HPS' Book Club: The best career development books
Career development books are invaluable resources for individuals seeking to navigate the landscape of professional growth and advancement.
These books offer a wealth of practical advice, strategies, and insights distilled from the experiences of seasoned professionals and experts in various fields. They provide guidance on setting career goals, honing essential skills, building effective networks, and overcoming common challenges encountered in the workplace.
Read below for our top career development book choices!
Atomic Habits
Good for: breaking bad habits and creating good ones professionally and personally.
Atomic Habits written by James Clear is a comprehensive, practical guide that talks about how you can change your habits and get 1% better everyday. the book uses a framework called the 'Four Laws of Behaviour Change' Where James teaches readers a simple set of rules for creating good habits and breaking bad ones.
With in-depth story telling, personal anecdotes and real-life instances, Atomic Habits takes you on a journey of self-improvement. Everything you learn in the book is backed by scientific research, making it clear that there are achievable results. Whether it’s the habit loop, 2-minute rule, identity-based approach, habit stacking, or most of the other concepts, they all have a reason why they work.
The Squiggly Career
Good for: Designing your career
The Squiggly Career written by Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis is the perfect guide for navigating the modern career landscape along with its twists, turns and possibilities. Helen and Sarah give readers actionable advice for identifying and pursuing fulfilling and purpose-driven careers in an age where we are all dealing with increased uncertainty and rapid change.
The Squiggly Career is packed with insights about the changing shape of work, exercises to fuel your growth, with tips and inspiration from highly successful people. This book will assist you in becoming happier and ultimately more successful in you career.
What Colour Is Your Parachute?: Your Guide to a Lifetime of Meaningful Work and Career Success
Good for: Uncovering career success
What Colour is your Parachute by Richard N. Bolles has transformed the way people think about job hunting. Whether you are searching for your first position, recovering from redundancy or are dreaming of a career change, this book has shown readers how to network effectively, compose impressive resumes and cover letters, interview with confidence and negotiate your salary in the best way.
More than just a book about job hunting, it delves into wisdom from Richard and famed self-assessment exercise clarifies seven key dimensions, allowing readers to uncover your greatest passions, most valued traits, and transferable skills in order to design a life that allows you to thrive.
Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.
Good for: Those wanting to be leaders
Dare to Lead written by Brené Brown is a leadership book that highlights the importance of vulnerability and empathy in the workplace. The book presents research-backed strategies for you to cultivate trust, resilience and collaboration in teams.
Brené doesn't talk about productivity techniques for outstanding results; she talks about the psychology of relationships in a business environment. In Dare to Lead, she discusses an unusual idea that a great leader has to be vulnerable, which challenged the typical image of a boss as a cold and distant person.
Designing Your Life
Good for: Building you career.
In Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, we are shown how design thinking can help us a create a life that is both meaningful and fulfilling, regardless of who or where we are, what we do or have done for a living, or how young or old we are. This same design thinking responsible for amazing technology, products and spaces can be used to design and build your career and your life, filled with fulfilment and joy.
The book teaches us how to use design thinking principles in our personal lives. The main idea is to think like a designer, embrace ambiguity and focus on prototyping and testing various life designs. One can’t simply ‘plan’ life. Life is a series of experiments.
Go Put Your Strengths To Work: 6 Powerful Steps To Achieve Outstanding Performance
Good for: Achieving outstanding performance in the workplace.
Marcus Buckingham's book has guided millions to become top performers in everything they do by focusing on their strengths. In Go Put Your Strengths to Work, readers learn how to hone and apply your strengths for maximum success in their careers.
The book gives structured exercises that will become part of readers' regular workweek and proven tactics from individuals who have applied the book's lessons successfully. Go Put Your Strengths to Work will arm readers with a radically different approach to their work life. The book also has an online Strengths Engagement Track, a focused and powerful tool that has proven to be the best way to measure the level of engagement of your or your team's strengths.
With structured exercises that will become part of your regular workweek and proven tactics from people who have successfully applied the book's lessons, Go Put Your Strengths to Work will arm you with a radically different approach to your work life. As part of the book's program you'll take an online Strengths Engagement Track, a focused and powerful gauge that has proven to be the best way to measure the level of engagement of your strengths or your team's strengths.
These career development books are like trusted guides, helping you at every step of your professional journey. From learning how to build good habits in Atomic Habits to navigating the twists and turns of modern careers with The Squiggly Career, each book offers practical advice. Whether you're hunting for a job, leading a team, or designing your life, there's something for everyone.