Career Management & Work-Life Integration: Using Self-Assessment to Navigate Contemporary Careers
"Back around the turn of the century, I was on the Alliance for Work-Life Progress board, and some of the board members found their jobs and offices being downsized as a fairly lengthy recession set in. I have been in touch with many of these folks since then, and they have all done well, but mainly by changing careers. What they really needed wasCareer Management and Work-Life Integration, by Brad Harrington and Douglas Hall (2007). As the authors note, job ladders inside of corporations (and job security) are largely a thing of the past. For young or mature adults, the implications of that shift are enormous. Specializing can be dangerous, and making yourself indispensable may not be a great idea. So individual career planning becomes on one level more difficult and less useful because the unexpected is always just around the corner, but on another level far more important if you don't want to end up stuck doing work you don't like for a company you like even less... And this really is a work-family book, which is anything but surprising once you take in the implications of modern careers: the difficulties of navigating contemporary careers are heavily compounded for modern families, where dual-earners are the norm, and fathers as well as mothers expect to devote substantial time to children and, increasingly, elderly parents and relatives. And corporate work-life policies become important for a reason that is often downplayed: attracting talent. My reading of most of the literature on the business case for work-life is that it tends to emphasize talent retention. But that may be the wrong angle if the problem is getting the right people, and planning on fairly short 'career' duration. I should mention that much of the book is very much practical, with exercises designed to draw out the reader's values, aspirations, history, and family situation in order to make sense of -- and plan for -- the future. I highly recommend it for that practicalpurposes, but genuinely enjoyed it as a contribution to rethinking the way work & family will play out in the future. Great stuff!”(Bob DragoNewsletter2007-07-23)"Its key features develop a bridge between theory and application, offering a rigorous self-assessment process and providing a more thorough experiential view than most existing books."(Johnson ThomasBusiness India2008-08-14)