Our careers are our most important economic asset
Our careers provide the path to fulfilling our personal economic hopes and dreams—homes you want to own, cars you want to drive, your children’s education, and the financial security during your working and retirement years. Managing our careers enables us to get promotions and exceptional pay raises, land new career opportunities, and maintain our employment to accumulate the value we need to fulfill our hopes and dreams.
There is an abundance of career management data available from numerous sources. Counselors, coaches, and others involved in career management provide advice through television talk shows, internet sites, and books. However, the data is not structured in a way that makes it easy to address your career goals and objectives or the specific career situations you are facing.
Without a structure, it is easy to feel overloaded, bombarded, and even confused by all the data coming from so many sources. You may be filling bookshelves, tablets, and ebook readers with numerous career advice books and articles. The information does not provide the relationships among the many components of managing a career such as developing a professional development plan, positioning yourself for a promotion, pursuing a new job, preparing a resume, preparing for an interview, or trying to strengthen your standing in your company’s talent pool. You can find yourself going in circles—doing a lot, but achieving very little.
Given the challenges you face and the enormous amount of data coming at you, what can you do to get the most value from your most important economic asset—your career?
There is a proven structure for creating value from assets. It is rooted in business management. After all, companies exist to create value from their assets for their stakeholders. The structure that companies use is the proven and age-old Business Management Process.
The Business of Me: Your Job … Your Career … Your Value explains how you can apply the Business Management Process to manage your career.
| Business Management Process | The Business of Me Application |
| Product Development | Turn your skills and capabilities into something you can offer for value |
| Product Branding | Define and express the value you offer |
| Marketing | Get known for what you offer |
| Selling | Convince decision makers to hire and promote you |
| Delivering | Prove your value by managing your job performance |
| Learning and Adjusting | Maintain/increase the value of your skills and capabilities in the employment marketplace |
The business management principles, processes, and career management information and tools in The Business of Me are supplemented by real-life examples and the thirty-four years of the author’s experience. Linwood Bailey managed people and functions in multiple industries and corporate cultures. He experienced what today’s professionals are experiencing, being the decision maker who impacted careers, as well as being impacted by decisions made by the companies for which he worked.
The Business of Me provides a structure as well as a “virtual filing cabinet” for managing career situations and challenges you may encounter.
- Structure for determining:
- What steps you need to take.
- How you can optimize the use of your time, money, and other resources.
- What resources and tools you can use, and when you should use them.
- Virtual filing cabinet
- What information you need
- How you can use the information
- When you should use the information
The Business of Me is designed to help business professionals address needs, challenges, and situations such as:
- Influencing career brokers, individual who make or influence decisions on who gets promoted or retained in your company.
- Leveraging new capabilities, skills, and credentials such as an undergraduate or graduate degree or professional certification.
- Making the transition from military service to the business sector.
- Finding your next job.
- Returning to the workforce.
- Making the transition from student to professional.
- Improving your job performance.
Each chapter in The Business of Me starts with a quote and a question that conveys the core concept of the chapter. This is followed by a synopsis of the component of the Business Management Process that is the focus of the chapter.
Synopses of Business Management Process components are followed by application of the components to career management—The Business of Me Process.
Chapters conclude with a summary that recaps the structure covered in the chapter—the specific steps for executing the career management component of The Business of Me Process. Chapter summaries also include a filing cabinet that relates information provided in the chapter to specific career management situations, needs, and challenges.
As you read The Business of Me, you will notice the interdependence among components of the career management process. This provides continuity from component to component and facilitates the use of The Business of Me Process as your point of reference for evaluating the abundance of career management information that is available to you beyond the book.
The Business of Me presents the following concepts.
| Concept | Description |
| Personal Product | Your strengths, skills, capabilities |
| Target Position (Personal Product Concept) | Description of the position you want to have in your future |
| Pro Forma Resume (Personal Product Prototype) | Resume you want to have in your future |
| Personal Brand Statement | Who you are, value you offer, what makes you unique |
| Personal Summary | Marketing and Selling aid for seeking promotions and a job |
| Career Brokers | Individuals who make or influence promotion decisions |
| TouchPoints | Interactions with career brokers |
| Personal Board of Directors | Advisors who can help you manage your career |
You can purchase The Business of Me: Your Job … Your Career … Your Value through Amazon.
