What Next? The Complete Guide to Taking Control of your Working Life [Paperback]

Working with a mentor or a coach is an excellent choice for accomplishing either of these goals, and in her latest book, What Next? The Complete Guide to Taking Control of Your Working Life, Dr. Barbara Moses provides the mentoring and coaching necessary to help people learn to live authentically and turn their dreams into reality. No other book on the market can provide individuals with the awareness, options, skills, and understanding necessary to deal with the bewildering array of challenges and opportunities in today's shifting work world. A virtual bible of resources, this book features self-assessment tools, quizzes, examples, guided exercises, diagnostic instruments, career wisdom based on tough realities, and tips on how to keep from getting derailed and how to overcome career challenges such as burn-out, boredom, and lack of passion.

Dr. Moses, called a Career Guru by Fast Company magazine, believes that the key to both successful career growth and life choices is for individuals to arm themselves with protective skills and act as their own career activists. She identifies 12 career strategies starting with building on your own skills, talents and strengths to finding a mentor to learning how to deal with disappointment, stressful situations and pressure. In addition she identifies eight key motivators that often work in combination or can contradict each other, but can assist individuals to find the best possible match between what drives them and a suitable work environment.

This book is not only of value to individuals at various stages of work life, but is a powerful resource for coaches, mentors, human resources personnel, and others who are in a position to influence the career development of their clients, colleagues and co-workers. The attractive style of the book with its top quality photographs and illustrations make it an excellent gift for graduates whose parents are wondering and worrying about the future course chosen by their "I'm taking a year off to go to travel with my roommate" son or daughter. But if parents start to read it before passing it on to their progeny, they too will find ideas, practical suggestions, and wisdom that can impact their own work life. It's likely that buying two copies will be necessary.

Whether you are just starting out and are looking for that first job to start you on your career path or you are considering changing careers in order to find a more fulfilling work environment, I can highly recommend "What Next?"

When you start reading the introduction, you will be amazed by the depth to which this book will take you. This is not a dry how-to-find-a-job book, this is about finding a soul-satisfying vocation. It is about finding work that not only provides a sense of purpose, but allows us to express our values, talents and strengths.

The two main ideas of "What Next?" include developing an independent attitude of being who you are by expressing your authentic self and acknowledging that a good job is a right, not a privilege.

Dr. Barbara Moses is a career expert who shows people how to uncover the core themes of their present jobs and find a career to help them become an expert in their field. She is known as a career guru, and her widely-read career column in the national Globe and Mail shows her deep love for career activism.

In this excellent source, you will:

Find out why career decisions can be distorted by unhealthy attitudes about money.

Discover your core interests.
Know how to express your authentic self in any work situation.
Find the information on how to avoid being a victim of age discrimination.
Overcome fear and learn to find work in tough times.

The 5 chapters include information on how to:

1. Know Yourself - The author starts with you, not with a list of jobs you might be interested in. First, you find out who you are. It was enlightening to discover my core needs in relation to the work environment. Do you want to change the world? Help people become more successful? Become famous? This is a book you will want to save. Throughout each chapter, you can record your thoughts about career issues. If you don't know who you are by page 85, I can tell you, you never will. This is simply brilliant information.

Dr. Barbara Moses will show you how to identify your motivational type. Are you a sociability seeker, career builder, authenticity seeker, personal developer, autonomy seeker, novelty seeker, stability seeker or lifestyler. This was all very intriguing. Once you have identified yourself, you can research work environments that are the best possible match for your motivational type.

2. Find Your Perfect Path - Once you have discovered your motivational type you can proceed with confidence to the rest of the book. You can then start to figure out which organizational sector fits with your personality. You will easily find one of the industry sectors that really appeals to your ideas of a great job. This is the chapter that discusses changing your career.

3. Find Great Work - Finally you know who you are and you have your areas of interest all mapped out. Now you create a powerful resume and cover letter and start interviewing. There is also information about what to do or not do when you lose a job. You will find out what employers are looking for and discover how to "net" a job. There are samples of a chronological and functional resume. The interview section is quite interesting. I?ve been asked some pretty tricky questions that I would have understood more fully had I discovered this wonderful resource near the time of the interview.

4. Overcome Career Challenges - If you have started to feel that your work is meaningless, you might be going through a career crisis. This chapter discusses everything from being fired to overcoming boredom and burnout. Are you feeling unfulfilled or do you have to deal with a difficult manager?

5. Boost Your Career Intelligence ? Learn how to market yourself, overcome networking angst and be kind to yourself. Throughout this book you will also find diagnostic instruments, guided exercises, quizzes and easy-to-follow samples, models and worked examples.

"What Next?" is an insightful look at how we can select a fulfilling career. Barbara Moses gives you the power to find your dream job in a contemporary employment landscape. This has to be the most exciting book on employment I've ever encountered.

~The Rebecca Review.com

As this formula goes, "What Next" does a decent job. It is populated with a variety of assessment tools, it covers the basics, such as resume writing, cover letter writing, interviewing, negotions.

What holds the book back, in my opinion, is that it does not provide anything more than the basics -- surely, it's nicely illustrated and well written, but so are many other books in the field. If you are looking for a concise, to the point and practical guide, I recommend WetFeet "Job Hunting A to Z".