How'd You Score That Gig?

Like the warning that tells us never to go food shopping when we’re hungry, the same axiom really applies when career shopping. The hungrier, or more needy we feel in terms of job fulfillment, the more likely it is that either we’ll select a career path not in our interest, or – worse yet – simply settle for…whatever.

Yet the new book, How’d You Score That Gig?: A Guide to the Coolest Jobs-and How to Get Them, by career expert Alexandra Levit, helps in a number of pragmatic, yet creative ways to provide us with a veritable shopping list of what to look for in finding that career of our dreams. Sure, you may think that you’ve ‘heard it all before,’ but what the author does is help us gain just enough insight into ourselves so as to better refine the search process. Using a simple, but innovative self-assessment test, Ms. Levit cleverly engages the reader to participate in the career satisfaction discovery process.

She’s created a ‘passion profile,’ so that readers can learn, and better understand, which fields and occupations best meet their internal and external needs. This is achieved via the establishment of seven basic personality types, and then a series of careers that best fit in each. For example, someone rated as an ‘adventurer,’ would be well served to look into such fields as conservationist, documentary photographer, foreign service officer or journalist. A ‘data head’ would likely be happiest pursuing a career as, for example, an information security specialist, a financial advisor or an urban planner.

In addition to the insights that can definitely be gained from taking and scoring the self-assessment test, Ms. Levit also provides, for each of the 60 careers highlighted in her book, a series of helpful tips as to how to take the next step in pursuing that dream career. She’s included a generous helping of relevant Web sites as well as books and magazines that are explicitely related to each career.

Whether you aspire to becoming an entrapeneur or an ecologist, this book helps you take the next and logical step from fantasy to reality. I would encourage readers to not only use this book as the great resource that it is, but also because it’s an interesting, insightful and overall easy and fun read.  Buy it here.