The University Libraries’ Career Collection is a treasure trove of valuable resources for professionals at any stage of their careers, from networking and interviewing to pursuing leadership positions. In this list, experts from the Libraries and the Career and Professional Development Center (CPDC) recommend ten books that focus on career exploration.
Designing Your Work Life: How to Thrive and Change and Find Happiness at Work
Burnett, Bill; Evans, Dave (2020)
The authors of #1 New York Times bestseller "Designing Your Life" taught readers how to use design thinking to build meaningful, fulfilling lives. Now, in the original DESIGNING YOUR WORK LIFE, they apply that transformative thinking to the place we spend more time than anywhere else—work—and show readers how to create the job they want, without necessarily leaving the job they already have.
"Designing Your Work Life" teaches readers how to create the job they want—without necessarily leaving the job they already have.
“Increasingly, it’s up to workers to define their own happiness and success in this ever-moving landscape,” they write, and chapter by chapter, they demonstrate how to build positive change, wherever you are in your career. Whether you want to stay in your job and make it a more meaningful experience, or if you decide it’s time to move on, Evans and Burnett show you how to visualize and build a work-life that is productive, engaged, meaningful, and more fun. - Publisher's Description
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You Majored In What? Designing Your Path from College to Career
Brooks, Katharine (2017)
“So what are you going to do with your major?” It’s an innocent question that can haunt students from high school to graduate school and beyond.
Relax. Your major is just the starting point for designing a meaningful future. In this indispensable guide, Dr. Katharine Brooks shows you a creative, fun, and intelligent way to figure out what you want to do and how to get it—no matter what you studied in college. You will learn to map your experiences for insights into your strengths and passions, design possible lives, and create goals destined to take you wherever you want to go. Using techniques and ideas that have guided thousands of college students to successful careers, Dr. Brooks will teach you to outsmart and outperform your competition, with more Wisdom Builders and an easily applied career development process.
No matter what career you aspire to, "You Majored in What?" offers a practical, creative, and successful approach to finding your path to career fulfillment. - Publisher's Description
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The Career Stories Method: 11 Steps to Find Your Ideal Career and Discover Your Awesome Self in the Process
Twigg, Kerri (2021)
These days, growing your career requires a brand. People who can share their strengths through compelling stories—in interviews, resumes, and pitches—land the work. But how can you find, optimize, and communicate those stories?
Career Stories founder Kerri Twigg combines her theater background with her training in HR, coaching, and meditation to bring you a job search guide unlike any other. Like Julia Cameron did with "The Artist’s Way," Kerri offers a program to find out which job is perfect for you, by examining your stories. Kerri also provides practical tools for networking, writing resumes that impress, building your LinkedIn profile, and more. And we’re not just talking about traditional employment—about half of Kerri’s clients realize that they’re actually entrepreneurs, and "The Career Stories Method" offers strategies for them too. - Publisher's Description
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Careers By the People: Candid Career Advice from 101 Experienced Professionals
Wysocki, Mike (2022)
Looking for advice on how to choose a career path? This dynamic approach goes straight to the source: asking real-world workers how they feel about their occupations. After three decades in corporate America, Mike Wysocki wondered if the grass really was greener on the other side. So he put his background in sociology to work and spent years surveying industry veterans in a variety of occupations.
The responses were eye-opening: an honest, insider's look at what workers say about their careers outside of the office. Wysocki chose the 101 most powerful responses for Careers By the People to demystify the world of work with practical experience rather than theory. These industry profiles pair the practicality of guidance counselors with the storytelling of a networking event (without the small talk).
Told in a Q&A format, insightful answers to thought-provoking questions include: descriptions of a day-in-the-life of the profession they chose, truths about conflicts, co-workers, and management, common misconceptions, issues and what pitfalls to avoid, what's fulfilling, what's draining, and what's worth it.
With humor and authenticity that doesn't hold punches, this career guidebook will help you narrow down career choices so you can determine what is best for you. All paths lead to retirement―which one are you on? - Publisher's Description
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Own Your Greatness: Overcome Imposter Syndrome, Beat Self-Doubt, and Succeed in Life
Orbé-Austin, Lisa; Orbé-Austin, Richard (2020)
Stop letting impostor syndrome hold you back! This guided workbook of interactive exercises and research-backed activities will help you conquer self-doubt, realize your true worth, and enjoy your success.How many times have you thought that everyone is crushing it except you? How often have you looked at one of your accomplishments and attributed it to luck or the help of others?
It can be difficult to acknowledge our own successes and skills, and overcome the feeling of being an impostor. But moving past that feeling is crucial to continuing down the path to even greater success and happiness. "Own Your Greatness" will give you all the tools you need to recognize and overcome the impostor syndrome that is holding you back. Packed full of research- and therapy-backed exercises, prompts, and activities, this interactive workbook will help you: - Identify the root causes of your impostor syndrome- Recognize your natural skills and strengths- Gain the confidence to lead- Speak up for yourself- Feel comfortable receiving and giving praise. - Publisher's Description
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You Can Do Anything: The Surprising Power of a "Useless" Liberal Arts Education
Anders, George (2019)
In a tech-dominated world, the most needed degrees are the most surprising: the liberal arts. Did you take the right classes in college? Will your major help you get the right job offers? For more than a decade, the national spotlight has focused on science and engineering as the only reliable choice for finding a successful post-grad career. Our destinies have been reduced to a caricature: learn to write computer code or end up behind a counter, pouring coffee. Quietly, though, a different path to success has been taking shape.
