Career Change

I left a 20-year, successful law practice to (ultimately) become an Assistant Branch Manager at the Evanston Public Library. My path from lawyer to librarian was not direct; I stumbled around for a while trying to figure out what was right for me and my family.

As I’ve ended up a librarian (and have always been a prolific reader) I am frequently asked if I read anything that helped me on my journey. The answer is “yes;” I read everything I could find on this topic — self-help books; scholarly treatises; websites and magazines. While each had a few nuggets of helpful guidance, they tended to blend together, reiterating many of the same suggestions (e.g., Network ’til you drop! Learn what others with your background are doing by joining professional groups and connecting with your college alumni network. Lunch with someone who holds a job you think you’d enjoy and quiz him about his career path over caesar salad.) Useful tips, but not what I was looking for.

Ultimately I found several books and articles that guided my quest to find a work life that meshed my abilities and interests with my desire to spend more time with my family and in my community. These writings worked for me because they are written in a straightforward style, emphasize self-reflection, approach the challenge of career change as a process rather than a destination, and cover some of the issues I faced.

Before I list my favorites, I have to confess that I’m not sure they’ll hold the same magic for anyone other than me. I’ve come to believe that wholesale career change is very personal journey; everyone has to figure it out for his or herself, and one person’s solution is another’s nightmare.

So … don’t race out and buy these materials on my say-so. You can learn more about each item by clicking on the underscored title. This will be take you to a website (usually Amazon.com) containing information on obtaining it. Also, if you’re in Evanston, all of these books and articles are available (for free!) in our library system (just click on the link and search by title or author.) Also, I’d be happy to loan you my copies.

Okay, that was a lot of preamble for a very short list. Here are my suggestions:

Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing your Career by Herminia Ibarra (Harvard Business School Press, 2003).

This book by former Harvard Business School professor Herminia Ibarra doesn’t give straight advice, so if you’re looking for a punch list of activities to accomplish that will lead to a career decision by the final chapter, it will probably disappoint. Ibarra teaches a career change process by illustrative case study, taking the reader through the experiences of 23 people who ultimately made successful career transitions. (I found it quite reassuring that it took most of Ibarra’s subjects many years to figure out where they were going and how to get there.)

Let Your Life Speak, Listening for the Voice of Vocation by Parker J. Palmer (Jossey-Bass 1999.)

This slim volume is actually a compilation of essays. While I enjoyed the entire collection (which can be read in an evening) I found the first essay/chapter, titled “Listening to Life,” to be one of the most useful things I read in my attempt to figure out what I wanted to do with my career. In it Palmer talks about his own career struggles and suggests that the reader “listen” to his or her life experiences to identify personal strengths, weaknesses, interests and values. It led me to deconstruct past jobs to learn exactly what made them positive or negative. When thinking about my law career (which I loved, but found incompatible with my family responsibilities), I asked myself: Did I love the work itself? Or was it the coworkers, the work environment, the pace of the work, the opportunity for creativity, the financial reward, or external recognition? Could I find those things that were important to me in other fields? If something was missing, would it be okay?

(Note: Although I recommend this book highly, I’m compelled to mention two caveats: First, because of its small size and new-agey cover, the book looks a bit “woo-woo.” I encourage you not to judge the book by its cover … but I confess I can see why you might be tempted. Second, in several essays Palmer discusses the impact his Quaker faith had on his vocational search. I didn’t find this distracting or preachy, but it might be off-putting to some.)

“Do Your Commitments Match Your Convictions,” by Donald Sull and Domic Houlder (Harvard Business Review, January 2005)

This article provides a concrete, grid-based method for analyzing how you allocate your money, time and energy among the things that you believe matter most. The London-based authors admonish you to “Mind the Gap!” between your convictions and your commitments. You can read the article and complete the exercise in a few hours … and then think about it for days.

Managing Yourself: Success that Lasts, by Laura Nash and Howard Stevenson (Harvard Business Review, February 2004)

Like the Commitments/Convictions piece, this article provides a framework for evaluating your successes and their impact on your self, family, work and community. While not perfect (I had some trouble figuring out what went where in the rubric), I found it very useful, particularly when combined with the Commitments/Convictions exercise.

Note: While you can obtain both Harvard Business Review articles from the library (or me), you can also download them from Amazon.com, along with Peter Drucker’s classic article on Managing Oneself, in an HBR article collection titled, “Managing Yourself.” I think this is a thoughtful gift for someone who is struggling with a career transition.

There are two final books that I found helpful in my journey. They both address the difficulties women face in combining work and family. I found great comfort in these books; I wasn’t alone in my inability to make the career I loved and the family I adored work with each other. I recommend them to any woman who is in a career transition because her chosen field and her family don’t play together nicely. The books don’t provide answers, but they do provide context.

The first is Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety. This book is written by New York Times editorial writer and blogger Judith Warner. I love her column, and read it each week. A link to her blog is on my blogroll. The second is Flux: Women on Sex, Work, Kids, Love and Life in a Half-Changed World by Peggy Orenstein. Again, no answers here, but lots of understanding.