Peak Careers
Professional Development for Career Practitioners
Wishing you all a very happy holiday season. I am taking vacation from December 24 – January 5.
Hope you like this picture of me and my good friend skating on Sandy Pond in Freedom Maine years ago. This picture makes me smile every time I see it.
Bio’s of interviewees
Karen James Chopra, LPC, CCC, NCC, is the founder of Chopra Consulting for Consultants , which helps therapists, counselors, coaches and other consultants create thriving businesses. She also has a well-established career counseling private practice in Washington, D.C. (www.ChopraCareers.com), and has helped hundreds of clients with career exploration, job search, and career management. A former U.S. Government trade negotiator, she is the author of Coaching Career Clients on Salary and Other Workplace Negotiations and numerous other articles on the business and practice of career counseling. MCDA has honored her with both their Outstanding Career Practitioner and Lifetime Achievement awards
PAULA BRAND founder of Brand Career Management (BCM), is a Global Career Coach & Consultant, LinkedIn Expert, Speaker, Trainer and Facilitator with more than 20 years of experience in workforce development, education, human resources and career counseling. She helps professionals strategically manage their careers, apply effective job search techniques and leverage social media tools to secure their best career options with ease. Paula has a passion for empowering mid-career to executive women. You can find out more about her and BCM at https://www.brandcareermanagement.com/
NOTE: The book Paula reviews is What’s Mom Still Got To Do With It? by Illana Tolpin Levitt http://www.whatsmomthebook.com/
JANE FINKLE, MS, NCC Jane has over 20 years experience in helping individuals with career assessment, planning, job search strategies, and workplace adjustment. Prior to founding her practice, Jane served as Associate Director of Career Services at the University of Pennsylvania, where she designed and administered career programs, developed resources, and provided career counseling and advice on employment trends for students and alumni of the College of Arts and Sciences and the Wharton School. Jane created and led the “Wharton Career Discovery” seminar and served as liaison to recruiters from major corporations. She has been published in Huffington Post, Psychology Today, mindbodygreen and SmartBrief. Author, The Introvert’s Complete Career Guide: From Landing a Job to Surviving, Thriving and Moving on Up Learn More at http://janefinkle.com/
JIM PEACOCK is the Principal at Peak-Careers Consulting and writes a monthly newsletter for career practitioners. Peak-Careers offers discussion-based online seminars for career practitioners focused on meeting continuing education needs for CCSP, GCDF and BCC certified professionals as well as workshops for career practitioners and individual career coaching. He is the author of A Field Guide for Career Practitioners: Helping Your Clients Create Their Next Move
Sign up to receive my TOP 10 TIPS WHEN WORKING WITH AN UNDECIDED PERSON. You can also receive the career practitioners newsletter which includes a variety of career topics, industry news, interesting events, and more. https://peak-careers.com
I write short book reviews whenever I finish a book and post them on my website. Thanks to a couple of other colleagues who are voracious readers, I am now also posting in Good Reads occasionally. Each December I like to reflect back on the books I’ve read in 2019 and seek recommendations from you.
For me, writing down my book reviews makes it (a) easier to remember as a visual & kinesthetic learner and (b) easier to share recommendations with others when the time is right.
Below I have three categories of book reviews.
I have also found a few quotes regarding books that I like.
Note: I’ve given 1 or 2 short sentences for each book but you can read the entire book reviews by clicking on the hyperlinks.
I Never Met a Book I Didn’t Like. Jim Peacock (this is almost true…I have had maybe 2 or 3 books I actually did not finish in my lifetime…one was Moby Dick 🙂
I like to learn from others in the PR and marketing and business world. Being a Solopreneur can be difficult but having experts around me makes my job easier. I always pick up tidbits from each of them.
PR Works! How to Create, Implement and Leverage a Public Relations Program for your Small Business. By Nancy Marshall, the PR Maven. If you are a small business person and want to get yourself onto the right direction for growing your business, then you need to read this book.
It’s Your Ship By Captain D. Michael Abrashoff. Read this in December 2019 so it missed that newsletter. I have been doing some research into “stay interviews” which are done while employees are still working at your company versus “exit interviews” when you ask them “What went wrong? What could we do better?” This book is what was recommended by someone in a Facebook recruiter group I am in as one of the first books that talked about putting employees first and asking them what they think.
