin a new calling with confidence. This book is packed with activities that will take you on an inner journey of self-exploration and answer your most pressing questions on finding meaning in life. Anitha’s candid recollections of her personal career-change journey form the heart of the book, giving readers useful insights into the nitty-gritty of mid-life career changes. By the end of the book, you will be ready with an action plan to smoothly transition towards your passion project. A Quest for a New Career Path is a must read for anyone who wants to think beyond the nine-to-five and lead a fulfilling and purposeful life.
In her book "Job Quest: How to Become the Insider Who Gets Hired," Sheila Markin Nielsen spells out what so many of us already suspected, that people with personal connections, the insiders, have a tremendous advantage when it comes to landing jobs. It's not that daddy pulls the strings. Instead, it is a personal relationship that the job seeker has created with someone known and trusted by the workplace that opens the doors. In this book she tells everyone how to develop the insider advantage for their job searches through a process of rapid relationship and trust building. Ms. Nielsen illuminates the often murky experience that is a relationship-building job search by breaking the process down into a series of concrete, easy-to-follow steps. She uses a game approach and an analogy to a medieval quest to help the reader understand what to look for and how to move forward in the search. She explains what luck has to do with it (and how to create your own), how to prepare for the quest, how to get around the resume-blocking gatekeepers (the dragons who guard the hiring managers), how to find key people to connect with (your knights and wizards), what to say once you connect with them, how to continue building your connections, how to interview, when to start using the word "job," when to go for the close, and how to give back to your connections. She also provides a summary of the four overarching quest concepts, the common pitfalls, a narrative of a successful quest, and appendices with exercises to support the quest. Her advice is direct, practical, and wise, based on over 25 years of professional counseling experience. Job seekers in all stages of their careers will benefit from reading this book. C O N T E N T S About the Author Acknowledgments Introduction: A Surprising Epiphany about How People Really Get Jobs Part I: The Basics Chapter One: The Insider Advantage Chapter Two: What Does Luck Have to Do with It? Chapter Three: Fortune Favors the Prepared Mind Chapter Four: Blueprint for the Quest Part II: Preparation Chapter Five: How to Prepare for Your Quest Part III: Launch Your Quest Chapter Six: Finding the Key People to Connect With Chapter Seven: How to Get Knights and Wizards to Meet with You Chapter Eight: What Happens in Meetings with Knights and Wizards Chapter Nine: Friendship Lite Chapter Ten: Interviews Chapter Eleven: The Tipping Point and the Campaign Phase Part IV: Concepts to Utilize as You Work Your Quest Chapter Twelve: Four Overarching Concepts Chapter Thirteen: Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them Chapter Fourteen: A Model Quest Chapter Fifteen: Concluding Remarks Appendices Appendix A: AIMS Assessment Appendix B: AILS Assessment Appendix C: Essential Elements Assessment Appendix D: Skills-based Resume Appendix E: Master List of People and Places Appendix F: Checklist and Guide for Your Job Quest"
On the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of her classic Leadership and the New Science, bestselling author Margaret Wheatley once again turns to the new science of living systems to help leaders persevere in a time of great turmoil. I know it is possible for leaders to use their power and influence, their insight and compassion, to lead people back to an understanding of who we are as human beings, to create the conditions for our basic human qualities of generosity, contribution, community and love to be evoked no matter what. I know it is possible to experience grace and joy in the midst of tragedy and loss. I know it is possible to create islands of sanity in the midst of wildly disruptive seas. I know it is possible because I have worked with leaders over many years in places that knew chaos and breakdown long before this moment. And I have studied enough history to know that such leaders always arise when they are most needed. Now it's our turn.
In an unorthodox approach, Georgetown University professor Cal Newport debunks the long-held belief that "follow your passion" is good advice, and sets out on a quest to discover the reality of how people end up loving their careers. Not only are pre-existing passions rare and have little to do with how most people end up loving their work, but a focus on passion over skill can be dangerous, leading to anxiety and chronic job hopping. Spending time with organic farmers, venture capitalists, screenwriters, freelance computer programmers, and others who admitted to deriving great satisfaction from their work, Newport uncovers the strategies they used and the pitfalls they avoided in developing their compelling careers. Cal reveals that matching your job to a pre-existing passion does not matter. Passion comes after you put in the hard work to become excellent at something valuable, not before. In other words, what you do for a living is much less important than how you do it. With a title taken from the comedian Steve Martin, who once said his advice for aspiring entertainers was to "be so good they can't ignore you," Cal Newport's clearly written manifesto is mandatory reading for anyone fretting about what to do with their life, or frustrated by their current job situation and eager to find a fresh new way to take control of their livelihood. He provides an evidence-based blueprint for creating work you love, and will change the way you think about careers, happiness, and the crafting of a remarkable life.
