I Am Changing Careers: Questions to Guide a Job Seeker by Anita Job
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: Non-Fiction, Contemporary
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

In “I Am Changing Careers” you will learn:

How to find fulfilling work
Receive a daily job search roadmap to focus on the right activities
Leverage non-traditional job search techniques and strategies that worked for Anita and will work for you
How to maintain your physical, mental and emotional health while job hunting: a holistic approach
Make a great first impression at your dream job!
Perfect for high school guidance counselors, those entering the workplace (school-to-work transition), college graduates, or those changing industries mid-career.

So what are you waiting for? Buy now and join the many readers who have gone from job seekers to employed in their perfect career!

A good attitude is essential while looking for work, but that’s just the beginning of what one needs to succeed.

It was nice to have so many open-ended questions to mull over as I read this. The job hunt can vary quite a bit for people in different industries or stages of life, so it made sense to ask the audience to think about what they bring to the table and what sort of company they’re interested in instead of making any assumptions about that. I also liked the fact that readers were asked to consider their own preferences for working conditions and any personal or medical considerations they might want to think about when deciding whether to pursue options like shift work, long commutes, long workweeks, or similar issues.

Online applications, virtual job interviews, and asynchronous interviews are incredibly common in many fields these days. Ms. Job spent almost no time discussing how technology has changed the process of looking for work or how to reword resumes with keywords from the job ads in order to get them past the automated applicant tracking system (ATS) and into the hands of a manager or some other employee at a company who screens applications. I was surprised by these choices and wished the author had included a chapter or two of advice on how to get your resume or application seen by an actual person. It would have also been helpful to have advice on how to ace interviews that either happen online or involve the applicant recording their answers in front of a camera without ever having a chance to talk to a live person from the company they’ve applied to until or unless they happen to be selected for the next round of interviews.

One of the things that surprised me about this work was how much time it spent talking about the importance of maintaining one’s physical and mental health while job hunting. Everything from exercise to eating a healthy diet to keeping one’s spirits up if things aren’t progressing the way you might have hoped they would, were covered in detail here. There is definitely something to be said for looking out for all of these things and doing plenty of self-care activities during what can be a stressful and lonely time for some folks.

With that being said, I did find myself wishing for more chapters that included practical advice for changing careers or otherwise landing work. This could have easily been expanded from 90 pages into a full-length book on the topic, and there was so much more the author could have said about best practices for trying to find a new position in the current climate. For example, cover letters seem to be less common in some industries, and many places have relaxed their dress codes as well.

The bibliography was filled with links to all sorts of organizations that can make life easier for people who are currently going through hard times. While many of them were specifically about careers, others could be used by folks in a wide variety of other circumstances. I appreciated the work that was put into compiling this list. It highlighted some of the best parts of the earlier chapters about networking, self-care, and so many other relevant topics.

I Am Changing Careers – Questions to Guide a Job Seeker was a thought-provoking read.