Carl J. Wellenstein - 12 Steps to a New Career

Youre a manager, an executive, or a professional on a management track, and now its time to take that next big step. Whats your best approach?

The process for searching for a new job or exploring a career change for you will be quite different from other employees. Surprisingly, youll find very little current, reliable, and accurate information on the subject directed at your level.

Most of the books in this genre, though well-intentioned, are written by academics, psychologists, journalists, or recruiters and convey theories about what they think you should do, or give narrow, one-sided views, or cover the subject with a generalized, one-size-fits-all approach.

One size doesnt fit all. This I know because of my own experience from:

My own job and career changes at the executive level.

Being on the other side of the table as a recruiter participating in countless interviews by the recruiters who worked with me.

Participating in candidate interviews with our employer clients.

Coaching and working with other executives, managers, and senior staff to help them make job or career changes.

Too many people change jobs to get away from the ones they have or to move to just another job for some short-term reason. They usually do so without a long-term career plan that is based on understanding their strengths and preferences.

The purpose of 12 Steps to a New Career: What to Do When You Want to Make a Change Now! is to help you make a life-changing leap from thinking of changing jobs as a job change to thinking in terms of a career path that will lead you to finding a job you can say you are eager to get up every morning to do, love what you do, and believe you are blessed with being able to get paid to do what you do.

This book will help you make your job or career change match your goals and desires regardless of whether youre a 30-year-old new manager or a 50-year-old seasoned executive. It is divided into five conceptual sections and 12 chapters. The five sections will help you to quickly grasp the overall process. The chapters will help you to achieve the objectives in each section by covering what you need to do, why you need to do it, when you need to do it and, finally, how to do it. Your journey will reflect a sequential process, each step building on the last, eventually taking you through a linear approach to , where youll roll it all together into a strategic action plan.

Ill be your career coach in this book. Ill explain how each step in the process works and why its important. Ill give examples of how to do each step, and then Ill guide you through a few exercises that will help you learn by getting you actively involved. Ill then share real-life experiences showing how others have been successful, and how recruiters and employers make their decisions.