The complete guide to finding work for anyone aged 50 and over. Whatever your circumstances - from a change of career, a move to self-employment, a need to earn a decent income, or wishing to decrease your hours to free up time for other pursuits, this invaluable book helps readers to define their individual work needs and learn the modern techniques for successful job hunting. Helping readers to refocus and build confidence in the job market, the contents include getting in the right mind set, establishing clear goals, social media, networking, CV writing, interviews, stereotypes and how to deal with them, and self-employment.
From the creator of the popular website Ask a Manager and New York’s work-advice columnist comes a witty, practical guide to 200 difficult professional conversations—featuring all-new advice! There’s a reason Alison Green has been called “the Dear Abby of the work world.” Ten years as a workplace-advice columnist have taught her that people avoid awkward conversations in the office because they simply don’t know what to say. Thankfully, Green does—and in this incredibly helpful book, she tackles the tough discussions you may need to have during your career. You’ll learn what to say when • coworkers push their work on you—then take credit for it • you accidentally trash-talk someone in an email then hit “reply all” • you’re being micromanaged—or not being managed at all • you catch a colleague in a lie • your boss seems unhappy with your work • your cubemate’s loud speakerphone is making you homicidal • you got drunk at the holiday party Praise for Ask a Manager “A must-read for anyone who works . . . [Alison Green’s] advice boils down to the idea that you should be professional (even when others are not) and that communicating in a straightforward manner with candor and kindness will get you far, no matter where you work.”—Booklist (starred review) “The author’s friendly, warm, no-nonsense writing is a pleasure to read, and her advice can be widely applied to relationships in all areas of readers’ lives. Ideal for anyone new to the job market or new to management, or anyone hoping to improve their work experience.”—Library Journal (starred review) “I am a huge fan of Alison Green’s Ask a Manager column. This book is even better. It teaches us how to deal with many of the most vexing big and little problems in our workplaces—and to do so with grace, confidence, and a sense of humor.”—Robert Sutton, Stanford professor and author of The No Asshole Rule and The Asshole Survival Guide “Ask a Manager is the ultimate playbook for navigating the traditional workforce in a diplomatic but firm way.”—Erin Lowry, author of Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By and Get Your Financial Life Together
An essential guide for students in the life sciences, established researchers, and career counselors, this resource features discussions of job security, future trends, and potential career paths. Even those already working in the industry will find helpful information on how to take advantage of opportunities within their own companies and elsewhere.
A career advice book with the tests that make the difference! American workers are upwardly mobile movers and shakers who change careers often, always on the search for their perfect niche. But you can't follow your bliss unless you know what your bliss is. Enter The Everything Career Tests Book--your key to determining the career path you were destined for! This engaging, accessible guide boasts ten different tests that reveal the work habits, affinities, and interests you may not even realize you have! Ten tests help you find your way: Values Test Skills Test Interests Test Personality Test Work Environment Test Location Test Work/Life Balance Test Entrepreneurial Ability Test Managerial Ability Test Emotional Intelligence Test Featuring extensive test result analysis and guidance as well as an easy-to-use format, The Everything Career Tests Book is all you need to make your dreams come true--at work!
How Successful Career Changers Turn Fantasy into RealityWhether as a daydream or a spoken desire, nearly all of us have entertained the notion of reinventing ourselves. Feeling unfulfilled, burned out, or just plain unhappy with what we’re doing, we long to make that leap into the unknown. But we also hold on, white-knuckled, to the years of time and effort we’ve invested in our current profession.In this powerful book, Herminia Ibarra presents a new model for career reinvention that flies in the face of everything we’ve learned from "career experts." While common wisdom holds that we must first know what we want to do before we can act, Ibarra argues that this advice is backward. Knowing, she says, is the result of doing and experimenting. Career transition is not a straight path toward some predetermined identity, but a crooked journey along which we try on a host of "possible selves" we might become.Based on her in-depth research on professionals and managers in transition, Ibarra outlines an active process of career reinvention that leverages three ways of "working identity": experimenting with new professional activities, interacting in new networks of people, and making sense of what is happening to us in light of emerging possibilities.Through engrossing stories—from a literature professor turned stockbroker to an investment banker turned novelist—Ibarra reveals a set of guidelines that all successful reinventions share. She explores specific ways that hopeful career changers of any background can: Explore possible selves Craft and execute "identity experiments" Create "small wins" that keep momentum going Survive the rocky period between career identities Connect with role models and mentors who can ease the transition Make time for reflection—without missing out on windows of opportunity Decide when to abandon the old path in order to follow the new Arrange new events into a coherent story of who we are becoming A call to the dreamer in each of us, Working Identity explores the process for crafting a more fulfilling future. Where we end up may surprise us.
