How to Crush That Career Thing
Discover Where You Fit Best within the World of Work
How to Crush That Career Thing is a thought-provoking self-help guide to discerning the work that best suits each person’s values and strengths.
Kirk Anderson’s tactical career guide How to Crush That Career Thing lays out a framework for discerning one’s ideal vocation.
Concerned with the foundational elements of determining one’s occupational direction, the book covers topics like one’s values, personality, preferences, and competency. This work is done to help audiences identify their professional characters—or, the natures of their personal desires and reputations. The book suggests that such self-awareness is the first step to achieving fulfillment at work. It then explains how to find the industries, occupations, and organizations that fit a person best.
With straightforward explanations of how industries work, as of the meaning of segmentation and supply chains, this book helpfully includes clear definitions of popular terms like passion, interest, and identity. Its discussions are clear and accessible at all times, regardless of previous familiarity with their subjects. It also includes piquing supporting facts, such as that 70% of the US work force reports feeling disengaged at work, with a related cost of $483 billion to $605 billion every year in lost productivity. Its statistical data and research is compelling: one study found that individuals live longer when they’re satisfied at work. These facts are used to reemphasize the inherent value of aligning an individual’s passions with their work, increasing general life engagement.
The book also ably takes on common beliefs about work, such as that work gives a person their identity; that success is associated with not having to work any longer; and that work is only meant to serve the individual. Its alternative perceptions—such as that the fundamental purpose of work is to serve others, and that work that suits a person’s values contributes to personal fulfillment best—are enlightening. Its eye-opening techniques for getting there include interest-mapping and a competency framework—methods that interrogate one’s natural talents and interests, helping to reveal how such factors can contribute to securing a fitting career.
The book’s recommended exercises are detailed and practical, and they are shared in a logical order. Still, the assumption that a person will have the luxury of choosing work that best suits them is somewhat idealistic; these recommendations are suited best to those living within the context of developed economies, with multiple industries, organizations, and occupations to choose from. This limitation is underlined by the fact that one of the book’s primary resources—the O*NET database—is only applicable to audiences in the US.
Still, How to Crush That Career Thing is a thought-provoking self-help guide that suggests methods for maximizing one’s sense of personal fulfillment via work that’s ideally suited to them.
Reviewed by
Edith Wairimu
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
