Review of The Career Guide for Creative People
Career Advice and Tools for the Artistic Personality
In the vein of Richard Nelson Bolles (What Color is Your Parachute?) who provides the introduction for the book, licensed psychologist and career counsellor of over 20 years Dr Carol Eikleberry offers insights, exercises and encouragement, aimed specifically at the Artistic personality who feels out of place in a conventional workplace and is looking for a career change.
Career Challenges and the Creative Personality
Eikleberry begins with an explanation of the creative impulse and provides useful self-assessment tools for the reader to analyse their personality to better help them understand their work-related needs. Based on Dr John Holland’s vocational theory that divides up personalities and corresponding work environments into Artistic, Social, Investigative, Enterprising, Realistic and Conventional, Eikleberry explains how each person falls into one of these categories, though usually with elements of more than one.
Using online tools provided by ONet Center, the reader can discover their three-letter Holland code, which is a combination of the top three categories one’s personality correlates with. As suggested by the book’s title, Eikleberry then focuses specifically on those with mostly an Artistic personality.
Creative Choices and Solutions
The main thrust of the book is to offer career solutions for the creative personality type. Eikleberry provides practical lists, exercises and guidelines to help the reader define their career needs and to generate ideas for an ideal career.
She also offers eight different routes to career satisfaction. The success of the book is that it allows for different approaches, including working in a creative field, having a creative hobby, or starting a business, punctuated with real-life success stories to help illustrate these different routes.
Exercises include beginning a Career Notebook, determining one’s interests through self-assessment tests and examining specific “occupation trails” that suite one’s interests and priorities. The third edition of the book also includes a list of 270 creative occupations, including salaries, job descriptions and types of employers.
Upsides and Downsides to the Career Guide
Throughout the book, Eikleberry adds her own first-hand experience and writes in a conversational, positive style that engages the reader. She includes interesting quotes to illustrate her points, though because these appear in separate boxes on the pages, they can prove distracting while reading. The reader also needs to bear in mind that this is not a job hunting guide or a How to Start Your Own Business guide and it does not offer interview, resume or cover letter advice.
Some of the resources discussed in the book are specific to North America and only available online, but Eikleberry’s Creative Careers companion website does provide information for finding help locally (as well as extra career tips and advice). The ONet Center’s online resources are useful, but some are a bit tricky to download. There are, however, pencil and paper printable versions of the tests available on the site. Finally, the list of 270 occupations at the end of the book is, of course, not exhaustive and not all of them provide salary information.
Making it Happen
One of the biggest successes of The Career Guide for Creative and Unconventional People is that it acknowledges the difficulties and stresses of career changes and job hunting, particularly in a creative field.
Eikleberry manages to convey a message that anything is possible, though it takes persistence and courage to reach one’s goals. She also gives practical advice on goal setting, staying motivated and maintaining perspective.
Perhaps the biggest message in the book, though, is that the world needs creative types and there is a place for the Artistic personality. As Eikleberry states near the beginning of the book, “The adventure begins when you set out to develop your own unique potential instead of following conventional expectations to become like someone else.”
The paperback third edition of The Career Guide for Creative and Unconventional People was published by Ten Speed Press in 2007. It is available online at Amazon.com or in local bookstores for $14.95.
Cover: Career Guide for Creative People
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