At first glance, the revised and updated version of Barbara Moses’ What Next?, released in April 2009, appears to be sleeker and shinier than its predecessor, released originally in 2003 and then again with an accompanying workbook in 2006. The cover is glossier, the subtitle catchier, and the spine slimmer (though the page count remains the same).
Inside, however, little has changed. The pages are no longer coated, but that is perhaps the most noticeable difference. Changes in the text, exercises, and images are few and may be hard to spot during a casual reading. Even a page-by-page comparison turns up little in the way of substantive revision.
The Revisions and Updates
One of the most puzzling changes, given the book’s Canadian author and British publisher (Dorling Kindersley Publishers Ltd) is the Americanization of the spelling. Whereas prior editions referred to the “behavioural implications” of certain motivational types (Chapter 1), the new edition refers to their “behavioral implications”. One can only assume this is to make the book more marketable internationally, particularly in the United States.
Other slight changes include the replacement of the old-fashioned “teleworking” with the much more modern “telecommuting” (Chapter 2) and the diplomatic “leave” with the more forceful “quit” (Chapter 4). Beyond that, the occasional picture has been swapped out and some of the “Career Counsel” sidebars have been rewritten, removed, or replaced. Three additional “Career Counsel” tidbits also grace the margins, mostly related to online job searches and e-networking.
And this marks the key change in the book’s content: a greater focus on the role of the Internet in career planning and development. Sure, the Internet was around in 2003, but since then, it has come to play a larger role in job searching and business networking. The recent development and explosion of social and professional networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn was barely a gleam in the eye five years ago.
Unfortunately, given that the importance of online networking is likely only to increase, the updates in the newest version of What Next? are bound to still fall short for next year’s job hunters. That being said, Moses’ focus is not simply to help people find jobs; her focus is on long-term career satisfaction – and the strategies for that have not changed significantly in the past few decades.
The Final Verdict
In the end, far more of What Next? has remained the same than has changed, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. There’s good reason the original was a national bestseller.
This book was designed to help people at every stage of their careers. Chapter 1, “Know Yourself”, contains tips and tests for discovering one’s passions, motivations, and core competencies for the workplace. Chapter 2, “Find Your Perfect Path”, helps locate the career sector that best accommodates the type of career seeker identified in Chapter 1, and Chapter 3, “Find Great Work”, offers strategies and tools for securing a job in that field.
What makes Moses’ text unique, however, is that she doesn’t stop there. While most career manuals focus on finding a great job, Moses’ also focuses on keeping it – or changing it, should the need or desire arise. Chapter 4, “Overcome Career Challenges”, deals with dissatisfaction and career distress, as well as age-related career problems and the constant struggle to achieve work-life balance. Thus, Moses takes her scope beyond finding a great job, to maintaining a satisfying career throughout one’s working life. Her final chapter, “Boost Your Career Intelligence”, is a sort of overall “how to” for remaining engaged in and enriched by the work world and contains a plethora of helpful hints for ensuring one’s continued employability.
With wisdom culled from years of work in the human resources field and a variety of hands-on exercises to get readers truly involved in the process of finding and managing a fulfilling, successful career, Barbara Moses’ What Next? is an invaluable resource for any career person. Whether or not the revised and updated version is truly any more helpful than the old is doubtful, but the bottom line is, this is a book worth having (in any edition) if you’re starting or changing careers.
The newest edition of What Next? is now available in bookstores.
Emily Jones - Emily Jones began her writing career by practising the alphabet on her mother's newly papered kitchen walls. She was promptly given a ...
