An action-oriented guide to help anyone find their calling and achieve their goals, inspired by the author's popular blog post with the same title The Career Manifesto presents an inspiring and refreshingly simple approach to finding your passion and purpose and then jumpstarting a dream career to achieve those, by asking three essential questions: - What do you want your impact to be? - What are the potential pathways that move you towards your purpose? - How can you hold yourself accountable for your goals? Award-winning CEO of XO Group and sought-after speaker, Michael Steib, draws on his own diverse work experience and career highlights as well as powerful anecdotes from other successful business leaders to offer expert guidance, field-tested advice, and interactive exercises that will help you answer these three key questions, envision a goal and then craft and execute a plan to achieve it. For young professionals, entrepreneurs, and creatives seeking more purpose and meaning in their work and lives, The Career Manifesto is the essential way to build--and follow through on--an effective plan to excel at whatever job, project or career goal you put your mind to.

Fully revised and updated in 2017, the revolutionary career guide for a new generation of job-seekers, from one of the U.S.’s top career counselors “So what are you going to do with your major?” It’s an innocent question that can haunt students from high school to graduate school and beyond. Relax. Your major is just the starting point for designing a meaningful future. In this indispensable guide, Dr. Katharine Brooks shows you a creative, fun, and intelligent way to figure out what you want to do and how to get it—no matter what you studied in college. You will learn to map your experiences for insights into your strengths and passions, design possible lives, and create goals destined to take you wherever you want to go. Using techniques and ideas that have guided thousands of college students to successful careers, Dr. Brooks will teach you to outsmart and outperform your competition, with more Wisdom Builders and an easily applied career development process. No matter what career you aspire to, You Majored in What? offers a practical, creative, and successful approach to finding your path to career fulfillment.

Compelling fiction starts with characters who have well-crafted layers that make them memorable, relatable, and fascinating. But trying to convey those layers often results in bulky descriptions that cause readers to skim. Occupations, though, can cover a lot of characterization ground, revealing personality traits, abilities, passions, and motivations. Dig deeper, and a career can hint at past trauma, fears, and even the character’s efforts to run from—or make up for—the past. Select a job that packs a powerful punch. Inside The Occupation Thesaurus, you’ll find: * Informative profiles on popular and unusual jobs to help you write them with authority * Believable conflict scenarios for each occupation, giving you unlimited possibilities for adding tension at the story and scene level * Advice for twisting the stereotypes often associated with these professions * Instruction on how to use jobs to characterize, support story structure, reinforce theme, and more * An in-depth study on how emotional wounds and basic human needs may influence a character’s choice of occupation * A brainstorming tool to organize the various aspects of your character’s personality so you can come up with the best careers for them Choose a profession for your character that brings more to the table than just a paycheck. With over 120 entries in a user-friendly format, The Occupation Thesaurus is an entire job fair for writers.

Get ready to relearn everything you thought you knew about what a successful career path can look like. Today, unemployment hovers at a near-record high, yet 3.5 million American jobs remain unfilled. Why? Because companies simply cannot find people with the skills they actually need. The good news is that this skills gap represents unprecedented opportunities for every person seeking a successful and exciting career. But these opportunities can’t be found inside the walls of the traditional classroom. Instead, they lie in the myriad of educational options that provide the technical, vocational, and soft skills on demand in today’s workplace, such as: -Professional certifications: Start your career faster in fields like bioscience aviation, culinary arts, and medical technology. -Associates degrees: Increase earning potential through inexpensive 2-year programs in subjects like civil engineering, environmental science, education, and nursing. -Apprenticeships: Earn while you learn under the direct supervision of a skilled expert. Far beyond the artisan trades, today’s apprenticeships can be found at companies like Volkswagen and Siemens. -Occupational learning: Refresh or reboot your skill sets through on-the-job training or online education. In Job U, you’ll learn about these paths to rewarding occupations; where to find them and how to parlay them into the best paying job in any field. And along the way, you’ll meet individuals of all ages who have attained their “dream jobs” through a non-traditional education: from an emergency air paramedic, to a lead mechanic of a racecar team, to an engineer of complex gas turbine generators, to a bestselling cookbook author. Whether you are recent high school or college graduate, or well along in your career journey, Job U will help you find your way to a more secure and prosperous future.

In an unorthodox approach, Georgetown University professor Cal Newport debunks the long-held belief that "follow your passion" is good advice, and sets out on a quest to discover the reality of how people end up loving their careers. Not only are pre-existing passions rare and have little to do with how most people end up loving their work, but a focus on passion over skill can be dangerous, leading to anxiety and chronic job hopping. Spending time with organic farmers, venture capitalists, screenwriters, freelance computer programmers, and others who admitted to deriving great satisfaction from their work, Newport uncovers the strategies they used and the pitfalls they avoided in developing their compelling careers. Cal reveals that matching your job to a pre-existing passion does not matter. Passion comes after you put in the hard work to become excellent at something valuable, not before. In other words, what you do for a living is much less important than how you do it. With a title taken from the comedian Steve Martin, who once said his advice for aspiring entertainers was to "be so good they can't ignore you," Cal Newport's clearly written manifesto is mandatory reading for anyone fretting about what to do with their life, or frustrated by their current job situation and eager to find a fresh new way to take control of their livelihood. He provides an evidence-based blueprint for creating work you love, and will change the way you think about careers, happiness, and the crafting of a remarkable life.

Feeling stuck? Find out how to work toward the career of your dreams If you’re slogging through your days in a boring or unrewarding job, it may be time to make a big change. Careers For Dummies is a comprehensive career guide from a top career coach and counselor that will help you jump start your career and your life. Dive in to learn more about career opportunities, with a plethora of job descriptions and the certifications, degrees, and continuing education that can help you build the career you’ve always wanted. Whether you’re entering the workforce for the first time or a career-oriented person who needs or wants a change, this book has valuable information that can help you achieve your career goals. Find out how you can build your personal brand to become more attractive to potential employers, how to create a plan to “get from here to there” on your career path, and access videos and checklists that help to drive home all the key points. If you’re not happy in your day-to-day work now, there’s no better time than the present to work towards change. Get inspired by learning about a wide variety of careers Create a path forward for a new or better career that will be rewarding and fun Determine how to build your personal brand to enhance your career opportunities Get tips from a top career coach to help you plan and implement a strategy for a more rewarding work life Careers For Dummies is the complete resource for those looking to enhance their careers or embark on a more rewarding work experience.