Thursday, May 24, 2012

What's Your Type of Career (2nd Edition) by Donna Dunning, PhD

Ok, I admit it, I got this book with an eye on the future. I'm pretty sure I want to do business, but I wasn't sure exactly what (it's a big field). I was hoping that this book would help me to realise more clearly what it was exactly.

And what this book reminded me off was one of those seminars that my schools used to make us go to. The ones that make you do all those quizzes and tell you your personality types. So this is what this book is like, only without the very detailed quizzes.

What I did was to read all the relevant chapters for me. That would be the first few chapters, especially where you "diagnose" yourself. After that, the book goes into the 8 working styles there is, with plenty of excercises to help you figure out your working style, leadership style, etc. Because of this, I think this book is best used in a group. You're not going to want to read all the chapters (unless you intend to become a career guidance counsellor), and I think it might be more fun to do the different excercises together.

The writing was, well, it was attempting to engaging. For some reason though, I wasn't engaged. As I said before, it felt a lot like those workshops from school and I used to start to drift off half-way through, just like this book.

In addition, I feel like the book is a promotion for this website called O*Net (I think that's the name, I kinda stopped paying attention). The reader is constantly encouraged to use that site, to the extent that I think important information was ommited. At the end of each chapter, each type is presented with a list of jobs that might be suitable and encouraged to look through them - using O*Net. For me, I couldn't finish reading the list, and I would have really liked to have a short explanation why each job (if not each group) would suit each particular type.

In conclusion, I think that this book is best used as a workbook. The many excercises seem useful but I'd need a very strong motivator to do them seriously.

Disclaimer: I got this book from NetGalley in exchange for a free and honest review.

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