Career Challenges: Straight Talk about Achieving Success in the Technology-Driven, Post-COVID World of Work

Career Challenges examines the career development encounters that people experience across their life-span. The book begins with a comprehensive examination of the career development process and why these eight phases must be understood in order for career success and satisfaction to be achieved. This analysis is followed by a meticulous treatment of more than two dozen significant challenges that members of the workforce must confront and resolve as they navigate their life experience. The career challenges examine the right and wrong ways to move through career development and address everything from conducting an effective job search and knowing how to manage career growth and mobility to essential tasks like preparing a resume, managing an interview’ and dealing with job stagnation, change, or loss. Added to this edition are two new chapters dealing with the changing nature of work, worker, and workplace in a high technology, post COVID world. Throughout the book, the author sets life-work balance as a paramount individual goal and outlines strategies about how this illusive objective can be achieved. Career Challenges is the next best thing to having a professional career counselor or recruiter in the room. While written for the individual experiencing the various life and career experiences, this book is also of significant value to counselors, search and staffing professionals, educators, and others playing important roles in these transitions. Career Challenges is the reader’s map or GPS to a successful and satisfying career.

Table of Contents:
Preface Part 1 –Entering, Reentering, and Moving about the World of Work Chapter 1 – Understanding the Career Development Process Chapter 2 – Making Quality Decisions Chapter 3 – Conducting Effective Searches at Every Career Stage Chapter 4 – Broadening Career and Occupational Knowledge Chapter 5 – Seizing Education, Training, and Retraining Opportunities Chapter 6 – Finding and Using Quality Information Chapter 7 – Establishing Realistic Career Aspirations Chapter 8 – Utilizing Human Resources and Life Experiences as Career Teachers Chapter 9 – Making Time and Calendar Your Career Allies Chapter 10 – Engaging Professional Counselors Part 2 – Finding, Acquiring, and Moving into the First or Any Job Chapter 11 – Adapting to Work, Worker, and Workplace Changes Chapter 12 – Mounting and Efficient and Successful Job Search Chapter 13 – Constructing a Winning Resume Chapter 14 – Mastering the Job Interview Chapter 15 – Writing Proficiency as a Job Search Ally Chapter 16 – Managing Career and Education Transitions Chapter 17 – Dealing with Career Setbacks and Obstacles Chapter 18 – Accepting the Right Job Offer Chapter 19 – Coping with New Job Anxieties and Stresses Chapter 20 – Holding Out for the “Dream” Job Chapter 21 – Managing Positive Encounters with Career Helpers Part 3 – Achieving Success, Satisfaction, and Dealing with the Occasional Crisis Chapter 22 – Maximizing Career Growth, Mobility, and Maintenance Opportunities Chapter 23 – Attaining Career Success, Satisfaction, and Life-Work Balance Chapter 24 – Dealing with Termination, Job Loss, and other Career Dilemmas Chapter 25 – Ignoring the Knowledge Explosion Part 4 – Winding Down and Exiting Your Career Chapter 26 – Posturing for Late Career and Retirement Chapter 27 – Ensuring Positive Late Career Adjustments Part 5 – Challenges to Career Development in the Future Chapter 28 – The Work and Worker of the Future Chapter 29 – The Workplace of the Future Chapter 30 – Experts Weigh In on Career Success and Satisfaction Conclusion Appendix Index

About the Author :
Frank Burtnett is a veteran counselor, teacher, student service administrator, education association officer, and consultant who founded and served as the President and Principal Consultant of Education Now, an education and human resource development consulting firm located in Springfield, Virginia, and Rockport, Maine. At various times in his personal career, Frank served as the Executive Director of the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC), Associate Executive Director of the American Counseling Association (ACA), and Certification and Education Consultant for the National Association of Personnel Services (NAPS).