books:

	• The Pathfinder: How to Choose or Change Your Career for a Lifetime of Satisfaction and Success Nicholas Lore Fireside, 1998 - 400 pages average customer review:based on 108 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

It's not enough to just have goals and desires - you need to be able to execute and deliver. Mr. Lore provides thoughtful advice on how to execute your plan for a new, more rewarding career. With practical insights on human nature, the book includes sage advice on understanding your predicament and taking action. It includes dozens of diagnostic tools to get you on your way. And it provides helpful advice on how to market yourself and network to get that exciting new job.

Most books in this category come across as being thrown together in a weekend - no depth, no originality. You wonder what the publishers were thinking. In contrast to the norm, this book is thoughtful, practical, and compelling. An excellent read.

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Funny and Life-Changing -- Update to my December 2001 review

Another Update, now 2005:

I did get into medical school, an incredible privilege for which I am extremely grateful. This was the dream this book helped me design for my future and pursue.

The Update:
I recently re-examined my Pathfinder notebook, while writing an essay for school. Even without frequently referring back to the book as I had intended, there is one concept which has helped me tremendously in the last year and half. Pages 138 and 139, Questions About Commitments, contains an idea which I have repeated to myself with really life-changing results - sorry, I'm too embarrassed to say which idea specifically! The particular idea itself may not be new, but I never really bought into it until I considered it in the context of reading and doing the exercises in this book.

I can also say that this is the only nonfiction book I have recommended to people I know in the last year and a half: the first person is a classmate who was having a hard time finding a direction for her life, and the second person is a family member who felt "stuck" in her life and asked for my advice. If you are going through the challenge of choosing / changing your career this book may be right for you, and also may I say, good luck!

My Previous Review:
The Pathfinder is a brilliant guide to choosing a career and Nicholas Lore's humorous insights into people and working made me laugh out loud. The book is well worth reading casually as Lore's ideas about career choice and development are creative and pragmatic. But taking the book as a manual for making a decision, and a tool for progressing in the chosen direction, can be a profoundly beneficial experience.

I like to consider all my options when I make a major decision and the logical structure of the exercises satisfied that concern. There are many valuable concepts which were new to me: ideas which come from Lore's extensive experience as a career counselor and from his intellectual approach which is broader than any career book I've read (for example, Parachute). Parts of the book were really hard for me - as 'personal growth' is hard - and it helped that Lore comes across as such an appealing personality, with a degree of irreverence and irony that keep the book fresh.

By the way, I am a 30 year old pre-med student, formerly an architect at a global corporate architecture firm. I think The Pathfinder had some useful insight on how to help my husband get over the shock of my career change too.

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Helped me find my way

The name of this book is completely appropriate. Mr. Lowe offers tools that helped me organize my thoughts. Each tool lead me another step down a path that I was building as I went.

He isolates the information that a reader needs to have to make an appropriate career choice. For example, he focuses on work envioronments and provides many questions to ask to determine what kind of work the reader prefers. Some people enjoy being in an active noisy office and other people need quiet. Once the reader has answered that question, any career that requires them to work in an envioronment that is not suitable can be ruled out.

It is these kind of tools that made the book so helpful. I strongly recommend it to anyone who is looking to choose a new career or refine their current one.

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