The Internet is full of ‘How to’ books. Jobs occupy pride of place in this collection. Forbes magazine has a list of the top career books for 2015. They are: Mistakes I Made At Work: 25 Influential Women Reflect On What They Got Out Of Getting It Wrong: Edited by Jessica Bacal; Moving the Needle: Get Clear, Get Free, and Get Going in Your Career, Business and Life by Joe Sweeney; Small Move, Big Change: Using Microresolutions to Transform Your Life Permanently by Caroline L. Arnold; and Now What? 90 Days to a New Life Direction by life coach Laura Berman Fortgang.
Notice a couple of trends? The new books are mostly written by women and they have longish names which would make the writer of The Story Of O blanche or at least hide it from her kids.
Why do women dominate this list? First, they have been restrained to home and hearth for centuries (except for the Amazons who have turned up in a new avatar these days). So, when they have the opportunity, they tend to go haywire.
Second, they are coming for the first time into the jobs arena. (Household duties — ‘the busy housewife plies her evening care’ — were part of the diurnal routine and professions like nursing were a fallout of Florence Nightingale’s crusade.) Eventually, birds of a feather flock together – even nightingales.
Today, however, you can reach for the moon. Susan Helms holds the world record for longest spacewalk. “Who we are is determined not by the destinations we choose, but by the journeys we take to get there,” says she.
This diversity of professions for women has also given rise to a different profession altogether. It’s called career cruising. A career cruiser — Anjali Misra, managing director of the Gurgaon-based Careercruise HR for one — has made the transition from corporate HR head to entrepreneur. There is increasing demand for her services. Careercruise, she says, has supported the strategic transformation initiatives of several companies. She and others like her are in the process of writing a book on their initiatives.
The title of the book is unlikely to be less than a paragraph long. For jobseekers seem to think they get their money’s worth that way. But the real successful career book has a title which is only one word in length. They call it Facebook.
