Delve into the library and explore expert guidance to help you define your purpose, invest in your career development, or change careers.
How to be Everything by Emilie Wapnick
This book celebrates multipotentialites: “someone with many interests and creative pursuits”.
Based on her research, Emilie covers four types of multipotentialite:
The Group Hug Approach: “having one multifaceted job or business that allows you to wear many hats and shift between several domains at work.”
The Slash Approach: “having two or more part-time jobs and/or businesses that you flit between on a regular basis.”
The Einstein Approach: “having one full-time job or business that fully supports you, while leaving you with enough time and energy to pursue your other passions on the side.”
The Phoenix Approach: “working in a single industry for several months or years and then shifting gears and starting a new career in a new industry.”
The Squiggly Career by Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis
A must-have manual to help you take control of your career development.
Linear career ladders and jobs for life are long gone. Careers today can take many forms, including having multiple income streams through several jobs; freelancing; being self-employed; moving between industries and role types; or working in a full-time gig and spending leisure hours building a side project to develop new skills. The Squiggly Career equips people with the five key skills needed to succeed in work today:
“Super Strengths: the things you are great at
Values: what makes you ‘you’
Confidence: belief in yourself
Networks: people helping people
Future Possibilities: exploring options”
Peppered throughout the book are simple exercises that will provide insightful answers to help you uncover these skills, which you can translate into actions that will move you towards the career you want.
The Multi-Hyphen Method by Emma Gannon
An honest, practical and topical career guidance book for the modern-day worker.
Gannon argues that working in one path throughout your career is an outdated system with little relevance today, and instead champions the rise of the portfolio career model, or multi-hyphen method, as a way of remaining competitive, following your interests, diversifying your career and being more financially strategic.
Nowadays we have the flexibility and opportunity to build multiple income streams through working in several part-time jobs, be in charge of our own skill development and pursue areas of curiosity through side projects; all thanks to the internet.
As well as drawing on her own experience, the book is peppered with success stories from other multi-hyphens, along with theories and statistics about the changing world of work, all of which supports the move towards this career model.
The Radical Sabbatical by Emma Rosen
Championing the importance of young people and professionals gaining work experience.
While trying to work out what career she should move into, it dawned on Rosen that there wasn’t one, singular career path that she wanted to pursue. In fact there were many different jobs and industries that she was interested in exploring. Why not give them all a try? That way she could minimise the risk of making another uninformed decision and instead pursue a career that she knew she was interested in, based on gaining first-hand experience in that area.
That was the start of her 25before25 project, in which she tried out 25 different careers within the space of 12 months, before her 25th birthday. The Radical Sabbatical is a thoughtful round-up that details exactly every step of the project, from where the idea came from, to how she organised the work experience placements, and the portfolio career she’s since built.
Start with Why and Find Your Why, by Simon Sinek
Start with Why is an extension of Sinek’s original TED talk, one of the most watched TED talks of all time.
Your ‘why’ is defined as “the purpose, cause or belief that inspires you to do what you do”. Knowing your ‘why’ can clarify what matters to you, the kind of person you’d like to be, the impact you want to have on the world and ultimately the kind of work you pursue.
Find Your Why offers a step-by-step method for discovering your ‘why’.
We have one ‘why’ that encompasses who we are at work, at home and everywhere we go. It determines why we get up in the morning, our purpose and why we are inspired to do the things we do with our lives.
The Crossroads of Should and Must by Elle Luna
Elle Luna wrote a piece in 2014 entitled The Crossroads of Should and Must, which quickly went viral. She later wrote a book by the same title, expanding on the original article.
Should
“Should is how other people want us to live our lives. It’s all of the expectations that others layer upon us… Shoulds are highly influential systems of thought that pressure and, at their most destructive, coerce us to live our lives differently.”
Must
“Must is different. Must is who we are, what we believe, and what we do when we are alone with our truest, most authentic self… It’s our convictions, our passions, our deepest held urges and desires – unavoidable, undeniable, and inexplicable.
Must is when we stop conforming to other people’s ideals and start connecting to our own – and this allows us to cultivate our full potential as individuals.”
Pivot – The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One by Jenny Blake
The book provides a four-step method to help you move into a new career. By drawing on your existing strengths, interests and experience: “a career pivot is doubling down on what is working to make a purposeful shift in a new, related direction”.
The Pivot Method:
Plant = laying the groundwork: “create a foundation from your values, strengths, and interests, and your one-year vision for the future.”
Scan = exploring: “researching new and related skills, talking to others, and mapping potential opportunities.”
Pilot = change experimentation: “small, low-risk experiments to test your new direction.”
Launch = pivot: “The first three stages of the Pivot Method, repeated as many times as necessary, help reduce risk and give you a greater chance of success, often taking you 80 – 90% of the way toward your goal. Launch is when you pull the trigger on the remaining 10-20%.”