Your career is so much more than just a job. It’s simple enough to find a job that pays the bills. Building your career, unlike finding a job, is a lifetime pursuit. If you feel like your career is firmly planted in a rut, some of the best advice out there comes in book form. Here are some recommendations for the best books you can read that will help you level up in your career.
Moving the Needle: Get Clear, Get Free, and Get Going in Your Career, Business, and Life by Joe Sweeney & Mike Yorkey
If you feel like you’re stuck in a rut, either in your job or in your industry, Moving the Needle is designed to help you shake up the status quo, and move forward in your career with a refreshed sense of purpose. If you have no idea what said refreshed purpose could be, this book gives you the tools you need to figure that out.
When your job search isn’t going well, it’s easy to feel like you’ll be stuck where you are forever. Sweeney’s book outlines a plan to help you figure out what you want and chart your path to professional and personal progress. Don’t let yourself get stuck in a boring status quo – embrace ideas like risk and innovation that can help you move your career in a more fulfilling direction.
The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People by Stephen R. Covey
In this classic self-development book, Stephen R. Covey details actionable items and stimulating ideas we can chew on during this time. “The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People” looks deeply into the core of why we internally self-sabotage or don’t take our careers to the next level. Once you look within to what’s truly causing a cease in your progress, you can pave your own way.
Drive by Daniel Pink
This book digs into debunking myths about motivation. It also talks about how some of today’s organisations follow outdated perspectives about motivation. Pink also uses science and evidence to show us the surprising truth about what motivates us. For example, he tells readers through science why rewards and punishments usually backfire. He also explores the desire for purposeful, meaningful work.
Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear
Since its publication in 2018, James Clear’s Atomic Habits has been a runaway success. And it should be no surprise, because don’t we all have a few habits we wish we could break, and some good routines that want to bring into our lives? What we often don’t realize is that the reason that we haven’t been able to reach our goals is that we’re missing the little details. Our life choices are made in the small habits that we carry day to day. How can we hope to be our best selves if we don’t recognise that that ideal version of us is built by small choices we continue to make every day? Atomic Habits gets down to the nitty-gritty of building good habits and break bad ones.
Build Your Dream Network by Kelly Hoey
Does the thought of networking make you cringe? Well, author and businesswoman Kelly Hoey wants you to think of networking simply as making yourself visible. “When you know people, and those people know what you do,” she writes, “success knows how to find you.” She also explains why she thinks introverts are actually better at networking than extroverts.
7 Secrets of Persuasion, James Crimmins
You followed the best advice on writing your CV and cover letter. Now it’s time for the interview, and you need to persuade someone to hire you. In this book, James Crimmins, former chief strategic officer at ad agency DDB Chicago, melds neuroscience and technique to create his seven secrets to persuasion, outlining how you can use them to talk someone into offering you a job.
Whatever books you decide to curl up with this year, I hope it brings you joy, insights, and a chance to learn a bit more about yourself.
If you’re looking for an exciting new career opportunity, make sure you click through to our job section.