In "You Can Do Anything," George Anders explains the remarkable power of a liberal arts education - and the ways it can open the door to thousands of cutting-edge jobs every week. The key insight: curiosity, creativity, and empathy aren't unruly traits that must be reined in. You can be yourself, as an English major, and thrive in sales. You can segue from anthropology into the booming new field of user research; from classics into management consulting, and from philosophy into high-stakes investing. At any stage of your career, you can bring a humanist's grace to our rapidly evolving high-tech future. And if you know how to attack the job market, your opportunities will be vast.
In this book, you will learn why resume-writing is fading in importance and why "telling your story" is taking its place. You will learn how to create jobs that don't exist yet, and to translate your campus achievements into a new style of expression that will make employers' eyes light up. You will discover why people who start in eccentric first jobs - and then make their own luck - so often race ahead of peers whose post-college hunt focuses only on security and starting pay. You will be ready for anything. - Publisher's Description
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Getting from College to Career: Your Essential Guide to Succeeding in the Real World
Pollak, Lindsey (2022)
"Getting from College to Career" by Career Expert and Global Spokesperson for LinkedIn, Lindsey Pollak, is an insightful, essential world guide for college students and recent graduates who are preparing to embark upon a career beyond the university walls.
Now newly revised to reflect the most recent changes in the economy and job market, these “90 things to do before you join the real world” will give every young grad a head start, providing essential information for adapting to and succeeding in a marketplace that is now more competitive than ever. - Publisher's Description
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Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action
Sinek, Simon (2011)
Discover the book that is captivating millions on TikTok and that served as the basis for one of the most popular TED Talks of all time—with more than 56 million views and counting. Over a decade ago, Simon Sinek started a movement that inspired millions to demand purpose at work, to ask what was the WHY of their organization. Since then, millions have been touched by the power of his ideas, and these ideas remain as relevant and timely as ever.
"Start with Why" asks (and answers) the questions: why are some people and organizations more innovative, more influential, and more profitable than others? Why do some command greater loyalty from customers and employees alike? Even among the successful, why are so few able to repeat their success over and over? People like Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Jobs, and the Wright Brothers had little in common, but they all started with WHY. They realized that people won't truly buy into a product, service, movement, or idea until they understand the WHY behind it.
"Start with Why" shows that the leaders who have had the greatest influence in the world all think, act and communicate the same way—and it's the opposite of what everyone else does. Sinek calls this powerful idea The Golden Circle, and it provides a framework upon which organizations can be built, movements can be led, and people can be inspired. And it all starts with WHY. - Publisher's Description
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Setback Leadership : How Leaders Turn Their Setbacks into Successes. And How You can, Too!
Bhatnagar, Srijata (2019)
“Every setback has the potential to be a leadership breakthrough. Are you tapping into that potential?”
At some point or the other in life, everybody goes through terribly tough times. Most people get stumped by these; they don’t know how to handle them. Plagued by negative emotions such as sorrow, anxiety, fear and self-doubt, they struggle to get back on their feet and find their way through life again. But the truth is, on the other side of setbacks lie great rewards. True leaders know this. Which is why, they see every setback as an opportunity for personal transformation to achieve exponential success.
This book brings forth stories of such incredible leaders, who have turned their setbacks into breakthroughs. As you read their stories, you will learn the tools, techniques and strategies used by them. In turn, this will equip you to handle your setbacks like a pro - and turn every adversity into an opportunity of a lifetime! - Publisher's Description
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Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader
Ibarra, Herminia (2023)
You aspire to lead with greater impact. The problem is you’re busy executing on today’s demands. You know you have to carve out time from your day job to build your leadership skills, but it’s easy to let immediate problems and old mind-sets get in the way. Herminia Ibarra—an expert on professional leadership and development and a renowned professor at INSEAD, a leading international business school—shows how managers and executives at all levels can step up to leadership by making small but crucial changes in their jobs, their networks, and themselves. In "Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader," she offers advice to help you: Redefine your job in order to make more strategic, contributions, Diversify your network so that you connect to, and learn from, a bigger range of stakeholders, Become more playful with your self-concept, allowing your familiar—and possibly outdated—leadership style to evolve.
Ibarra turns the usual “think first and then act” philosophy on its head by arguing that doing these three things will help you learn through action and will increase what she calls your outsight—the valuable external perspective you gain from direct experiences and experimentation. As opposed to insight, outsight will then help change the way you think as a leader: about what kind of work is important; how you should invest your time; why and which relationships matter in informing and supporting your leadership; and, ultimately, who you want to become. Packed with self-assessments and practical advice to help define your most pressing leadership challenges, this book will help you devise a plan of action to become a better leader and move your career to the next level. It’s time to learn by doing. - Publisher's Description
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For additional information, check out the Libraries’ Career Collection resources. Physical copies of books are located on the second floor of Hunt Library, and eBooks can be found in the catalog. You can also visit the CPDC website to find additional resources, or make an appointment with a Career Consultant.
Feature image by Marten Bjork on Unsplash