This guide will help you find a satisfying career in today's market. It includes numerous assessment surveys, identifies career resources for professional networking, outlines how to write a winning resume, and features numerous personal case histories of those who have successfully made the transition from academia to the business world. The authors' step-by-step techniques have been field-tested on thousands and will help you to discover new career perspectives.

Unplanned careers affect everything and everyone. They can lead to frustration, negativity, and apathy at a time when we need to be focused, energized and motivated. Though your library career might have started "accidentally," you can overcome organizational restructuring, changing job titles, and shifting responsibilities by cultivating a mindful existence in the library workplace. Building on the simple and fun approach that have made her previous books bestsellers, Hakala-Ausperk offers up a DIY-style program for revisiting personal values, understanding your options, identifying skill gaps, and creating plans for growth. Whether you're a library veteran who's feeling burned out, a new LIS grad just starting out, or somewhere in mid-career, this book will introduce methods to help you examine your individual interests, desires, and goals; show you how to understand your workplace's priorities and culture, and offer tips for identifying where there's either a match or a gap; demonstrate how you can improve your current position; prepare you to move forward through the creation of a personalized strategic professional plan that addresses professional development, gaining additional experience, and other options for growth; include tips for effective self-marketing, networking through colleagues and friends, and acing an interview; present ways to stay happy and engaged in a new role or position; and offer guidance for sharing your skills and experience through mentorship, and retiring with grace. Ideal for both self-paced study and team-based staff development, this six-step plan will help readers renew themselves, their careers, and their organizations.

“The only stability possible is stability in motion.”—John William Gardner In his classic treatise Self-Renewal, John W. Gardner examines why great societies thrive and die. He argues that it is dynamism, not decay, that is dramatically altering the landscape of American society. The twentieth century has brought about change more rapidly than any previous era, and with that came advancements, challenges, and often destruction. Gardner cautions that “a society must court the kinds of change that will enrich and strengthen it, rather than the kind of change that will fragment and destroy it.” A society’s ability to renew itself hinges upon its individuals. Gardner reasons that it is the waning of the heart and spirit—not a lack of material might—that threatens American society. Young countries, businesses, and humans have several key commonalities: they are flexible, eager, open, curious, unafraid, and willing to take risks. These conditions lead to success. However, as time passes, so too comes complacency, apathy, and rigidity, causing motivation to plummet. It is at this junction that great civilizations fall, businesses go bankrupt, and life stagnates. Gardner asserts that the individual’s role in social renewal requires each person to face and look beyond imminent threats. Ultimately, we need a vision that there is something worth saving. Through this vision, Gardner argues, society will begin to renew itself, not permanently, but past its average lifespan, and it will at once become enriched and rejuvenated.

The first volume of the series, Maintaining Focus, Energy, and Options Over the Career, examines how individuals enact and keep their career vital over their work life. Awarding-winning, internationally renowned researchers, including Daniel Feldman, Jennifer Deal, Phyllis Tharenou, and Terry Beehr examine the dynamic nature of contemporary careers and how careers change as individuals change in response to such factors as aging, learning, experience or contextual changes. Volume 1 includes theoretical perspectives on maintaining person-environment “fit” over the course of the career, the shifting constellation of developmental relationships over time and place, a new framework for examining midcareer renewal, a reconceptualization of the retirement transition, and potential gender differences in self-initiated international careers. Empirical studies in volume 1 examine provocative questions including: Is the traditional career really dead? Are there significant generational differences in learning and development? Can career plateauing be positive for the individual or the organization? The focus throughout this volume is on how careers unfold over time and how individuals remain productive and successful as they navigate career changes.

Work Across the Lifespan coalesces theoretical and empirical perspectives on aging and work. This volume examines a collection of human development theories that explain trajectories of change, including patterns of growth, maintenance, and decline across the adult lifespan. At its core, the lifespan perspective assumes a focus on aging as a continuous process of intraindividual change and goal-based self-regulation. In this text, the lifespan perspective serves as a lens for examining the complex relationship between aging and work. Integrating research from the fields of developmental psychology as well as industrial, work, and organizational psychology, this authoritative reference brings together the collective thinking of researchers who study work, careers, organizations, and aging.

A positive, practical, and empowering new model of career resilience for everyone who has lost, fears losing, or is thinking of leaving their job in today's downsized, restructured workplace.

This book examines the difficulties confronting information professionals who, due to financial downturns, technological change, or personal crises, are forced to re-evaluate their career options. It is divided between a case study (based on the author's own experiences) of career dislocation and eventual career renewal, and several sections that offer pragmatic advice on how to recover from job loss, conduct a skills assessment and develop a practical job search strategy. The author, with honesty, confronts the serious and sometimes troubling psychological and professional consequences of layoffs and job burnout. This book presents an overall positive outlook on personal growth and the opportunities our new information environment holds. - Provides the tools and resources that will help the reader decide on the best approach to re-start their career - Presents first-hand experience about the anxiety, hard work, and excitement that go into career renewal - Shines a light on the understanding of the various challenges that come with working in multiple library environments