The Career Guide You Never Knew You Needed: Real Advice for Every Stage of Your Work Life (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798199634410)

You didn't think you needed a career guide. You're employed. You're managing. You're fine.

And yet here you are.

Maybe you've been in the same role a little too long, and something feels off. Maybe you're watching other people get promoted and wondering what they know that you don't. Maybe you've been quietly thinking about switching careers but have no idea where to start. Or maybe you're deep in a job search, and it's going worse than you expected.

Whatever brought you here, this is the book you needed before you knew you needed it.

In The Career Guide You Never Knew You Needed, higher education professional and career coach Kris McPeak brings thirty years of hard-won experience - nine jobs, seven states, and every career stage in between - to give you the practical, honest, real-world advice that most career books are too polished to deliver.

This isn't theory. Every story, every strategy, and every piece of advice in this book came from living it, failing at it, and eventually figuring it out.

Organized in three parts that follow the full arc of a working life, this book meets you exactly where you are:

Part One - Where You Are Now - for the reader who's employed but questioning. You'll learn why job satisfaction isn't a luxury, how to have the difficult conversations most people avoid, how to get promoted when you feel stuck, and when leaving is the right call.

Part Two - Making the Move - for the reader who's ready for something different. You'll get the real story on online job applications and ATS systems, how to write a cover letter that actually gets read, how to navigate a career switch, and yes - how to dress for the job you want without blowing your budget.

Part Three - Landing and Thriving - for the reader actively in the job search. You'll learn how to ace an interview, which questions to ask (and which ones reveal the most), how to read an employer, and how to build a sustainable work-life balance once you've landed.

Fifteen chapters. Three decades of experience. Zero corporate fluff.

McPeak writes the way she talks - warm, direct, self-deprecating, and completely honest. She has held nine positions at nine colleges across seven states. She has made the bold moves and the timid ones, taken jobs for the wrong reasons and turned down opportunities she probably should have taken. And she has learned something useful from every single one.

This is the guide she wishes someone had handed her at 24, fresh out of graduate school, about to move across the country for a job she took because she was afraid there wouldn't be another offer.

It's the one you've been looking for, even if you didn't know it yet.