6 Ideas To Put In Your Toolbox

This month’s  Career Collective Bloggers are writing about their favorite career resources.  Scroll down to see what others have written on this topic.

My clients primarily live with chronic illness.  For the most part, the challenges they face fall into the same “categories” that healthy people face.  The story and degree of difficulties might shift.  Over the years, I’ve developed some favorite places “go t” places when I’m working with clients  around career transition or career development.

1. Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes Strategies for coping with the difficult, painful, and confusing times in your life,  By William Bridges  – the 25th anniversary edition is out and that tells you how strong this book is. This is often the place I start when working with someone who is going through any kind of difficult shift or loss in their life, not just career.  Clients with illness find that this speaks to them on so many levels and that’s a great starting place to accepting and embracing what has to be done.  Bridges explores what makes change so difficult and offers concrete suggestions.   He has written subsequent books that are also quite good, including Making the Most of Transitions,with Susan Bridges.
2. New Job, New You: A guide to reinventing yourself in a right new career, Alexandra Levit.  This is timely because it speaks to where our society is right now regarding career dreams and the marketplace.  It offers examples and specifics but primarily serves as a motivator that this can be done.  Many of the folks with whom I work have to reinvent themselves (I did!) because their symptoms prevent them from being successful in their jobs.
3. The Right Job, Right Now, the complete toolkit for finding your perfect career, Susan D. Strayer.   It sounds too perfect and it is but there are some solid assessment tools that I use with clients.  This is helpful for the “do-it-yourselfer” who wants to figure it out.
4. I’d Rather Be Working, A Step by Step guide to Financial Self Support for People with Chronic illness, by Gayle Backstrom. Although it’s written in 2002, a lot of the information is still very relevant.
5. Keep Working With Chronic Illness  Workbook, by Rosalind Joffe.  I’ve included this resource because healthy people have told me that they find it useful, too.  I developed this, though, because I couldn’t find a career tool that reflected the challenges and needs of people living with disabling symptoms. Among other things, it includes tools for identifying how symptoms impact your needs and  jobs skills as well as career assessments and job search tools.
6. Resume Writers: I didn’t know that this is a profession, separate from career professionals until recently (twitter actually).  I’d always written my own resume and didn’t realize there were options that would make it more effective.  But more than ever, this is an absolute must.  With the increasing need for the right search terms in a resume, the of qualified people trying to get the same job, a resume is a critical tool to opening doors.   Anyone with  an unusual background, such as career change, job gaps, degree/experience mismatch particularly needs to frame this strategically.  A good resume writer should be able to do this.  Oh – and if you’re wondering where to find the right match for you, we’ve got some great bloggers on this list who can help you.

Career Collective Bloggers:

• If your industry does not participate online, you can lead the way, @Keppie_Careers
• Your Best Job Search Resource? You!, @WalterAkana
• In a Job Search, Knowledge is Power, @barbarasafani
• Jump Start Your Job Search Now!, @resumeservice
• Favourite Resources for Jobseekers, @GayleHoward
• The Best Job Search Tool Ever, @careersherpa
• Find What You Do Best, Know Your Stuff, and Connect, @chandlee
• 27 Recommended Blogs for Entry-Level Job Seekers, @heatherhuhman
• Invaluable Resources for Job Search Success, @heathermundell
• Favorite Social-Media Resources for Job-seekers, @KatCareerGal
• Canadian Resources for Job Seekers, @EliteResumes @MartinBuckland
• A Self-Empowering Job Search Resource, @KCCareerCoach
• Covering your bases: 5 ultra-useful online career resources, @LaurieBerenson
• Favorite resources for Job seekers, @DawnBugni
• Top 3 Resources for Job Seekers to Position Themselves as Experts and Increase their Visibility, @expatcoachmegan
• Time as a Career Resource: How “Not” to Squander It, @ValueIntoWords

• Favorite Internet Resources for Jobseekers, @ErinKennedyCPRW

• The Facts Behind Why LinkUp Is the Most Revolutionary Job Search Engine Available to Job Seekers, @GLHoffman