Decoding Careers for College Kids or How to Succeed in Business with Lessons from the Prof (me)

I am happy to announce that I am working on my 5th book – you can learn more about my books here at The Next Step Publishing.
 
My Career Readiness expertise is talked about here and of course my College and Career Readiness Workshops speak for itself.
 
The introduction to this book, The Prof's Guide to Being Successful at Work (or What Workplace Readiness Means) is below for your first sneak peek and I will provide more updates as I get closer to publication:

Introduction
This installment of the College and Career Readiness series is focused on succeeding in your career. As someone who has been training students for the past 13+ years on how to be ready for life after college, this book is a long time coming.

I also conduct in person and online course around these topics to help people, just like you, be career ready.

My previously published books also cover important lessons on being college and career ready. This is the third book in the College and Career Readiness series I have created and published. The first book is The Prof’s Guide to Surviving High School and Kicking Butt in College (or The Book on College Readiness). The second book is The Prof’s Guide to Graduating College with a Job Offer (or The Book on Career Readiness).

When I completed that second book, I realized there was still lots to say and teach on how to be ready for that first job.

When I started my career officially meaning I was no longer a student worker or intern but a real bona fide employee of a large multinational firm, I was lost. I had no idea what I was doing or how to do what I was doing. It was a huge transition for me and it has not gotten any easier for students today to make this transition – if anything, it has gotten harder.

There is even less time for a company to “onboard” you appropriately and make sure you have the skills and talents to succeed or at least not to stick out by making too many mistakes!

You need to be able to hit the ground running as soon as you walk through the door on your first job. Also, you need to keep in mind that the job might not be a career – it might be a stopgap for you to getting to the next step of your career or it could be a temporary gig that you are hoping to turn into a full time job.

The economy is not the way it used to be and the potential to find a career path is harder and harder. What makes sense is for you to read this book and learn from me and consider expanding your knowledge with the other series I have written – The Prof’s Guide to Entrepreneur-ING Using Entrepreneurial Skills to Launch Your Own Business or be the Boss of Your Career (or How to Succeed in Business). This book will walk you through the skill sets you need to constantly manage your own career.

But before you can do that, you need to know how to be a career person.

In Chapter 1, I will teach you how to be professional and handling stereotypes with being the “youngest” employee and what that means for your interpersonal relationships at work and how yo you can be ahead of the curve with this in your career.

Office politics and culture is what I spend Chapter 2 detailing but this could be its own book – so much of this chapter is hard to define but all of it is helpful and important for you to know as you build out your career as a young professional.

Chapter 3 teaches you all you need to know about communication. Being a great communicator is key to everything you will ever want to do in your life.  Even being a “good” communicator is enough to make a difference in your career and life.

Dressing for success in Chapter 4 is so important and hard to do on a budget for a new career person – there are easy ways to accomplish this and to maintain the perception of professionalism even as a younger person.

Chapter 5 is the magic around motivation – not so much to motivate yourselves because if you are reading this book, I know you are motivated enough already to try to better yourself and to set yourself apart professionally. Instead, the magic of motivation for this chapter is around motivating others – your team members, your managers and more.

Chapter 6 is about conflict resolution and how to diffuse situations and recognizing positive conflict vs negative conflict. Taking those lessons and then building out the team building skills you need to take things to the next level for your career in Chapter 7.
 
Chapter 8 is about how to build your career through volunteering. Doing stretch assignments and doing them well is a huge way to help your career and we go over that in Chapter 9.

Chapter 10  gives you lessons and insights into managing failure and most importantly makes you understand that failure is not the worst thing that can ever happen to you. In fact, failing is the best way to learn and be ready for new adventures. Of course, with my lessons from this book and my other books (on being entrepreneurial in your career, on career readiness and more)  you will not fail for something that is not worth it.

I have spent many years as a project manager and I am a PMP (Project Management Professional) via the Project Management Institute (PMI) and I rely on all of these lessons to build out Chapter 11 on implementing project management skills in your career. Chapter 12 is all about mentorship – being a mentor and building mentoring relationships with others.

Be ready to rock your career with the lessons I will share with you based off of my long time career as an executive, entrepreneur and educator.
  
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