Your Career, Your Way
"A guide for working women to empower themselves on the job. Numerous sample and reproducible charts lay out an easy-to-follow framework for accomplishing long-term goals." Highly recommended.--Midwest Book Review © 2007"Provides more than just advice for breaking out of your rut, it offers a plan.  Moreover, it offers 'homework' to ensure you'll really create and execute your plan. We hope to reap the benefits for a lifetime." --Seattle Picks © 2007"Offers a guide for a future that women workers create...offering a direct and simple course for getting much closer to the career advancement many of us hunger for."--Marty Graham, San Diego News Network © 2009Consultant Quast contends that any woman regardless of age or  profession can use the business concept of a strategic plan to advance her  career. Ten chapters take the reader through the various stages of creating  and implementing such a plan, from reviewing assets and evaluating  competitors through determining goals, checking progress, and rewarding  achievements. Quast's approach is based upon her own experiences climbing  the corporate ladder, as well as her work with clients as a career coach  and mentor. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR) --Book News Inc. Portland, OR ©2007If you want to get ahead in the business world, just read the  step-by-step instructions provided in Lisa Quast's first book. Her book  includes worksheets and templates for marketing yourself as a product. She  leads you through the steps of assessing your assets and liabilities,  getting feedback from colleagues and other business people about your  strengths and weaknesses, establishing goals and setting up a plan of  action. The reader can use the book like a workbook or download the same  worksheets from the author's website. Any woman who aspires to climb the  corporate ladder would find much useful information in this slim volume. --The Odessa Record, by Terrie Schmidt-CrosbyThe message is everywhere - in order to be successful you must  have goals. Well, that may be true, but most people have very little  understanding of how to develop, manage, and maintain these goals. Good  news - help has arrived! Your Career, Your Way takes this overwhelming task  and breaks it down into a step-by-step process.For those who have struggled with letting their career manage them, have  been overlooked for career advancement, or have a hard time selling  themselves in interviews, this book will help you find your way. Taken from  the perspective of strategic product planning, the book points out the  importance of understanding your product (assessing your assets and  liabilities), assessing differentiators (your distinctive assets),  obtaining customer feedback (testing your beliefs), evaluating your  competitors (determining what you need to do to be the best for the  job/position you seek), determining your goals (short and long term  stepping stones), and creating your strategic plan (pulling it all together  to create your career roadmap). Once you have completed the exercises and  are on your way to making your career goals happen, it's important to check  your progress, stay the course, and celebrate and reward achievements. The  book provides templates for working through the process as well as sample  stories to provide guidance throughout the steps.The book sets such simple and clear guidelines you'll wonder how you ever  struggled with goal setting. The satisfaction of taking control of your  career and the self confidence that will come with understanding your  product (you!) will make you wonder how you ever survived without these  vital tools.Lisa Quast spent years writing strategic plans that created roadmaps for  products and businesses to be successful in the market place. Suddenly,  while feeling discontent with the direction, or more specifically the lack  of direction, her career path was taking, it occurred to her that she could  apply her strategic plans to a new product - her career. What has resulted  is a brilliant tool to guide woman toward taking control of their career,  understanding where they want to go, and what they need to do to get there.  This is an absolute must read for anyone - while written for women the  tools and techniques apply to everyone - and every goal. --Originally published on Curled Up With A Good Book at www.curledup.com. ©  Regan Windsor, 2007You can manage your career, your way. You can put yourself in the  driver's seat, steering yourself toward destinations of your choice. So  make the commitment to treat yourself like a product, to continually  upgrade yourself, and differentiate yourself from others." So begins author  Lisa Quast in a book on thoughtful professional planning, Your Career, Your  Way!  Having developed strategic plans in her marketing career, Quast asked  herself, "What could I achieve if I applied a business concept to myself?"   She tried the strategic planning process out on her own career before  offering the method to other women in this book.Written in a crisp, no-nonsense style, the premise of Your Career, Your  Way! is that women should view their talents and skills as competitive  products to be offered carefully to potential employers. The exercises  include a number of self-surveys to help readers develop a proactive set of  skills through self-examination and goal-setting.  Each chapter is packed  with thought-provoking exercises that help readers to manage their careers  rather than to stumble from one serendipitous employment to another.Strategic planning was developed to help businesses position themselves  competitively. Using Your Career, Your Way!, the reader can do the same for  themselves, following ten crucial steps, from assessing assets and  liabilities to goal setting and finally to success.  This is a working  book, meant to be written in, digested, and taken seriously as a basis for  developing a professional lifestyle. The author uses two fictional women  with different skill sets and different goals to illustrate how to  construct a strategic career plan.  One is a married mother of two who  aspires to be a clothing buyer, the other a single woman whose goal is to  become a vice president of marketing. Together, these characters help the  author demonstrate the strategic career planning process.The book is sprinkled liberally with inspirational quotes from famous  women, quotes that set the stage for the reader's identification of  professional strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.  Examples  are given for each exercise, followed by templates for the reader to  complete and supplemental information on finding a mentor, selecting a  coach, goal-setting, evaluating accomplishments, and celebrating success.  The book seems geared for individuals pursuing a career in the business  world and is, in that way, restrictive.  In truth, the material it contains  could be applied in many professional fields as self-study, seminar  material, or supplemental text. Your Career, Your Way! would be an  excellent gift for any woman developing a professional career. --Reviewed by Rebecca Sisk, PhD, ForeWord CLARION Reviews