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Career Management & Work-Life Integration
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Career Management & Work-Life Integration
Using Self-Assessment to Navigate Contemporary Careers



May 2007 | 248 pages | SAGE Publications, Inc

Career Management & Work/Life Integration: Using Self-Assessment to Navigate Contemporary Careers is a comprehensive, easy-to-follow guide to managing contemporary careers. Although grounded in theory, the book also provides an extensive set of exercises and activities that can guide career management over the lifespan. Authors Brad Harrington and Douglas T. Hall offer a highly useful self-assessment guide for students and other individuals who want to deal with the challenge of succeeding in a meaningful career while living a happy, well-balanced life.

Key Features

  • Bridges theory and application: While the book helps readers gain a better understanding of theories on careers, work life, and human resources, it also guides them to develop a tailored, personalized career strategy for themselves.
  • Offers a rigorous self-assessment process: Serving as the book's foundation, this self-assessment guide gives readers a wealth of information and insight regarding their own career priorities and strategies.
  • Provides a more thorough experiential view than existing books: This book integrates work from both the career management and the work life field while most academic literature treats these two areas separately.

Intended Audience
Career Management & Work/Life Integration is a great resource for employers and career planning offices. This book will also by ideal for undergraduate and graduate courses in Career Management; Leadership Development; Organizational Behavior; and Human Resource Management in the departments of business, management, and organizational psychology.

Instructor's Resources
Available upon request, an instructor's resource CD accompanies the book and includes such teaching aids as PowerPoint slides, and teaching notes for each chapter, as well as assignments, key concepts, and terms for each chapter.

Meet the author! http://www2.bc.edu/~harrinb


 
Preface
 
Acknowledgments
 
1. Understanding the New Career
Three Career Cases

 
The Barnes Family

 
Helen Casey

 
The Smith Family

 
The Changing Landscape of Careers

 
The Changing Nature of Families

 
The New Careers

 
Our Career and Work-Life Model

 
 
2. The Self-Assessment Process
The Basic Areas of Self-Assessment

 
Reflecting on the Past

 
Identity as a Core Competence

 
Clarifying Your Values

 
Understanding Your Interests and Passions

 
Lifestyle

 
Understanding Life Goals and Personal Vision

 
Skills Assessment

 
Summary

 
 
3. Integrating Your Self-Assessment and Developing Implications
Integrating Your Self-Assessment

 
Developing Themes from Your Data

 
Step 1: Coding Your Data

 
Step 2: Grouping Your Data

 
Step 3: Assigning Tentative Themes

 
step 4: Constructing the Final Themes With Supporting Data

 
Sample Themes

 
Developing Career and Work-Life Implications

 
 
Summary
4. Finding Ideal Work

 
Job Loss

 
Assessing the Labor Market

 
Identifying the Right Opportunities for You

 
Job Search Tools

 
References

 
Résumés

 
Starting a Professional Portfolio

 
Cover Letters

 
Conducting the Job Search

 
Networking and the Job Search

 
Informational Interviews

 
Guidelines for Conducting an Informational Interview

 
Questions to Ask

 
Identifying the Ideal Employer

 
Special Challenges and Tips for International Students Who Want to Work in the United States

 
Career Decision-Making

 
Summary

 
 
5. Career Development Strategies
Organizational Career Paths

 
From Career Ladders to Career Lattices

 
Vertical Careers and Organizational Advancement

 
Managing Up

 
Alternative Career Paths-Salzman's Typology

 
Backtrackers

 
Plateauers

 
Career Shifters

 
Self-Employers

 
Urban Escapees

 
The Portfolio Career

 
Ongoing Development

 
Organizational Career Systems

 
International Assignments

 
Financial Considerations

 
Summary

 
 
6. Work and Family
Men and Women, Families and Work

 
Dual-Career Couples

 
Dual-Career Families

 
Sources of Stress

 
Role Conflict

 
Summary

 
 
7. Workplace Flexibility
Flexible Work Arrangements

 
Flextime

 
Compressed Work Week

 
Part-Time and Reduced-Load Work

 
Job Sharing

 
Telecommuting

 
Leaves

 
Sabbaticals

 
Other Elements of the Family-Friendly Workplace

 
The Family-Friendly Workplace Culture

 
The Dark Side of Flexible Work Arrangements

 
Summary

 
 
8. Career Development Over the Lifespan
Lifespan Development: Are Career and Life Stages Still Relevant Today?

 
Adult Life Stages

 
Gender and Life Stages

 
A New Model for Middle and Later Years: Learning Cycles

 
The Second (or Third or Fourth) Career

 
Protean Career and Older Workers

 
How Do We Tap the Potential of Older Workers?

 
Use Developmental Relationships

 
Opt for New and Varied Job Experience

 
Improve Person--Job Brokering

 
Use Information Technology

 
Retirement

 
How Do I Want to Design My Life for the Thir Phase?

 
Financial Planning and Careers in Later Life

 
Summarizing Careers Over the Lifespan

 
Book Summary

 
 
Appendix: Standards of Excellence Index
 
Bibliography
 
Index
 
About the Authors

"Back around the turn of the century, I was on the Alliance for Work-Life Progress board, and some of the board members found their jobs and offices being downsized as a fairly lengthy recession set in. I have been in touch with many of these folks since then, and they have all done well, but mainly by changing careers. What they really needed was Career Management and Work-Life Integration, by Brad Harrington and Douglas Hall (2007). As the authors note, job ladders inside of corporations (and job security) are largely a thing of the past. For young or mature adults, the implications of that shift are enormous. Specializing can be dangerous, and making yourself indispensable may not be a great idea. So individual career planning becomes on one level more difficult and less useful because the unexpected is always just around the corner, but on another level far more important if you don't want to end up stuck doing work you don't like for a company you like even less... And this really is a work-family book, which is anything but surprising once you take in the implications of modern careers: the difficulties of navigating contemporary careers are heavily compounded for modern families, where dual-earners are the norm, and fathers as well as mothers expect to devote substantial time to children and, increasingly, elderly parents and relatives. And corporate work-life policies become important for a reason that is often downplayed: attracting talent. My reading of most of the literature on the business case for work-life is that it tends to emphasize talent retention. But that may be the wrong angle if the problem is getting the right people, and planning on fairly short 'career' duration. I should mention that much of the book is very much practical, with exercises designed to draw out the reader's values, aspirations, history, and family situation in order to make sense of -- and plan for -- the future. I highly recommend it for that practical
purposes, but genuinely enjoyed it as a contribution to rethinking the way work & family will play out in the future. Great stuff!”

Bob Drago
Penn State University
Newsletter

"Its key features develop a bridge between theory and application, offering a rigorous self-assessment process and providing a more thorough experiential view than most existing books."

Johnson Thomas
Business India
Business India

I would recommend this book to students when considering their own career planning as it is an excellent guide to thinking about what career may be suitable for the individual. However, it does not cover enough from an organizational point of view in regards to how career paths have evolved in the workplace. This was touched on slightly but is an issue that is underdeveloped as a Management Issue

Mrs Carrie Foster
Business School, Chester University
September 25, 2012

Interesting and integrates well theory and practice.

Dr Carin Linander
Hälsa och samhälle sektion 1, Kristianstad University
July 21, 2011
Key features
  • cutting-edge text written by two leading authorities on career studies
  • combines self-assessment activities with career management strategies
  • exercises and self-assessment have been thoroughly class tested

For instructors

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