HBR Guide to Changing Your Career

Harvard Business Review

• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781633692503
• eBook ISBN: 9781633693111
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Careers

The guide for professionals in their 30s to 50s on breaking out of a career rut and finding their way toward the next satisfying chapter of their work lives.

• Gives readers the confidence and advice they need to know that they can successfully change careers midway through their working lives
• Gives readers tools to create experiments that allow them to explore their options without putting their current jobs in jeopardy
• Helps readers craft a story about their professional path that will make sense to hiring teams, rather than appear jumpy and unfocused
• Helps readers answer tough questions such as: Should you consider a more fulfilling job with a pay cut when you've got a mortgage, bills, and college savings to worry about? How do you get the training or education you need to switch careers if you're already struggling to spend quality time with your family?
• Provides inspiration for readers by including real-life stories of folks who've done it

Audience: Managers/professionals who are at least five years into their careers. The 2015 results of the Conference Board's annual job satisfaction survey revealed that 52% of Americans are unhappy with their jobs (and that rate has hovered in that half range for the past several years!). This guide is for them, and for their global colleagues who are also suffering from job malaise. Ideal readers include: people who are bored in their jobs; people who want to be promoted, but the path or process at their job is unclear; people who have been laid off in a shrinking industry; people who took time off of work to care for family members (children and the elderly) and are now back but unhappy; people whose bosses are terrible; people who are in a line of work that meets their financial needs but not their spiritual/motivational ones (such as someone who becomes a highly paid CPA to support her family instead of teaching math in an inner-city school system); people who are recruited by friends or to a company that everyone assures them is "perfect" for them only to discover that it's not a good match; people going through a divorce and finding they need more money or more flexibility to address family concerns.

Announced first printing: 20,000
Laydown goal: 4,000

Index

action, taking, 8, 93, 98

adaptability, 11

advisers, trusted, 98–101. See also coaches

analysis paralysis, 2, 98

apprenticeships, 115–117

assets, using your, 140–141

backup plans, 83–84

best self exercise, 62. See also exercises

boredom, as signal it’s time to take stock, 9–10. See also stock, taking

budgeting, 79–80. See also financial issues

career

being stuck in wrong, 87–111

building expertise in new, 163–167

having multiple, 171–175

identify themes in, 144–146 (see also storytelling)

length of, 40

passion for, 59–64 (see also passion)

reevaluating, 7–15

stages of, 40–41

career changes

context of, 5

conventional wisdom on, 1–2, 90, 93, 96, 98–99

financial issues of, 77–86

guidance on, 98–101 (see also coaches; advisers, trusted)

imagination exercises for, 65–68 (see also exercises)

making big, 101–102

midlife crisis and, 31–36

obstacles to, 90

radical, 185–191

reasons for, 78–79

resilience and, 189

risk taking and, 71–76

studies of, 91–92

success stories, 102–103, 171–175, 177–184, 185–191

test and learn model for, 103–110, 111

test driving, 115–123

thinking about, 87–89 (see also reflection)

three-point plan for, 93–94

career decision scorecard, 155–161

career fuel, 41–42

career stages, 40–41

career stories, 143–147

career strategy, 39–43

change

big, 101–102, 186

fear of, 3, 90 (see also fear; risk taking; risk tolerance)

test and learn model of, 103–110

triggers for, 108–110

coaches, 23–25. See also advisers, trusted

cold calls, 127–132. See also informational interviews; networking

c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• What You’ll Learn
• Contents
• Introduction
• Section One: Understand What’s Going On
• Section Two: What Do You Think You Want to Do?
• Section Three: Is Career Change Right for You?
• Section Four: Get Going
• Section Five: Get Inspired
• Index