Best careers advice book ever
I see that a new edition of What Color is your Parachute by Richard Nelson Bolles is coming out. I found this the best careers advice book I ever read, at the moment I last took a serious career shift, in late 1998. The summary of the advice is as follows:
- Know your best and most fulfilling transferable skills.
- Know what kind of work you want to do and what field you would most enjoy working in.
- Talk to people who are doing the work you want to do. Find out how they like the work, how they found their job.
- Do some research, then, in your chosen geographical area on those organizations which interest you, to find what they do and what kinds of problems/challenges they or their industry are wrestling with.
- Then identify and seek out the person who actually has the power to hire you for the job you want; use your personal contacts - everyone you know - to get in to see him or her.
- Show this person with the power to hire you how you can help the company solve its problems/needs/challenges and how you would stand out as one employee in a hundred.
- Don't take rejection personally. Remember, there are two kinds of employers out there: those who will be bothered by your handicaps - age, background, inexperience, etc. - and those who won't be and will hire you, so long as you can do the job. If you get rejected by the first kind of employer, keep persevering until you find the second.
- In all of this, cut no corners and take no shortcuts.