In this section we attempt to bring some coherence and organization to this literature to assist you in identifying any additional resources that might be useful to you in your job search. Since many of these books cannot be found in local bookstores or libraries/ you may need to order them directly from the publishers.
Choosing What's Best For You
You may be initially overwhelmed with the sheer volume of the career planning and job search literature available to help individuals find jobs and change careers. Once you examine a few books you will quickly learn that this literature is designed to be used. The books are not designed to describe or explain reality, develop a theory, nor predict the future.
Most career planning and job search books attempt to advance self-help strategies based upon the particular ideas or experiences of individual writers. They expound a set of beliefs - more or less logical and based on both experience and faith. Like other how-to literature on achieving success, you must first believe in these books before you can make them work for you. These books must be judged on the basis of faith and usefulness.
Given the nature of this literature, your best approach is to pick and choose which books are more or less useful for you. There is nothing magical about these books. At best, they may challenge your preconceptions; develop alternative beliefs which you may or may not find acceptable; provide you with some directions; and help motivate you to implement an effective job search. They will not get you a job.
The level of redundancy in this literature may be disturbing to many readers. More so than in many other fields, career planning writers tend to quote each other or rely on the perspectives of a few key writers in restating the same approaches in a different form. As a result, many individuals confuse the high level of redundancy as repeated evidence of career and job search "facts".
What You Get
We have examined most of the career planning and job search literature with a view toward identifying the best of the lot. We've judged the literature in terms of its degree of accuracy, realism, comprehensiveness, and usefulness. In doing so, we have found three major types of books which use different approaches to getting a job:
- Books designed to teach key job search process and strategy skills; these books emphasize "how" questions.
- Books designed to outline various employment fields; these books focus on "what" and "where" questions.
- Books designed to address key career issues for special groups; these books emphasize "what" and "how" questions.
Specialized Career Groups
A final set of career planning and job search books has emerged during the past few years. These books are designed for specific groups of job seekers who supposedly need specialized assistance not found in most general job search process and employment field books. The most common such books focus on women/ minorities/ the handicapped/ immigrants, public employees/ military personnel/ educators, mobile spouses, college graduates/ children/ and teenagers.
Many of these books represent a new type of career planning book that has emerged during the past few years and will most likely continue in the foreseeable future. Several books deal with both process and substance. They link the substantive "what" and "where" a concern of specific employment fields to "how" processes appropriately outlined for each field.
Take for example, the field of advertising. Several new books now outline the jobs available in the field of advertising {what questions); where you should look for vacancies {where questions)', and the best strategies for finding a job, including resumes/ letters, and interview questions appropriate for the advertising field {how questions).
These specialized career books finally identify how general job search strategies must be adapted and modified to respond to the employment needs of different types of individuals as well as to the employment cultures found in different fields.
In the coming decade we can expect to see many more career planning books produced along these combined process, field, and specialized group lines. While general career planning books focusing only on process and strategy will continue to proliferate, the real excitement in this field will be centered on the continuing development of books which link the job search and career planning processes to specific employment fields and specialized groups. If, for example, you are in the fields of real estate or robotics, you should be able to find books outlining what the jobs are, where to find them, and how to get them. Such books will most likely be written by seasoned professionals who represent specialized groups rather than by career planning professionals who are primarily trained in process skills. Such books will meet a growing need for information from individuals who have a solid understanding of how to get a job based on familiarity with the "ins" and "outs" of each field.
