Review
Beverly has created an original handbook for workers of the 21st century that is beautifully written and very inspiring. She teaches you how to be the master of your own life and proactively and positively maneuver in the new workplace and win. By telling you the truth about how you can be your authentic self in the new marketplace and giving you detailed guidance of what to do and how to do it, this book will become a career classic. I will certainly be recommending it to clients and colleagues as a must read. --Gail McMeekin, President of Creative Success, Author of
The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women and
The Power of Positive ChoicesThe clarity and wisdom in this book are amazing. Beverly Ryle reframes the task of finding work in a practical way that fits current times and helps the reader to be optimistic, proactive, and even excited about it. Chapter Four, "Throw Out Your Resume and Stop Networking," is worth the price of the book in itself.
Ground of Your Own Choosing will be highly valuable to career counselors, as well as individuals who want to be more entrepreneurial about their careers. --Edwin C. Nevis, Co-Founder and Board Chair, Gestalt International Study Center, Author of
Organizational Consulting: A Gestalt Approach and
Intentional Revolutions: A Seven-Point Strategy for Transforming OrganizationsWhatever your reason for being involved in job-search, you should read
Ground of Your Own Choosing before you take another step.
This thought-provoking book offers hope to those caught in the job-search maze, struggling valiantly and often futilely to get hired. It lays out a clear path to follow to identify your personal skills and work preferences and align yourself with people and organizations that need and want you! It turns the job search process upside down and inside out and will revolutionize your thinking about how you define and find work in the 21st century.
This book should cause everyone who provides job search advice to reconsider what they are currently telling their clients. It points out what we already know that traditional approaches no longer work for many job seekers and lays out a fresh approach that does work.
Whether you are a career changer, a stay-at-home mom considering a return to the business world, a new graduate, or a recently outplaced seasoned professional, Ground of Your Own Choosing will help you view the job search in a whole new way. --Barbara Hyle, Senior Associate Director, Alumni and Graduate Career Development, Bentley College
Product Description
Everything has changed about work except how we go about finding it. Our reliance on the use of traditional job search techniques in a work environment that has dramatically changed is the equivalent of "fighting the last war" with disappointing, even disastrous, results. Most of us sense this, but we don't know what else to do.
This book is a clear, concise guide to a new kind of work security, one that is not dependent on any particular job, but on your own capacity to generate work. It offers a compelling rationale for why it is necessary to change your thinking and provides practical steps, supported by real life stores, for taking action.
From the Author's Preface:
"Several years ago, I did a workshop for a group of Bentley College alumni. Right after we finished lunch, just before we started back again, someone expressed frustration with the inefficiency and wastefulness of traditional job-search practices, and I made the offhand remark, 'If I had my way, people would throw out their resumes and stop networking.'
"An electric charge went through the room. Thirty business professionals, some a few years out of college, others farther along in their careers, all of them well-versed in traditional job-search, came alive.
"Somebody had actually said out loud what they instinctively knew, that trying to find work the way we currently go about it is unproductive, frustrating, humiliating, and often downright awful.
A career expert was telling them that it was not only acceptable but also entirely appropriate for them to feel as they did, and it was as if they heaved a collective sigh of relief. 'Maybe it's not us,' they thought, 'maybe it's the methods themselves that aren't working.'
I wished I could have put aside the agenda I planned for the afternoon to pursue the subject with them. What I suspect would have happened is that they would have told me they follow traditional job-search practices because they don't know what else to do.
Not being able to answer the question, "What do I do instead?" is the reason people looking for work keep doing the same things and expecting different, less disappointing results.
This book was written to answer that question.
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~ Leonard Cohen
by Jennifer Louden
