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Targeting the Job You Want

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Targeting the Job You Want

Career Press,

15 min read
10 take-aways
Text available

What's inside?

Before you can find your ideal job, you have to define your ideal life.

Editorial Rating

7

Qualities

  • Applicable

Recommendation

The mantra has been repeated so often that it’s become a clichŽ: Worker loyalty has disappeared, making every job temporary. Author Kate Wendleton repeats the obvious facts about the increasingly transient work force, but goes beyond the apparent as she supplies inventive ways to approach your career decisions. Her most intriguing suggestion is that you should use a "Seven Stories Approach" to develop your "Forty-Year Vision." The stories help you discover what you’re really passionate about so you can build a long-term vision to guide you meaningfully through your career. While the book is repetitious at times, it offers useful examples of job hunters who used Wendleton’s tactics to improve their careers. getAbstract recommends this book to anyone who is interested in a fresh approach to career change, and to human resource professionals who want to know how applicants are (or should be) thinking.

Summary

The Morphing Job Market

The changing economy and rapidly developing technology have combined to make the job market much more fluid and flexible than it was 20 years ago. The economy continues to morph, making traditional career planning techniques obsolete. Once, a loyal worker expected to stay with one employer for an entire career. But now jobs seem to be merely temporary assignments. Consider the statistics. The typical American worker has been in his or her job only four years. A recent college graduate can expect to have more than a dozen jobs in five separate careers. In 2010, half of workers will hold jobs that hadn’t been invented in 2000.

Want proof? In the early 1990s, few people had ever heard of industries that now employ countless people, such as health maintenance organizations, wireless communications, for-profit schools or the Internet. In 2010, half of all workers will have untraditional jobs and will not be full-timers on one employer’s payroll. As a result, workers must engage in a continual job search. This concept means staying constantly aware of market forces inside and outside the organization where you work.

Today, changing jobs is relatively...

About the Author

Kate Wendleton founded The Five O’clock Club in 1978 to help job hunters and career changers. Wendleton is a syndicated columnist and an expert on job searches and career development. She holds an M.B.A. and was chief financial officer for two small companies.

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