Bored with your current job or forced to make career changes because of a layoff? Here are some job-hunting book and Web recommendations from a career librarian. Check these out and learn to look forward, not backward. As the poet wrote, “The best is yet to be.”
- The 2009 What Color Is Your Parachute? A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers, by Richard N. Bolles. Ten Speed Press, c2009. This is a true classic first published in 1971. The longevity of the title attests to its popularity and utility. Bolles recommends beginning with an assessment of your personal interests to widen the view of opportunities. The author has an excellent associated website, jobhuntersbible.com, described next.
- Job Hunters Bible. Designed as a supplement to Bolles What Color Is Your Parachute and The Job-Hunters’ Survival Guide, this online resource offers access to six important areas of career changes and job hunting: The Internet, Contacts, Job Hunting, Research, Counseling, and Jobs and Resumes. Besides advice, there are links to recommended sources in each section.
- Thinking about Tomorrow: Reinventing Yourself at Midlife, by Susan Crandell. Warner Wellness, 2007.By describing how 45 men and women, all 40 years and older, changed their careers and “reinvented” their lives, Crandell furnishes a blueprint for starting a second career. The book includes fifty tips on starting the process of life reinvention.
- The Mid-Career Success Guide: Planning for the Second Half of Your Working Life, by Sally J. Power. Praeger, 2006. Probably more useful to those not quite ready to make a significant career change, the focus of this title is on career management and ways to develop new skills while still employed. Power does include some development exercises and resource guides.
- CareerOneStopThis Website is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor. It functions as a clearinghouse with “America’s Career InfoNet,” which provides information by occupation including salaries, education sources, and many other resources. Another section of CareerOneStop is a “Service Locator,” which links people to employment and training opportunities.
- Military-Civilian Career Transition Guide: The Essential Job Search Handbook for Service Members, by Janet I. Farley. JIST Works, c2010.This guide, written by an outplacement career counselor, can be an essential guide for service members and spouses as well who are facing retirement or transition from a military career to a civilian one. Farley includes one-step at a time hints, checklists and worksheets as well as sample resumes to help the ex-military job seeker.
- From Here to There: A Self-Paced Program for Transition in Employment, by Lawrence A. Stuenkel. Lawrence & Allen, Inc., 2002.The author is founding president of an outplacement firm with 27 years experience counseling job seekers. One interesting insight in the book is the author’s contention that less than 4 percent of people get jobs through the Internet. An included CD-ROM provides a “resume editor” to help the reader work through the process of developing an excellent resume.
- Occupational Outlook Handbook This is the definitive listing of jobs published annually by the Bureau of Labor statistics. Covering 11 major areas, including management, service, sales, farming, constructive, and transportation, the handbook provides specific current information on training and education, earnings, job prospects, typical activity, and working conditions for hundreds of jobs.