Recommended Career Resources
During the course of my journey as a Life-Work Discovery guide, I have discovered certain books and CDs that clearly have the power to deconstruct myths around the job marketplace, challenge the conditioning of the job seeker, and offer strategies to shorten the time frame needed to secure a better job, change careers, or create a business or consulting practice of one’s one. The following are resources I can recommend without hesitation.
Finding Your Way
How to Find the Work You Love — Laurance G. Boldt. Boldt is the author of the best selling Zen and the Art of Making a Living, a book which had the power to overwhelm the reader by the sheer breadth and density of its information. Here Boldt has chosen to limit his focus on guiding the reader to find a direction for his or her career. He helps the reader find the courage to begin the search for a new career. Four elements are woven into that search: Integrity, Service, Enjoyment and Excellence. In this slim volume, Boldt has concentrated on the essence of career identification and, in the process, produced a lucid and helpful guide.
Creating New Paradigms
The Way of the Ronin: Riding the Waves of Change – Dr. Beverly Potter. In the third edition of this classic work, Potter challenges and demolishes many of the myths older job seekers were given as essential truths. We were conditioned to choose one career for our entire lives and then climb the promotional ladder to success. To do so, we had to fit ourselves into the world Potter calls corporate feudalism.
The reality of impermanence and the rapidity of change in the emerging global economy has produced a situation in which entire professions are being outsourced or eliminated. To survive in this increasingly chaotic world, Potter creates the figure of the Japanese samurai, the ronin or “wave man” who surfs the waves of change to carve our personal and career fulfillment.
So You Think You Know Networking
The 29% Solution: 52 Weekly Networking Success Strategies – Ivan R. Misner, PhD and Michelle R. Donovan. Reviewing this book, I’m hopelessly biased because Michelle Donovan is a dear friend who has forgotten more about networking than I will ever know. That said, however, this is simply the best single book on networking that I have come across. It presents a system for developing a word of mouth referral network that, if implemented, will increase revenue for the small business and the large corporation alike. I have taken the model Misner and Donovan have developed and modified it for the job seeker who, following the strategies outlined in the book, will increase her career opportunities many times over. Highly recommended!