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies . . . The man who never reads lives only one.” – George R.R. Martin
White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism. By Robin Diangelo. I included this book here because it has really challenged me. Most of our American culture is run by whites which means that polices, laws, and interpretation of them is white focused. So challenge yourself and read this book.
“Think before you speak. Read before you think.” – Fran Lebowitz
Grandma Gatewood’s Walk by Ben Montgomery. I just finished reading Grandma Gatewood’s Walk about a 67 year old grandmother who was the first woman to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail. I love the outdoors and have walked 1800+ miles of the Pacific Crest Trail and pieces of the AT but was blown away and inspired at the same time with this woman who walked the AT at 67 years old, then again as a thru-hike, AND again in sections
A Widow for One Year. By John Irving. This is my second John Irving book in 2019…there was a sale at a bookstore. The author is an edgy guy and not afraid to write about sex 🙂 Not dirty sex or porn, just the struggles of sex and the complications of it at times. I enjoyed both books.
Becoming By Michelle Obama. From the South Side of Chicago to the Whitehouse. What an amazing journey. What I loved about this book was the insight into how Michelle Obama thinks and her passions.
“Books are a uniquely portable magic.” – Stephen King
Oh yeah, I almost forgot…I published my book this spring too. A Field Guide for Career Practitioners: Helping Your Clients Create Their Next Move
You can can check out what others think of my book on the above link. I’m quite proud of it, but I could be biased.
There are more books that I read in 2019 and you can see them all by going to my website. And if you’d like to make a recommendation for me in any of my categories…please do, I’m always looking for the next great read.
Check out my interview with four other book reading friends.
Jim Peacock is the Principal at Peak-Careers Consulting and writes a weekly email for career practitioners. Peak-Careers offers discussion-based online seminars for career practitioners focused on meeting continuing education needs for CCSP, GCDF and BCC certified professionals as well as workshops for career practitioners and individual career coaching.
He is the author of A Field Guide for Career Practitioners: Helping Your Clients Create Their Next Move and the recipient of the 2020 Kenneth C. Hoyt Award from the National Career Development Association.
Sign up here to receive my TOP 10 TIPS WHEN WORKING WITH AN UNDECIDED PERSON. You will also receive the career practitioner’s weekly email on a variety of career topics, industry news, interesting events, and more.
By Nancy Marshall, the PR Maven.
I was recently on the PR Maven Podcast (Episode 63) and true to Nancy’s love of networking and generosity, she sent me this book after our podcast as a thank you. I devoured it in short time. It is filled with tips and practical advice on how to take your small business to the next level in regards to public relations.
There are a number of things I have been doing right for PR, but scribbled all over the margins and made notes on places I could improve. Like Nancy, I am a networker and that has helped me tremendously over the years. What I am not as good at is leveraging a number of other PR practices.
She begins with what PR is and how it works, the importance of having a game plan, the art of storytelling, using social media to generate interest and much more. She has a great appendix with examples of the important things she is recommending you to do. Two very important examples in the appendix are the Message Map and the Measurement Dashboard.
If you are a small business person and want to get yourself onto the right direction for growing your business, then you need to read this book.
Thank you Nancy for all your great advice and your willingness to share your experience.
This is my second John Irving book in 2019…there was a sale at a bookstore. The author is an edgy guy and not afraid to write about sex 🙂 Not dirty sex or porn, just the struggles of sex and the complications of it at times.
One of the two main characters is a 16 year old boy, Eddie, who ends up fooling around with an older distraught woman on his summer job. Distraught because her two sons were killed in a car accident and she just can’t deal with it. The woman’s daughter, Ruth, is young and doesn’t really understand what is going on and then they fast forward to years later when the daughter is an adult. Everything I can think about writing, feels like a spoiler so I won’t say much more.
I enjoyed the book. There are lots of twists and turns that are unexpected with the two main characters, Ruth and Eddie are complicated people and you get to follow them from when they were young in the 1950’s to 1995 when their lives continue to intertwine.
Edgy, complicated relationships, and at times hilarious for the situations they get in.
Good summer book.