I ran across In Transition many years ago when I was looking to leave Wall Street and find a job in the entertainment field. Its authors, Mary Burton and Richard Wedemeyer, teach a popular seminar on career management at Harvard Business School's club in New York.
This book, which looks at career change from both a practical and profound perspective, very quickly became my bible! In Transition emphasizes the importance of integrating your personal priorities into your professional goals. It contains well-thought out exercises for exploring the internal aspects of career satisfaction, such as creating a life mission statement and identifying your priorities and acceptable trade offs. It also stresses the importance of applying business skills to the job search, such as working with a 'Board of Directors' and creating a 'personal marketing campaign'.
The trials I faced as I moved between completely different industries taught me other key concepts that were specific to career reinvention, including:
- Exploding the 'myths' about what life would be like when I landed my 'dream' job
- The value of having the support of a 'reinvention team', a group of like-minded peers who were also looking to change careers
- The importance of becoming 'fluent' in the language of my target career
In Transition provided me with a conceptual foundation that I could modify to my own particular situation, which helped me successfully land my first job in the entertainment field. Although it was written a number of years ago its advice is timeless, and it remains an essential part of my career reinvention reference library!
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